Re: columbia -- what really happened
On Wed, Feb 05, 2003 at 04:12:49PM -0600, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-02-05 at 12:09, Pigeon wrote:
> [snip]
> > What do you think of the Culture economy? All work is done by
> > machines, which are designed to work properly and last for millennia -
> > fully upgradeable, of course. So no-one has to worry about going
> > hungry or any other physical need, or want. The Luddites never saw
> > this far ahead. For all our technology, we're still Luddites today.
>
> That would be *the*worst* plan, as shown by the multiple generations
> of the same families on welfare. They have not bettered themselves.
What exactly do you mean by "bettered themselves"? If you mean
"improved their financial situation", that doesn't apply to the
Culture: everything is built and maintained by machines, which cater
for people's physical requirements from food to spaceships without
needing to be paid. Money, as a result, is extinct; "rich" and "poor"
have become meaningless; everyone lives in luxury if they want to.
There's a magic power source, of course; materials are supplied by
space mining, as far as I can make out, by machines.
If you mean "educated themselves", personal motivation has a lot to do
with it. People who are on welfare because they can't be arsed
probably won't be arsed to educate themselves. Also, education tends
to be expensive. And a lot of people are only too glad to get out of
school, and hate the idea of anything resembling going back to it. But
there are some people on welfare who use their time in intellectual
pursuits, reading, learning.
I doubt the proportion of people on welfare who educate themselves is
very much different from the proportion of people in work who educate
themselves (note: my definition of "education" here would include
studying philosophy but exclude taking a course because people in the
position you aspire to be promoted to are expected to have done it). -
ie: much smaller than the proportion of people who spend their
non-work time watching TV or going down the pub. I see the inside of a
lot of people's houses when I repair their TVs and stuff. What are
they all missing? Books...
The Culture seems to repeat this pattern quite realistically.
> Also, look at the "old money" rich, who don't have to work. The
> Kennedys and the DuPonts aren't paragons of moral virtue...
True. But look at a random selection of people you see on the news.
Many of them are "newsworthy" precisely because of some transgression;
most of them work. Indeed, their newsworthy transgression may well be
something to do with their job (like that Barings bank bloke, or the
nurses/doctors who knock patients off every now and then). I don't
think the idea that people should be made to work to keep them out of
mischief is very sound.
The Culture has eliminated crime caused by physical want or envy by
making luxury freely available to everyone. But that doesn't cover
everything by a long chalk. In the Culture, the precepts of "do as you
would be done by" and "love your neighbour" seem to have become as
instinctive as "don't piss in the street". How this has been achieved
is a matter of speculation. I think it is probably the major weakness
of the scenario.
Pigeon
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