"What we have lost in food we have gained in electricity"

[pyat]

The election in Canada and listening in to random conversations on the train has sparked a few trains of thought that I keep meaning to write down. Nothing exciting or original, but I think it’s helpful to get them on “paper.” They may also be useful for getting to know me.

Thought #1: You know, 330 million North Americans can’t all live at the cottage, or on a Luddite freehold. Cities (no, not suburbs) are the most efficient way to give us all a roof, supply us with food, support us, provide venues for collaborative research and art, and yes, wash away our excrement. We are now at point where we are incredibly well-fed, even overfed, yet have no idea how to produce that food ourselves. I don’t see that as a bad thing, but rather as a sign of a increasingly efficient society that is moving away from drudgery.

There are multiple economies of scale involved. A thousand light bulbs and a thousand space heaters require a far smaller investment of aggregate energy than a thousand candles and a thousand fireplaces. A thousand light bulbs in a thousand condos require substantially fewer resources than a thousand light bulbs in a thousand houses, since there is a greater reduction in the capital cost of power lines, maintenance, and even raw consumption.

The tendency of technological development has been to the provision of more for less, and it is simply wrong to suggest that the simpler ways of the past consumed less. There were just fewer of us. Get enough people in one place doing things the old fashioned way, you end up with a blasted heath. As Edison put it, one day only the rich will be able to afford to burn candles for light. That day arrived a long time ago. We are now living in a world where only the rich or privileged can afford “the simple life.”

One of my favourite essays by George Orwell notes this trend in pre-War Britain, with industrial workers subsisting on tinned milk and margarine because the cost of acquiring and keeping fresh milk and butter was beyond them, and nor could it have possibly been provided to meet the requirements of all, even if they could afford it. Yet, their state was substantially better than the industrial worker of 1890, in many regards. They had a plenitude of cheap industrial luxuries like sweets and radios, and free access to education and public libraries and newspapers that would have amazed their fathers.

Today, industrialized society is able to provide milk and vegetables for any budget, unimaginable resources of information lie at our fingertips, and everyone (ideally) has access to advanced medical care.

One day, perhaps, this ongoing trend toward more for less will lead to an effectively post-scarcity society, where all needs will be met for a minimum consumption of energy. Hopefully, we will not have scuttled the Earth accidentally on the road upward, but I have faith in the example of history, which provides countless examples of “two steps forward, one step back,” or even “two steps forward, 1.9999 steps back…”

I also happen to believe a post-scarcity society will resemble a giant SF convention or LARP, except that instead of three-days of shared fantasy, we will have a world in which local consensus of opinion creates local reality. This happens everyday, already, but the communal fictions of the stock market, romance, religion, or what-have-you, aren’t as exciting as cat-girls in Veritech fighters.

Thought #2: Socialized healthcare is expensive. Medicine is expensive. Medicine is not less expensive when it is provided via for-profit institutions. With socialized healthcare the cost of provision is simply spread out evenly over a large population, much in the same way the military or public education is provided. It permits the same level of choice in care provision as a free market system - somewhat more, in fact, because there is no hassle with "approved" providers or treatments. In practice, this has proved to be cheaper on an individual and aggregate level than private healthcare systems.

Thought #3: I don’t believe we have the right to bear arms, because that implies an intrinsic right to kill another person. I don’t even think the police should carry guns. Now, I admit this opinion reflects a long-term ideal view of what I think humanity should be. I also note that it does not preclude ownership of guns as tools, albeit dangerous tools requiring the same sort of regulation one requires to be able to drive a car. Essentially, this means a ban on handguns and other hardware specifically designed for use against human targets and strict regulation of shotguns and hunting rifles.

Comments

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

I think I agree with you on most of that (excepting the idea that police shouldn't be able to use guns to prevent loss of life), and I really hope you're right.

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Re Thought #1: To be really energy efficient, you could come up with a plan for a 7 mile tall arcology in the shape of a giant pyramid and simply cram everyone in North America into it!

::B::

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

When I was a kid, I would've loved to live in a Paolo Soleri design.

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Remember arcologies from SimCIty 2000?

[pyat.livejournal.com]

That'll keep us safe from the Monsters!

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

Nod. As long as we can find the right plug-adaptor for the World Current!

::B::

[conjurdude.livejournal.com]

On the whole I quite agree with you.

This leads me to believe that I am, in fact, a well-meaning Canadian that was simply born 500 miles or so to the south by mistake. Damn stork.

[dagoski.livejournal.com]

If you ever want to see a defense of point 1, look at what's happening in a great many parts of Africa. You have a lot of people living effectively low tech despite some modern technology in the hands of the elites. Just in order to cook their evening meals, they're leveling forests.

In terms of three, there has to be a national consensus and an implicit trust among the citizens in one and other. The sad truth of the US is that we are split by some very serious cultural divisions which have been widened by politicians in the past thirty and more years. We are not so far from Yugoslavia right now. There are an awful lot of people who want the right to bear arms because they do not trust the other. In some cases, they can put a name to that other in other cases, there's just a sort of general distrust. And everyone kind of assumes those other guys are the ones in charge of the government. I hope Barry Obama can start rebuilding the national identity or that it happens from the bottom up. I sort of feel that happening on a generational level; meaning the under thirty crowd just doesn't get the divisions of their elders. But, I definitely think the US needs a graded licensing system for firearms. The patchwork of lax and strict gun laws between states and even counties creates a perverse incentive in the gun trade. That unregulated trade means that criminals can get firearms pretty much unhindered and that's created a very high body count here in Philly of late.

[slwatson.livejournal.com]

Good for you! Being all idealist.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

This happens everyday, already, but the communal fictions of the stock market, romance, religion, or what-have-you, aren’t as exciting as cat-girls in Veritech fighters.

What, you don't like Mad Men?

[paka.livejournal.com]

I think there's no duality, really. Modern life has stuff which would have been crummy even by our ancestors' standards. On the other hand, there's so much improvement - it's especially poignant to think about at this time of year.

I kinda think we're in the middle of the cycle as far as technology and its impact on society. That we're at a point where our resource use isn't all that economical and at some point in the future, either there's going to be some sort of big die-off, or a big breakthrough which goes into the next cycle of growth, exploration and expansion. A little like how the medieval world stayed at this clunky place for a few centuries, and then they figured out, as an example, harnesses - and it fit together with other breakthroughs, and suddenly the 1100s and 1200s were incredibly advanced compared to the 600s or 800s.

I'm not sure how optimistic I am.

I do really think something Canada gets right and which the US does wrong is you guys really have this emphasis on cities - I think that's far more convenient resource use than suburbia, and probably helps contribute to the national pride you guys have. For instance, I've seen what Vancouver is like - and even though it's this immense, sprawling, potentially nightmarish place, it's far nicer than this part of the world. Which leads us to...

and everyone (ideally) has access to advanced medical care.

You guys have health care as a right. Us, down here, being sick or old is a luxury item. We actually have a candidate seriously talking about how the free market needs to make available plenty of choices for health care, ignoring the obvious fact that if your choice is between nothing, nothing, and also nothing, then the wealth of privatized options don't do you much good. I wish Americans would start behaving like an actual first world country. We could fix so many of our problems without raising taxes, even while supporting tax cuts, if we only didn't insist on having 45% of federal budget going to defense stuff. Arguably more.

Being the neighborhood bully is not something to be proud of, but it's absolutely ridiculous when you're the neighborhood bully and you're obviously dying from a severed femoral artery.

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

What I don't get is why the Libertarians I've talked to are against improved access to health care. It's the ultimate property rights issue!

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

It's not necessary--because didn't you know, a completely free market will fix everything in health care just like it will in every other area of society?

(Oh man, I HATE debating libertarians, especially the obnoxious ones I know online.)

[zenten.livejournal.com]

Canadians do use up a lot more resources per capita than Americans. Last time I checked we used up more than Icelanders.

Not sure how that demographic split works within Canada though, and now I'm curious.

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

Canadians do use up a lot more resources per capita than Americans. Last time I checked we used up more than Icelanders.

Sadly I believe this to be true - however, I think that represents the fact that we are a country that combines low population density with a cold climate. I think as populations go, most nations with climates as cold (and I'm going to go out on a limb and say I think this is even true of Russia in aggregate) are able to take advantage of their density better than Canada is. Also Iceland has all that lovely geo-thermal going on *shakes jealous fist at Bjork*.

I think if you compare urban Canadians to urban Americans (and I'm assuming this works across climates - I don't know, but I would guess that Dallas uses almost as much energy cooling as Winnipeggers use heating) the numbers would be much closer. Of course urban Canadians do have a higher average standard of living and that does take resources...

[zenten.livejournal.com]

OK, it appears that at least in terms of carbon emissions my information is now inaccurate. I might have seen the numbers based on a different statistic though, instead of just carbon dioxide output.

http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/env_pol_car_dio_per_cap-pollution-carbon-dioxide-per-capita

This is also an interesting chart:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_GDP_to_carbon_dioxide_emissions

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Which resources are those?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita
has Canada being modestly more than the US, and less than Iceland or Luxembourg.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I think I was going off of old data from the mid 90s.

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I agree on all of that except the short term banning of hand guns (I agree with the long term ideal world thingy, and if that's what you meant then I agree with everything you said). It's a huge waste of money for a program that won't save much in the way of lives.

[nottheterritory.livejournal.com]

I have to say that the idea that 'cities are a more effective way of feeding people' wants some nuance - cities are a better way to feed people than suburbs, but the food has to come from somewhere and, especially in the current model (though many of the people I work with are pushing urban agriculture which would shift the balance slightly) that is always from outside. The idea that getting food shipped from outside is cheaper or more efficient than walking out to the back field and picking/killing it yourself is self-evidently problematic. The rest of what you say about this point I generally agree with, though.

On the other hand, I'm surprised you didn't mention the economy of scale in socialized healthcare - the main thing socialized healthcare does is to enforce the model of many small providers working for one giant consumer - as opposed to many small consumers buying from a handful of large providers. In essence, socialized medicine enforces a kind of buyer's market, as opposed to a seller's market - and that, I believe, is at the root of the arguments about it - a lot of people make a lot more money if medicine is a seller's market!

[zenten.livejournal.com]

I have to say that the idea that 'cities are a more effective way of feeding people' wants some nuance - cities are a better way to feed people than suburbs, but the food has to come from somewhere and, especially in the current model (though many of the people I work with are pushing urban agriculture which would shift the balance slightly) that is always from outside. The idea that getting food shipped from outside is cheaper or more efficient than walking out to the back field and picking/killing it yourself is self-evidently problematic. The rest of what you say about this point I generally agree with, though.

I don't see it as being so problematic, depending on the energy costs of transportation. Having people who are dedicated to making food, on land that is dedicated to making food, and then shipping that in for processing to a large place designed for it makes sense to me. Now, part of the problem with urbanization is that the cities are often created on very good farmland, but unfortunately that's not something that is reversible, and is just an argument against the creation of new cities or the expansion of the boarders of them into farmable land, not increasing population density in existing cities.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Well, there's moving food to people, or moving people from their gardens to their jobs, and moving water and trash and sewage back and forth. Though I guess if we all had gardens we'd ideally use our own sterilized waste as re-fertilizer.

Interesting point about the health care market. I'm more used to thinking of it as the efficiency of preventive care. USA has unfunded socialized health care via emergency rooms, which is tres expensive and inefficient.

[bodhifox.livejournal.com]

Our standard of living comes on the backs of millions if not billions of people starving and scraping. It's inherently unsustainable. Light bulbs, tin foil, fish... is all coming to you from China or Mexico or Vietnam, shipped by the use of oil the price of which is going to fluctuate wildly as it becomes more scarce. Industrial society will one day inevitably tank. Then what, for the people gathered in those cities, with no one nearby growing food? Look to post Soviet collapse Russia for a short scale picture. If they weren't making money with oil and gas right now they'd still all be eating beets from their gardens.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

I am not delusional enough to think the current model will or should continue as it does indefinitely. The end of affordable oil will not spell the end of industrial society, but it will undeniably change it in dramatic ways.

Few things collapse overnight. I think we're more likely to see a gradual shift to new models of operation, something that will certainly strain society, but not break it.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Cheap oil and cheap labor help, but I don't think either is necessary for industrial society. Energy can come from fission or renewables, and used to synthesize liquid fuel where needed. Labor... I've suspected Euro income PPP looks low, even when exchange rate GDP/capita is comparable to the US, because of less cheap labor -- upside, no one has to be the cheap labor. Of course, they're still importing, but it might be an example of a fairer but still functional society. Then again, the US itself used to be quite industrial -- those were among our better paying jobs, so I'm not sure if what's really at stake is "standard of living" or "executive profits".

[foomf.livejournal.com]

I won't address 1 or 2 (they're being examined well already) but I will comment on 3.

The right to bear arms is actually a third or fourth order derivative of something more profound: the right to make your own choices. In a community, because we're apes, we have a tendency to have leaders and followers, and the leaders tend to do what they want, and they and their stronger followers tend to coerce everyone into doing what the leader-group wants. Altruism remains a powerful force, in the construction and maintenance of that community, and as a result, there is a recognition that leaders and leader-groups must not be permitted to freely coerce.

Looking at what we know of hunter-gatherer societies, in the pre-agricultural mode, the groups remain small, their interactions with other groups tend to be friendly rather than hostile, though that's less and less true as they develop a sense of ownership of territory.

Agriculture, however, creates an immediate sense of ownership, and a resulting requirement for control of territory, and the enforcement of that control very quickly turns into leaders becoming regents, followers becoming armies, non-followers becoming slaves.

Only the continuing evolution of the philosophies of altruism gave us a practical approximation of democracy, and in order to get there, because armies had guns, it was and remains a logical and necessary conclusion that it must be the right of every person (for some definition of person) to be able to use the commonly available customary weapons for defense against aggression.

There is a reason why it was illegal for peasants in China and Japan to learn martial arts. There is a reason why it was illegal for the Saxons in England under the Normans, to own a bow longer than their arm, and why the Welsh (who had no such law) were able to and needed to develop the longbow, and why it spread back into the Norman occupied lands. Where there is tyranny, and where there is oppression, people will fight back, and quite often they will depose the tyrants. What happens after that is not necessarily an improvement, of course.

The only way to get rid of guns, or their equivalents, is to change the way people think about other people, to change the way people respond to leaders, to change the way leaders respond to attaining power.

[pyat.livejournal.com]

The only way to get rid of guns, or their equivalents, is to change the way people think about other people, to change the way people respond to leaders, to change the way leaders respond to attaining power.

As I said - long term ideal.

[archai.livejournal.com]

Full disclosure: I did not read your whole post, I just need to respond to one sentence in Thought 3. "I don't believe we have the right to bear arms, because that implies an intrinsic right to kill another person."

I disagree with this on a quite fundamental level. It doesn't imply any such thing, but it does guarantee that your intrinsic right to defend yourself extends all the way to self-defense against unreasonable deadly force.

[archai.livejournal.com]

...okay, one more, in support of #2. Any purely capitalistic system can be considered an evolutionary algorithm whose end product will be the perfect means by which to make the maximum possible amount of money at any given activity. Where healthcare is concerned, profitability is a really stupid goal toward which to strive.