The continued obsession on COVID19 is shining a bright light on this very fundamental fact: we are asking the young to sacrifice their future calendars for the sole sake of preserving the future calendars of the retirement-age group. Eventually, that light will shine on the massive qualitative difference of those calendars.
The trolley problem we faced was that leaving this disease take its course would put at risk the lives of people who are mostly elderly or dealing with other conditions. We chose to follow a different path that puts at risk the lives of the younger generation either through premature death or a greatly degraded quality of life than they would have if the choice had not been taken.
let’s act in a way so our children can have a prosperous future.
The future-tense science is the risk-based decision making with the goal of a future that progresses from the past. The goal needs to be optimizing the benefits enjoyed in the future given the facts on the ground in the present. Memories of the past is not as important to this planning as is the current facts and the future opportunities.
Human-based governments are not well equipped to handle the contradiction we are facing now. We have to make decisions now based on the influential population we have now. As a result, we are unable to consider the needs of the influential population we will have when this crisis is over. Most of the decisions made now will benefit people who will no longer be around when the future has to deal with the consequences. In addition many of those who do survive will be handicapped directly by the policies we made to benefit people who are no longer around.
An economy of automated engineering and automated operation presents a new burst requirement on human labor. We need a labor model that can rapidly dedicate people to solve emergency problems caused by automation and yet that automation is essential for continued operation of the economy or for avoiding some future disaster.
In the presumed post-scarcity world, we get the lifestyle without working, without any income. In the extreme, the only possibility for compensation for residual jobs is in some form of an investment. From our modern perspective where income is tied to consumption, income will not be a benefit from working. The future will be a post-income world.
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.
I anticipate a future where we redefine a work-week as the duration of a specific just-in-time gig, a weekend as the gap between gigs, vacations as opportunities presented by anticipation of long gaps but subject to sudden termination when new opportunities occur. The day itself will have break times that will vary day to day and may arise with no advanced notice, leading us to arrange social encounters with near-strangers who happen to share something in common including the fact that they are free at the same time.
