Rantman

17

Paradoxes and stereotypes. How we perceive two opposite ideas to be seemingly true, when put together they are insanely contradictory. Its one of my favorite topics.

Like poetry is associated with females, but searching rappers comes up with a male image. No wonder half of the industry doesn't know how to use rhyme and rhythm with meaning. Or how cooking is expected from women, yet chefs are majorly men. So many chefs cook mediocre food anyway. Or how a woman is expected to manage a house and all the people in it, but not a business firm. All these paradoxical prejudices lead to so much inefficiency and wasted potential, forget even about the justice/fairness side of it. And its all because humans like being irrational and act as if its normal. And the desire for power and patriarchy and all the jazz...

Do you want to know one of the biggest paradoxes in existence though? Something that stares us everyday right in the faces, yet we don't bother even acknowledging it? Something that impacts the existence of almost everyone on this planet?

That technology and capitalism are supposed to increase efficiency and make our lives easier, but somehow our lives are only getting harder! How was this even possible?

We paint tech as the enemy of jobs, as it takes away the livelihoods of people and transfers them to businesses. Yet, what is the fault of technology in that? Tech was supposed to replace almost ALL jobs. Tech wasn't and isn't an enemy. If anything, technology can ensure that almost no human ever needs to work for survival. Yes, technology is the key to our utopia.

Our planet can already feed 10 billion people, despite the varying efficiency across the world in agriculture. There are resources plentiful for the current population, though they are distributed disproportionately. Much of our work is machine-assisted or can be completely done by machines even in our current world. Yet we are not at all using it to our full advantage.

And this is due to our capitalism, the 'most ' efficient market structure, designed to maximize output by making people work for everything. According to me, if we are to ever fully embrace a tech-driven world, capitalism must be replaced by a new world order.

Why, you may ask. Well, because there simply won't be enough jobs for the entire population, there would be a very minimal demand for human workers. Self-driving cars, automated cashiers, robot-run restaurants...these things already exist. If tech is utilized to its full potential a major chunk of the population's jobs would become obsolete. And no, tech jobs won't increase in the same proportion, you pseudo Adam Smith. This is because additional robots are produced by other machines, not humans. Applying the self-driving software across more cars doesn't give extra jobs to the programmers working on it, only money to the owners of the software. High-skill jobs are always lesser in quantity demand than lower skill jobs, and hence harder to be eligible for. You need only one manager, but maybe 10+ laborers under them. A manager is paid more, yes, but that's because fewer managers are available than laborers too. Its both a demand and supply contraction. The demand is artificially high because the supply is lower, because its harder to be eligible to be a manager than to be a laborer.

Nevertheless, my point is that jobs don't get transferred linearly from one industry to another, else tech wouldn't offer any advantages in the first place. A textile plant that employs 300 people can make do with 30 if it uses advanced machinery, and the additional manufacturing of another unit of those advanced machines would maybe create 10-20 more jobs. You still have a deficit of 250 jobs due to usage of capital-intensive production. And that paints machines, the very building blocks of an utopian society, as an enemy to our livelihoods. When in fact its not the machines themselves that ought to be resisted, but the regressive system that was designed to maximize efficiency of HUMANS. Capitalism is a world order driven on HUMAN incentive. Machines don't need incentive to work. They are the ideal labor resource, they work for the sake of work and are 101% in our control. Without artificial restriction of supply done to maintain margins by businessmen, machines would dramatically reduce costs and increase output to the point where it can meet all humans' demand without losses, though not at the profit-maximizing price. Since capitalism relies on profit-maximization, a new world order is required to achieve this social-benefit-maximizing outcome.

What sort of a world order would come about in a tech-driven society? I imagine that money wouldn't exactly be abolished, but its nature would change. In a society that needs only 10 percent of the population to necessarily work, we simply can't have sole ownership of businesses by entrepreneurs who will reap exorbitant profits while the rest starve. The ownership will most likely fall to the government, who may botch it up a bit here and there, yes. But nevertheless, the provision of food, electricity (thru solar panels), water, internet and other resources at sustainable regulated levels would commence, turning most of these into public goods. The supply would expand to the point where the actual cost of these resources is dirt-cheap, and since its government-owned, the unnecessary profiteering done by entrepreneurs would be removed, making most resources become affordable for almost everyone. Another lie of capitalism. It minimizes costs and maximizes efficiency, yes. But what's the use of having a lowest-costing product if its selling at 3 times its cost in the market? Even if a government-owned product costs 50% more to make, if it is being sold at the cost price, which is cheaper for consumers! Wait, is profit an inefficiency?! I must write a paper on this...

Housing is an example of an inefficient and artificially inflated market. In an ideal scenario, the number of housing units constructed would not be very far off from the number of households, hence would be affordable by all if we get around a capitalist market's shenanigans. Even now, an abundance of empty houses and flats are the norm, while people sleep in shacks and streets. Technological innovations in construction is making it way cheaper to build standard houses/apartments with high capacity, which would lead to a revolution in the market if it is implemented to its maximum possible extent.

The revenue-generating sectors in this economy would probably be the arts, science, tech and other highly skilled and specialized fields. Money would become something like an enabler of luxuries, something you want, but not need (to live). Like something you use to buy art and fancy jeweler and luxury cars instead of bread and milk and paying bills.

Entrepreneurs would perhaps become intrapreneurs, hired by the government to maximize cost efficiency of factories, product quality and the like. The question of incentive is, of course, a tough one. Even giving a percent of the revenue could make intrapreneurs disproportionately rich, toppling the system again. But a flat salary won't motivate them to change existing models and keep optimizing it. Perhaps a government could set certain cost targets with bonuses, but then there might be a quality trade-off. Hmm, how about some sort of competition between intrapreneurs, wherein the best one gets the biggest bonus? Ah well, I guess the models would come up on their own anyway.  Like any human system, it won't be ideal, but would get the job done. Perhaps there will be more emphasis on maintaining a certain cost and quality, instead of continual improvement. And given that jobs are low and intrapreneurs don't need to invest at least their full capital, we'll have enough candidates. Perhaps this could be the system. A major chunk of their college funds go into a capital account (If you pursue intrapreneurship), and exceeding the cost targets reduces it, while reducing costs increases capital. And trainees would obviously start with one branch or building or something, so the government is utilizing their funds to support its extra costs (if applicable). A lock-in period of 1-2 years (mandatory internship lol) would ensure they at least work for a while before withdrawing their funds. 

The idea of government owning vital businesses sounds a bit like communism, doesn't it? Well it'll sort of be like government is the primary shareholder in the business, but not the runner. Like Bill Gates owns Microsoft but doesn't run it. A sort of overseer, who ensures the benefits of low costs gets passed on to consumers and quality isn't compromised. Even today, governments own electricity, healthcare and some sectors. In the tech world this would expand to all businesses who utilize machinery to a very large extent to reduce their costs, but continue to charge very high prices that exploit consumers. While competition can solve this issue, capital-intensive production requires a high capital investment which reduces the number of firms in the field, and due to risk management firms would prefer to enter new markets and new industries first instead of competing in established ones.

Lost my thread and started rambling, didn't I? Anyways, this may not come to pass, at least in this world's timeline. But its nice to dream. And its painful too. How everything we want is within our grasp, and yet isn't. All this'll make is a good story idea, which I don't have time, motivation and energy to write. If I become a maladaptive daydreamer some day I blame all this fiction and stories, I've been addicted to them since forever. Onto the next chapter now.