[Outcast_Searcher]

Despite my previous post on concerns about who would actually run things and the implications of a centrally planned "magical fairy dust portrayal" super-benign government:

Don't get me wrong -- I love the ideas about planning intelligent resource management and using efficient technology, where the technology does most of the work. Since we seem to be headed toward a world where automation will make a huge proportion of the middle class workforce obsolete, we need to come up with SOME model for what we do with "surplus" labor long term.

Today the idealized Western model is "if you don't work, you don't eat". Well (leaving the sick, handicapped, and the truly retarded aside for a moment), in a world where there is plenty of work for everyone, and everyone "pulling their weight" is needed for a well-off society, that is all well and good.

If however eventually machines can do (pick any reasonable number -- 70%? 90%?) of the needed work BETTER and more efficiently than people can, unless you just want to kill or let starve the rest of the folks -- some kind of system needs to be set up handle this issue, which IMO is rapidly becoming IN OUR FACE.

[Outcast_Searcher]

By the way, whatever we do when heading toward a sustainable society, IF we have automation doing most of the work, there is a strongly dystopian potential feel to the thrust of this film that reminded me of elements of:

1). The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg.

In this novel, which starts out as touting a utopian society where the ultimate goal is, literally, to create giant indoor self-sustained societies, to let the earth sustainably support as many people as possible -- all looks "good" on the surface.

However, as you follow several people through their lives as cogs in the giant machine, the horror of the rigid dystopian system where absolute conformity and NO real choices slowly dawns on you, and you realize that the norm is to APPEAR happy to survive, but actually to be terribly unhappy.

For the sustainablility crowd, one "good" thing is, once someone is deemed unfit for society by being unable to conform or be "cured" (made willing to conform), they are uncerimoniously tossed down "the chute" where their mass is converted to energy, which helps sustain the utopian society...


2). Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

The technology and conformity parallels are obvious.


3). Soylent Green

The "not enough work" nightmare central to this film makes one wonder if only needing 3% of people to do all the work will really be the utopia they assume in Moving Forward.

[AdTheNad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Outcast_Searcher', '
')
If however eventually machines can do (pick any reasonable number -- 70%? 90%?) of the needed work BETTER and more efficiently than people can, unless you just want to kill or let starve the rest of the folks -- some kind of system needs to be set up handle this issue, which IMO is rapidly becoming IN OUR FACE.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', '
')I figure people could live as they wanted outside the utopia-cities as long as they didn't mess with them. If you hadn't skipped to the part you figured you wouldn't like you'd note the film creators had a bit of a romantic view of hunter-gatheres so if primitivists wanted to branch off & form their own society I figure they'd be allowed to do so.

[paimei01]

http://paimei01.blogspot.com/2009/08/wh ... -work.html
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/ ... icle/2962/
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')oday “work and more work” is the accepted way of doing things. If anything, improvements to the labor-saving machinery since the 1920s have intensified the trend. Machines can save labor, but only if they go idle when we possess enough of what they can produce. In other words, the machinery offers us an opportunity to work less, an opportunity that as a society we have chosen not to take. Instead, we have allowed the owners of those machines to define their purpose: not reduction of labor, but “higher productivity”—and with it the imperative to consume virtually everything that the machinery can possibly produce.

[Ludi]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('AdTheNad', '
')
I personally think option 1 is the best and fairest option. More people working part time, then devoting more time to hobbies/ raising their children who are currently being neglected/ socialising etc.

But if you work part time you can't afford nice things because so much of your money goes towards paying ridiculous high rates of rent, or mortgage repayments. True, so it's time to revalue all those asset prices to a more realistic level, so society can function properly again.

[AdTheNad]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '
')

I agree. But sharing is not a big part of our current societal values.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'M')ost people in our society can't function outside of it.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', 'I')'m not sure how people could live outside the system when the idea is to equally divide up the resources. What if you lived where there were some resources, like minerals under the land you inhabited, that you didn't want divided up?

[mos6507]

You don't understand, Ludi. How can we have a revolution if we don't have the satisfaction of sticking the heads of the pigmen on spikes? We need to know that good is triumphing over evil, and that requires vengeance and the lamentations of the women.

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'T')he only thing that can rectify the above is land redistribution and the physical redesign of suburbia and surrounding farm regions to bring people closer to their food and the food waste closer to the field. This can not happen. It will not happen without revolution and/or collapse and a slow redevelopment of our infrastructure.

[mos6507]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', '
')Suburbia is not a place of culture or refinement, a means to your dreams, an entrepreneurial opportunity.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'Y')es, the idea is to equally divide up the resources for all the people.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', 'H')ow is it an "accelerated pace"? What are the Venusians doing now, for instance, to bring this about? Besides making a movie and posting about it on messageboards?

[davep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('TWilliam', '
')Which one will find, if one examines it closely, is precisely what the Venus Project endeavors to accomplish (among other things), albeit at an accelerated, rather than slow pace...

[TWilliam]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('pstarr', 'H')ow can we possibly bring people and their nutrients closer to the land? Please do not tell me there is growing land on top of skyscrapers, on city terraces, community gardens, postage-stamp backyards.

[Narz]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', '
')This is your strawman against any person that wants to enact a change in society, government or technology.