Fully Automated Luxury Communism

[The Great Zaganza]

And if I want a boat and can't have it, what do I do to earn it?

that's not how an A.I. economy would work: if you want your boat and can pay for it, you get it.
What we won't get is warehouses of cheaply-made clothes, 50% or more of which will never get bought.

 

[Belz...]

that's not how an A.I. economy would work: if you want your boat and can pay for it, you get it.
What we won't get is warehouses of cheaply-made clothes, 50% or more of which will never get bought.

Not sure I get how it would work, then.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

Not sure I get how it would work, then.

just like Amazon and Google can predict what you are going to look for next, supplier A.I.s will be able to anticipate demand to a far great level, and be able to take into account what other A.I. suppliers are providing.
In contrast, current supplier must flood the market in the hopes of having enough of something that will be demand that will cover their costs plus a profit.

 

[Belz...]

just like Amazon and Google can predict what you are going to look for next, supplier A.I.s will be able to anticipate demand to a far great level, and be able to take into account what other A.I. suppliers are providing.

That sounds more like one of those fictional future nightmare utopias than anything I'd want to live in.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

That sounds more like one of those fictional future nightmare utopias than anything I'd want to live in.

You might not realize it, but you are already not the one making your purchasing decisions.

 

[lomiller]

On a more serious note, there are discussions to be had about whether intellectual property should be treated the same as physical property or in what way it should be treated differently. I haven't set my mind on the issue.

“Intellectual property” is really just a monopoly created and enforced by government action. The notion that it’s a form of property at all is relatively recent, and is little more than a marketing tool.

In a true Laissez Faire free market system intellectual property doesn’t exist because it’s a form of government intervention in the marketplace. In practical terms it’s important for encouraging the arts (copyright) and innovation (patents), but in recent decades the system has begun to be abused, in part because rights have successfully promoted the idea that ideas can be “property”.

 

[ponderingturtle]

“Intellectual property” is really just a monopoly created and enforced by government action. The notion that it’s a form of property at all is relatively recent, and is little more than a marketing tool.

In a true Laissez Faire free market system intellectual property doesn’t exist because it’s a form of government intervention in the marketplace. In practical terms it’s important for encouraging the arts (copyright) and innovation (patents), but in recent decades the system has begun to be abused, in part because rights have successfully promoted the idea that ideas can be “property”.

And of course patents were originally more complicated than that. It was to promote the sharing of innovation as patents become public record and not personal secrets. But to encourage the sharing of such information it was protected for a period of time. So you patent your new process for making steel and you tell everyone how you did it, but you don't have to worry about the technique being stolen for a time and it gives other people a look at how to improve other processes and prepare for when it becomes open to all.

Now the sharing aspect is less significant but it was originally about more than just protecting innovation.

 

[lomiller]

just like Amazon and Google can predict what you are going to look for next,

My experience is that they don’t predict what you will look for next, so much as show only the things you already found last time.

 

[lomiller]

And of course patents were originally more complicated than that. It was to promote the sharing of innovation as patents become public record and not personal secrets. But to encourage the sharing of such information it was protected for a period of time. So you patent your new process for making steel and you tell everyone how you did it, but you don't have to worry about the technique being stolen for a time and it gives other people a look at how to improve other processes and prepare for when it becomes open to all.

Now the sharing aspect is less significant but it was originally about more than just protecting innovation.

Yup. The original point wasn’t to limit access to ideas, it was to incentivize the dissemination of idea. Allowing so others to eventually take advantage of them and build on the idea and thereby encourage innovation. Instead, what we have today is businessmen know that the way to become really wealthy isn’t to compete, but to find ways to prevent competition and patents/copyrights have become important weapons for this.

 

[Belz...]

You might not realize it, but you are already not the one making your purchasing decisions.

Of course I am. My choice is not unlimited, but I still make the choice.

“Intellectual property” is really just a monopoly created and enforced by government action. The notion that it’s a form of property at all is relatively recent, and is little more than a marketing tool.

Maybe but if I write a song and I make my living off of doing that, I'd like that sort of monopoly.

Whether that should pass on to my descendants is another question.

 

[theprestige]

And of course patents were originally more complicated than that. It was to promote the sharing of innovation as patents become public record and not personal secrets. But to encourage the sharing of such information it was protected for a period of time. So you patent your new process for making steel and you tell everyone how you did it, but you don't have to worry about the technique being stolen for a time and it gives other people a look at how to improve other processes and prepare for when it becomes open to all.

Now the sharing aspect is less significant but it was originally about more than just protecting innovation.

Yup. The original point wasn’t to limit access to ideas, it was to incentivize the dissemination of idea. Allowing so others to eventually take advantage of them and build on the idea and thereby encourage innovation. Instead, what we have today is businessmen know that the way to become really wealthy isn’t to compete, but to find ways to prevent competition and patents/copyrights have become important weapons for this.

Patents are still public records, though. Nothing has changed about that. Where are you guys getting the idea that patents are now about hiding ideas?

 

[lomiller]

Of course I am. My choice is not unlimited, but I still make the choice.



Maybe but if I write a song and I make my living off of doing that, I'd like that sort of monopoly.

Whether that should pass on to my descendants is another question.

That’s exactly why copyright exists. It was thought to be important enough that the US constitution explicitly grants Congress the ability to create Copyright (and Patent) laws don I don’t disagree. Even life of the artist + 10 years makes sense to me. My issue is using laws intended to help artists make a living from their work be extended to cover commercial software and even physical devices.


While software needs similar protections the scope and duration should completely different than what’s given to works of art. What’s worse is that this software protection has been extended to physical devices created using software. Historically physical devices received no protection unless they contained patentable inventions. You could duplicate them as clearly as you wanted. Now, however, you can effectively have copyright protection on electronic device by making it dependent on an FPGA and argue that you now have a copyright on the FPGA itself because some elements were procedurally generated. You can’t even if you write your own procedure to do the same thing because copyright protects against work that is too similar to the original.

With music it makes sense that you can’t get away with “it’s not your song, it just sounds almost the same”. What I really object to is using this same standards for physical products.

 

[lomiller]

Patents are still public records, though. Nothing has changed about that. Where are you guys getting the idea that patents are now about hiding ideas?

We said no such thing.

Today you can use patents to do things like this:
1) identifying a gene sequence.
2) use the sequence to create a marker for itself and patent the marker
3) wait for someone to come up with some useful drug or product involving the gene sequence
4) Make them pay you for the right to sell their own product even though you contributed nothing to it’s development.

 

[theprestige]

My experience is that they don’t predict what you will look for next, so much as show only the things you already found last time.

Amazon seems to be convinced that since I just bought a pair of shoes, I must want to buy two or three more pairs. I'll start believing in AI the day Amazon figures out to wait 6 months before shilling more shoes to me.

 

[lomiller]

Amazon seems to be convinced that since I just bought a pair of shoes, I must want to buy two or three more pairs. I'll start believing in AI the day Amazon figures out to wait 6 months before shilling more shoes to me.

Google is the same. I bought a car and for the next 4 months no matter what site I went to all I got were car adds. I bought a computer online and for the next 4 months no matter what site I went to all I got were adds for computers.

 

[ponderingturtle]

That’s exactly why copyright exists. It was thought to be important enough that the US constitution explicitly grants Congress the ability to create Copyright (and Patent) laws don I don’t disagree. Even life of the artist + 10 years makes sense to me. My issue is using laws intended to help artists make a living from their work be extended to cover commercial software and even physical devices.

It does get complicated when there is no single clear artist involved in the creation. Who do you base this on with a movie or anything that is the work of a large collaboration of people working together instead of the lone inventor/creator?

And yes computer code should be patented and not copyrighted.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Google is the same. I bought a car and for the next 4 months no matter what site I went to all I got were car adds. I bought a computer online and for the next 4 months no matter what site I went to all I got were adds for computers.

How does google know when you go from looking into cars to when you bought one?

 

[lomiller]

And yes computer code should be patented and not copyrighted.

Patent isn’t exactly right either since it’s only supposed to protect inventions but you could probably use drug patents as a model and come up with a new class of protection specifically aimed at software.

How does google know when you go from looking into cars to when you bought one?

It doesn’t, that’s the point. How can it predict what I’ll need next when it can’t even figure out I stopped looking at car related information?

 

[dudalb]

Let's just say that pure capitalism and pure socialism (ie,Communism) are miserable failures.
Both depend on faith based concepts; the "hidden hand" of Lassiez Faire capitalism, and the infallible wisdom of the State in Marxism.

 

[dudalb]

I dpn't believe in perfect systems that will produce Utopia, a system that works readonably well a lot of the time is probably the best we can hope for, given the human capacity for error.
I think Orwell was smart when he said he though the socialists were making a mistake in trying to sell it as a system that would produce utopia; he though a "we can't make things perfect but we can make them better" was a better approach.