I see a very grim future for current governments that are already trapped by their decisions with the only option to ratchet up the restrictions and government dependencies. It is possible that a brighter future could emerge under an algorithmic driven government with the properties described above of punctuated liberty with extensive data use.
As during the Prohibition where people moved their social gathering from public bars and saloons to their private residences, I think the same thing will happen now. Social gathering in comparable numbers will resume but they will be in private “speak easy” locations with restricted entry to those who have the right test results instead of knowing the right password.
One side of the debate says this is a remedy to a failing capitalism, while the other side says this is socialism.
As I look at it, the real goal is finding a remedy to a broken employment model.
We look back at the recent history and are frustrated that we can not do what they were able to do. We live in a world with many more rules, and a lot less opportunities. The conditions are like that of the experiment: we are frustrated in finding relief and observe what increasing appears completely random occurrences of success. The modern examples of people who do succeed, even in the technologies, appears more to be the case of the person being lucky at being in the right place at the right time rather than being particularly visionary or brilliant. Success is random, and consequently so is the pain of the lack of success. Success is also increasingly rare, leaving a large population in frustration, yearning for its master to save them.
Looks do matter a lot in social and professional success. What really matters is that our looks match our personalities and aptitudes. Many of us do not live up to our appearances. We can try to compensate with changing things we can control, but we can not escape the messages sent by our height, our skeleton, and especially our facial features. The alternative is to work on our personality, changing it to match what people expect from our features. Many of us do that, but we never convince ourselves so it is always an act, and that act will eventually be exposed for what it is, leaving us where we started, alone.
Assuming a post-scarcity world, the big challenge will be how to satisfy the human need for justice. At the very least, there will be two systems of justice: one for the wealthy celebrities and another for the rest. The masses will have very little opportunity to seek justice from the wealthy, especially once democracy is replaced or rendered lame from politics of division of ever smaller identity groups. Over time (especially over generations), we will learn to satisfy our needs for justice though non-governmental means.
Contrary to President Trump’s declaration, we have an inescapable need to have laws that coerce, dominate, and control our lives. There may be some people who think they can live without those laws, but I suspect that will only work when they are on an island isolated from any dissenting peers. There is something deep within us that recognizes that the rule of law is essential to our being humans.
An example is coming to the rescue of someone who is in a perilous condition such the case of a drowning person. If suitably capable, both men and women will come to the rescue. However, I believe they are drawing upon fundamentally different instincts: the woman will be drawing on the compassion to relieve the person, while the man will be drawing upon the recognition that the drowning person needs to be mercifully extracted from a lost battle against nature. Once the person is saved, he would receive reassurance type comfort from a woman, but probably will receive from the man a word or two of advice about how to avoid that situation in the future.
In context of the overall story of humanity, what will be the result of our current modernity? I suspect our descendants will not know most about what we currently know about past civilizations. The reason is that we would have exhausted all of the archaeology to provide independent confirmation of the literature. Even if they…
In this increasingly globalized world, we confront the question of how well groups may govern themselves optimally not only to survive within their local context but also keep up with the standards of the global norms. The goal is for self government but that government should thrive at a comparable level to the global norm. What is that measurement that will determine a group’s success at self-governing?
