Submitted via IRC for AndyTheAbsurd
Jacque Fresco spent decades building a life-sized model of his ideal city. The central idea? If we want the Western world to overcome war, avarice, and poverty, all we need to do is redesign the culture.
[...] This civilization would be created through "sociocyberneering," a radical form of social engineering where automation and technology would bring about "a way of life worthy of man." 171391-02-223
Throughout the interview, Fresco brandished full-color sketches of the future: white domes perched on the surface of the ocean and arranged in concentric circles so as to resemble the structure of an atom. Serving as the city's nucleus was a central computer, which would monitor the ecology of the region—measuring crop yields in farmland, controlling irrigation, and overseeing hydroelectric power grids. Expanding outward were civic centers, museums, and universities, all of which would operate like public libraries in that any cultural artifact would be available for temporary loan. The next largest ring of the city consisted of a residential area, where denizens would dwell amid opulent gardens and manicured parks, in built-to-suit developments. These elliptical abodes would contain every amenity imaginable (at one point, Fresco predicts the invention of entertainment software that sounds breathtakingly similar to Netflix). The city's enclosure—the crust of the circle—would house a massive recycling center to which all trash would be ferried via underground conveyor belts. Once there, automated machines would sort the refuse for proper salvaging.
Fresco was gruff and humorless throughout the interview, wholly immune to King's attempts at playful banter. At one point, he pronounced, "Sociocyberneering is an organization that is probably the boldest organization ever conceived of, and we're undertaking the most ambitious project in the history of mankind."
Source: https://psmag.com/magazine/waiting-for-fresco-social-engineering-technology
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Bain consultants' macro trends department have released a report examining trends in demographics, automation and inequality to produce a set of predictions.
This kind of report seems to be all over the place these days, but this one seems more detailed and perhaps a little less optimistic than most.
In the US, a new wave of investment in automation could stimulate as much as $8 trillion in incremental investments and abruptly lift interest rates. By the end of the 2020s, automation may eliminate 20% to 25% of current jobs, hitting middle- to low-income workers the hardest. As investments peak and then decline—probably around the end of the 2020s to the start of the 2030s—anemic demand growth is likely to constrain economic expansion, and global interest rates may again test zero percent. Faced with market imbalances and growth-stifling levels of inequality, many societies may reset the government's role in the marketplace.
They predict that governments will assume a larger role in markets to combat inequality and boost demand, but will our corporate overlords decide that's in their interests, or continue to squeeze the lower and middle classes forever?
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @06:21AM (3 children)
I 'member.
Remember the Pol-pot agrarian utopia?
I 'member.
Utopia is always another murder away, always needing a strong and firm hand to guide society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @06:45AM (2 children)
Implying the ruling class don't deserve to be murdered.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @06:54AM (1 child)
Implying the people of SoylentNews aren't the ruling class. How naive can you be. The average soylentil is a retired boomer sitting on a nest egg investment portfolio. Soylent people are the living embodiment of idle entitled wealth. The soylent credo is, "Fuck you! Got mine."
Kill them all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @04:19PM
Haha you are clueless. That may represent a few people on here, but the majority are techies of various sorts, just semi-irregular people. That credo you mention is simply the result of a very small subset of this community, however they are overwhelmingly more vocal on here. Personally I suspect shill / propaganda accounts, give me a copy of the entire historic database to run some stats on and we'll find out pretty quick!
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @06:28AM (4 children)
Michael David Crawford has made Social Engineering into a way of life.
Michael David Crawford opens his persuasive mouth and everyone throws money at him.
Michael David Crawford gets paid simply for existing.
Michael David Crawford will inevitably be a trillionaire in the socially engineered future.
Michael David Crawford always wins.
(Score: 5, Touché) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 26 2017, @07:16AM (2 children)
My driver will go to my client's customers in a few days. Once they all sign off on it I get a big paycheck.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @08:53AM (1 child)
+1, Good Job & Good Luck!
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 26 2017, @08:16PM
Hfdghih fddgh hhfg
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @04:21PM
Meh, what a stupid comment. I don't recall him saying anything along those lines unless it was snarky, and lately he's seemed much more like a typical pro-capitalist techie.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @06:42AM (2 children)
That architecture is straight out of William Gibson's Gernsback continuum.
If you start hallucinating utopian white domes and giant zeppelins, you should immerse yourself in porn and trash TV until you snap out of it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by MostCynical on Tuesday December 26 2017, @08:31AM
Or just mix the two - Zeppelin porn: https://www.redbubble.com/people/butcherbilly/works/12641545-porn-zeppelin [redbubble.com]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @02:06PM
Just read tfa -- toward the end the author connects the dots to a variety of prior art. For example, Savanna GA was originally designed to promote similar ideas that could not be easily implemented in England back then (and originally did not allow slavery). Also there is a Facebook employee attending the same seminar who asserts that FB is implementing some of the same ideas...
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday December 26 2017, @07:15AM
Back during the subprime crisis Silicon Valley had 24,000 homeless people.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @07:48AM (2 children)
Obligatory reading of 'Brave New World' at this point.
I want my soma. Now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @02:26PM
What makes you think you an Alpha, Delta boi?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @02:45PM
There was an article on the amanita muscaria and santa and christmas a few days back. That's your Soma; if you don't take so much that you are made ill (or unable to function because of the visions), then you are doing it right.
It is a fantastic tonic, so to speak... similarly to how some people say that a little weed can do so much, while the people getting high are just disappointed when they aren't getting high, amanita muscaria can at times make life seem like worth living--provided you don't take so much you can't function... people are often focused too strongly on the high or disapproving of something due to the same high. Just don't take it to get high all the time and you'll see why Santa was happy despite his workload!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday December 26 2017, @02:26PM (5 children)
The problem with artsy types doing science as an inspiration, is they're always out of date leading to the wrong analogies. If you're gonna use science as an analogy authority, then you need current science not obsolete stuff.
The pre-quantum, pre-periodic table vision of the atom as a perfect clockwork solar system doesn't work well when both the atom and city-scale civilization has an issue with the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle or Pauli exclusionary principle or various concepts of chemical bond formation etc etc.
Sure, its just the usual utopia claim where central government control of the economy and total regulation of all activity will result in paradise, which never works, but this time we'll market it to the noobs as being scientific using 1800s chemistry analogies. Because the only problem with authoritarian socialist utopias is they were not marketed correctly, LOL.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @04:34PM (4 children)
A lot of the problems being solved are things human beings are perfectly capable of. The current "problem" is allowing unlimited amounts of wealth to be sequestered in VERY small pockets of humanity. Fix that and humanity is pretty good at making successful communities.
Oh, it just occurred to me, we DO live in an engineered society. Corporations have ad-hoc engineered the shit out of society, and it is horrifying. Los Angeles had excellent public transit, it is now a hell hole of traffic THANKS FORD/GM! Many communities wanted to improve their internet options, but corporate lobbying ruined that. We should never have grown so much corn / dairy but corporate lobbying purchased government handouts. Car companies wanted to sell vehicles with bad mileage (great for gas consumption) so we got massive tax breaks on SUVs cause they're "trucks" and tax breaks would help "real businesses create jobs!" lawl. Hmmm, what other examples pop into mind? NESTLE! Those fuckers have been ruining water rights around the world! Third world countries are turned into polluted shitholes because the local "governments" are so easily bought off with a little cash. City planning flew out the window, real estate is too valuable to waste on a money sucking project like a park!!
/wall_o_text
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday December 27 2017, @01:09AM (2 children)
No, that one is because big vehicles sell for 2x as much as small ones, but are only marginally more expensive to produce. Trucks and SUVs therefore are more profitable. All the expensive stuff is in the drivetrain, the interior, the regulatory gear...basically all the stuff that is either exactly the same or scaled up for only higher material costs.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:14PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:15PM
You might be surprised at my wife's Prius, then. It didn't have heated seats, or a sunroof, but certainly had everything else. Per Google, those two are options.
I wonder if you can still buy a car in the USA with manual non-power brakes and steering, or crank handle windows. That wasn't an option for my cheap little commuter Yaris.
I seem to remember my dad having a commuter hatchback non-power steering Plymouth Horizon (aka Dodge Omni) in the early 80s. Everything is power everything today, much like its not easy to buy a new car with a carburetor or a front mounted starting crank.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:25PM
The replacement road system was superior to the public transit systems of the time. It wasn't FORD/GM, it was economics. And let's not forget population. LA county [laalmanac.com] went from 4 million people in 1950 to 10 million people today. Much has changed since the days of the dying mass transit systems. Road transportation has run hard into traffic load problems that weren't as big in the past.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by khallow on Tuesday December 26 2017, @03:28PM (6 children)
The Western world is already well on it's way to overcome those things. And why is it that the Western world has to do that overcoming, but not the developing world where these problems are much worse?
I find yet again that those who advocate for the removal of money are really signaling the inadequacy of their ideas. Money means nothing in the absence of the resources, labor, and capital one can allocate with it as a measure of exchange. Nor is allocation of resources a significant issue in the world today. We can already allocate enough resources to feed everyone comfortably. It's just not that important to us to do so.
Even so, we have vastly improved [ourworldindata.org] the position of the poor despite this lack of focus. The linked page discusses a metric for "extreme poverty" using an inflation and cost adjusted "international dollar" which they decided was $1.90 per day. The metric is arbitrary (I gather it was intended to measure what portion of people were so poor that starvation was a day to day problem). In any case, the absolute number of people living at that degree of poverty declined from 1970 to the present by a factor of three. Whose social engineering was responsible for that? Global trade, markets, and some degree of capitalism have to be part of that answer.
Yet once again, we see a utopia that is built on abandoning the things that have worked so well over the last 70 years.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @04:40PM (5 children)
Blergh, I'm forced to agree with khallow. Yes, the pure engineered society removes the tangible rewards that we primates really enjoy. It could be done, but removing money overnight would absolutely destroy a lot of good human activity.
Counterpoint: we need restrictions on wealth inequality, the simplest method being taxes that scale heavily the more money one makes. Without that we get the bad situations we have today, and I'd like to remind you that unrestricted economic activity has brought us to a world that is steadily walking up to the cliff of ecological collapse. There are problems to solve, some of which require some aspects of these centrally planned "utopias" but you're khallow, you can't fathom these deeper truths.
Feel free to prove me wrong, don't let it go to your head that someone actually agreed with you a little!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 26 2017, @06:04PM (4 children)
Without an adequate replacement, it would absolutely destroy a lot of good human activity over any time frame. Let us keep in mind that the key reason money exists in the first place is that it greatly reduces the algorithmic complexity of trade. You don't have to know what the other side of a trade needs in order to trade with them.
We already have progressive taxes. And what is that wealth actually worth?
Let us note here that the "bad situations" are the best situations ever in history. I've written about this [soylentnews.org] before. It's a comforting narrative that humanity is destroying itself.
But by a huge number of metrics we're doing better than ever before. Humanity is wealthier than it's ever been before and trending towards most of the world . Environmentally, we're not that bad off and large portions of the world (in particular, the entire developed world) have figured out how to live without causing ecological collapse. There are less wars than ever. And overpopulation, the true problem is improving. The world's population is still growing, but the population growth rate has declined since the 1950s.
You have yet to name such a problem or such a truth. Appeal to intangible "truths" are the refuge of the intellectual scoundrel. And we continue with the comforting fantasy of "wiser than thou".
Let us note that in the first place, you claimed that "wealth inequality" was responsible for the "bad situations". I disagree. It's a red herring, but a convenient one. After all, why use metrics that can improve, when you can choose a metric that won't and thus, have a permanent cause to rally behind? There will always be wealth inequality because there will always be people with unequal competence and interest in obtaining wealth.
Further, what does wealth inequality have to do with pollution and other ecological damage? I can point to direct connections between overpopulation and poverty to such things. More people means more pollution per person and more land taken from nature.
But wealth inequality doesn't have that connection. If someone is wealthier than me, it doesn't matter to my ability to obtain the things I need and want (like food, shelter, etc) how much wealthier they are. It doesn't matter to our pollution footprint if someone owns more or less. I'm just as well fed and sheltered, if Bill Gates is worth $50 billion as if he is worth $50 million. My society is just as polluting. Wars are just as likely.
Perhaps I can do so. But what's with the concern (trolling) about my ability to cope with agreement? I'm not the one being "forced" to agree with someone I don't like. Perhaps, we should be concerned (trolling) about your ability to agree with other people (which apparently requires some time on the intellectual torture rack in order to coerce agreement about things that you should be agreeing on in the first place)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @06:57PM (1 child)
Temporarily, yes. Evolution does not stop; it is a mathematical certainty.
There has been a change to the environment. We invented birth control, porn, jobs for women, abortion, child support, criminalized rape, and many other impediments to successful reproduction.
All of that is easily overcome by behavioral changes. People with the required mental attributes already exist in the world today, and their DNA is being preferentially passed down in each successive generation.
We're headed back to squalor. Evolution makes this the destiny of every species that survives.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:16PM
Is that so? Where's the proof? Don't use phrases here you don't actually mean.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday December 26 2017, @08:05PM (1 child)
Except that he can outbid you and outcompete you for essential resources.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:05PM
What is the problem with that? Gates demonstrated he could do amazing things with the wealth he has obtained, including create from scratch a business that currently employs hundreds of thousands of people. Why shouldn't he be able to have a larger access to resources as a result?
One of the basic observations about relatively free markets is that wealth is accumulated by those who make better decisions and try to save wealth, and lost by those who make poor decisions or who deliberate expend wealth for other reasons. This gives the people who are competent and trying to make wealth a larger say in the economy. Sounds like a good thing to me especially if they have a long track record, as Gates does, of making good economic decisions.
A second related observation which is much more obscure is that a wealthy person who consumes inordinate amounts of resources or make investments with outsized levels of wealth ends up paying more per unit resource or investment than a person buying much less of those resources or making a smaller investment. In other words, while there are economies of scale to large levels of wealth, there are also diminishing returns to even greater, extremely high levels of wealth as well.
In the US, a typical example is the luxury home versus a regular one. The latter is going to be much cheaper since it is built in bulk, using materials in great supply. The luxury home has to be specially designed and is more expensive at every stage. In this way, wealth is routinely shifted from the wealthy to the less wealthy.
Extremely high levels of wealth also are far more difficult to invest. You won't be able to get the same high levels of return on investment on $50 billion as you can on $50 million. Most high risk/high return investments are niche markets with only so much you can invest. A chain restaurant, for example, might be very profitable at 50 locations, moderately profitable at 500, and a money sink at 5000 locations, simply because there are limited areas of the US that are suitable for the restaurant's niche.
And while there are a lot of niches out there, it requires vastly more resources to find more such niches than less with diminishing returns to your attempts to find new niches.
I'm not totally against a progressive tax system mentioned earlier in this thread. A modest amount of increased responsibility to pay taxes is ok with me. But we have that now. I see no reason to increase those levels in large part because I don't see greater access to wealth by the wealthy as a problem, but rather as a feature. Also, as mentioned above, I see various natural aspects of the economy that transfer wealth from the wealth to the rest of society.
These actually work quite well, I might add. For example, we have a huge improvement [voxeu.org] in the wealth of the developing world. That has resulted in a massive improvement in global income inequality (which BTW is a much better measure [observer.com] of wealth inequality than wealth inequality itself!). Most of that IMHO has been wealth transfers at the country level which are beyond regulation or deliberate wealth transfers at the state level (and often occur despite interference via protectionism schemes).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 26 2017, @06:14PM
Pointless piece about some dumb project, but I found the publisher more interesting. The magazine is backed by some foundation ("Social Justice Foundation") run by one McCune, some Santa Barbara socialite. Their website notes all the awards she won, but none about how she made the money to set up and run the outfit - seems like it's all her dead husband's money.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday December 27 2017, @01:31AM (4 children)
The number one problem in society is not internal politics. It’s how you deal with outsiders. And this guy seems to have thrown his hands up in the air and said “Immigrants? What immigrants? It’s not like anybody will want in on my perfect society!”
Without a plan for dealing with this fundamental division, the result would be full-on nationalism. Closed borders breed contempt, and soon enough the centralized economy would be focused on keeping them out and exterminating the ones already inside that look like those bad guys out there.
I guess politics really does go full circle.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 27 2017, @12:10PM (3 children)
I'll note that the developed world actually does a pretty good job of keeping people out. One doesn't need immigration to perfectly halt, but rather keep it at manageable levels.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday December 27 2017, @04:49PM (2 children)
Funny, I thought we did a terrible job keeping those millions (billions?) of immigrants from flooding over the US-Mexico border. And the EU hasn't done a particularly good job of keeping those Syrian refugees out, either.
And sure, in our current society we don't need to keep everybody out. But in this hypothetical "sociocyberneered" perfect society, there can't be any room for outsiders. Not unless they themselves become "sociocyberneered" first. Is there a plan for some kind of lower-tier holding pen for immigrants while this happens to them? Is that even close to humane?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday December 28 2017, @12:28PM (1 child)
What does your thinking have to do with reality? First, a billion immigrants in the US would be about one and a half orders of magnitude more immigrants than the US actually has. Second, the recent bout of immigration to the EU has more to do with a temporary combination of factors (such as the Syrian Civil War, Greece's dysfunction, and Germany's rather open invitations) which created an unusual surge of immigration (which already is dwindling).
I don't think any such planners of the society in question would have qualms about "sociocyberneering" immigrants.
Probably not. But one thing they can do is make more such habitats. Even if the mature habitats themselves have low immigration due to fixed size, immigrants can always move into new habitats.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday December 28 2017, @07:21PM
That's not how immigration is done in the USA, so that would be quite the policy shift.
I don't see any point in messing with the USA or Europe anyway. Start with somewhere more dysfunctional, Saudi Arabia or the entire continent of Africa or some place like that. Lets say an experiment "fails" and forces society to the level of western culture in 1935, that sounds bad for the modern USA, but in Mexico or the middle east or all of Africa that would be quite a huge improvement. Heck, 1500s Europe would be an improvement for vast sections of the world.