"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

[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.