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Episode Summary:
In episode 12 of Revolution Now!, Peter Joseph addresses audience questions about automation, resource management, and renewable energy. He argues that automation, while currently misused within capitalism, offers immense potential to eliminate dangerous, monotonous jobs and increase efficiency if implemented correctly. He critiques the current market system, noting the contradictions in capitalism’s reliance on labor while technological automation advances. He also touches on the integration of sustainable practices, emphasizing how systems like Amazon’s efficiency could inspire resource-based economic models. Joseph discusses the film Planet of the Humans, agreeing with some critiques but highlighting its failure to consider long-term renewable energy advancements. Finally, he stresses the need for a cultural shift toward minimalism.

Transcript:
Good afternoon, good evening, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to Revolution Now, episode number 12, December 2nd, 2020. My name is Peter Joseph. So, for those following the program from the beginning should have a good feel for this podcast by now, 12 episodes. I’ve tried my best to not waste anyone’s time and I keep it very direct, educational manner. However, today I’m going to deviate a little from my usual format and address some questions that have been sent. Since these can be a little messy, I’ve selected only a handful that best warrant a substantive response. Meaning, not just some rapid fire Q&A, expanding on noted elements as need be.

I have also edited some of these questions for clarity and conciseness. Number one, “Can you explain how you see automation as a solution given the reality of resource scarcity? How can more technology solve one problem while not increasing another?” A little bit vague there, but I think I get the idea. Let’s first start with the subject of automation itself. Automation is a tool, just another tool and one of many in the interest toward post scarcity. But it’s a very interesting tool because it’s born out of generations of scientific and technical inquiry to develop mechanisms to end unsafe and monotonous human tasks.

The bottom line is it’s pretty much irresponsible, socially irresponsible, for us not to automate as much as possible, given it can not only free humankind from mundane and dangerous labor, but the use of automation has also proven to be far more efficient, more accurate, and less wasteful in getting a job done. Simply put, we should be logically working to automate as much as humanly possible on this planet because it’s completely irrational for us not to. If we are to hold dear true economic principles of sustainability and efficiency and productivity, not to mention caring about human safety, and human wellbeing, public health, and beyond.

As was touched upon the prior podcast, the exponential advancement of information technology applied to automated systems could rapidly catapult us into a very different reality. The problem today is that we’re not incorporating it correctly. So, cost efficiency of labor automation will eventually become competitive compared to human labor in virtually every sector. Yes, this is going to happen. It’s just a matter of time before it’s cheaper for a restaurant, say, to install fully automated systems in the front and back of the house, as opposed to having to hire people to cook and carry trays around. That is the general economic trajectory from a profitability standpoint, the gaming standpoint.

So, the owner of Starbucks might claim he will never automate because he wants to keep a human centered focus in his stores. Yes, he said this, but he’s not in control of that decision, in fact, because the laws of competitive dynamics in the market system are in control. All it takes is a competing coffee shop chain to begin to implement extreme cost savings through labor automation to eventually force Starbucks to do the same because they can’t compete otherwise. From a moral perspective, broadly, I honestly think value wise this entire romantic, arcane nonsense of having humans serve as public slaves to each other in service capacities will eventually be viewed as what it is.

Just oppressive exploitation of vulnerable people that have no other means to survive. I can’t think of anything more simple than automating a coffee shop to produce more rapid transactions, more safety, more accuracy, in fact, in the drinks prepared. Same with a bar, this kind of stuff is so easy to automate it’s comical, but yet everyone still hides behind this sociality, that we have to have people there to serve us. I don’t know about you, but if I ever find myself in a Starbucks, which is rare, all I see is a litany of generally miserable young people, monotonously preparing drinks crammed into a tight space, staring blankly as they hand you this coffee drink thing in the coffee slinging chain gang.

Yet, that is a side that people tend not to see in the debate, and it strikes a funny memory with me because I was on the Joe Rogan show a long, long time ago. I found myself in a drugstore with him and his producer after and waiting in line. He said comedically to his producer, “See, in Peter’s world, we wouldn’t be able to do this.” Referring to not being able to buy things and the freedom of buying things. He was taking the position of basically those who benefit from the system, not those that serve it. My immediate response was, “Well in my world, there wouldn’t be a human being spending their days ringing up gum behind a counter all day.”

It’s really a fascinating sociological and psychological state. That’s kind of elitism that people subconsciously feel. You can be self-interested and want people to serve you, or you can have compassion for the people that are in unfortunate positions that they clearly don’t want to be in when they are coerced by the system to embody such servitude. So, what the head of Starbucks is saying is that it’s a gimmickry, it’s a front, it’s just a marketing ploy to have the slaves all out in front of the house, so you can be served and feel like there’s some value to that, which I think in time will be reversed in the general social value system.

If there’s any rational trajectory on this front, I think in time, the so-called job creators will no longer be praised in their efforts. Jobs we looked upon as what they are, which is an expression of inefficiency that requires action, and true praise will be put upon people that seek to eliminate the need for monotonous and dangerous human labor roles. To hell with the job creators, an antiquated notion that means inefficiency and exploitation. We should have standing ovations for the automated system creators. Those are the true engineers trying to benefit humankind, not job creators.

Anyway, moving on, let’s consider one other tangent in regard to automation that I think needs to be mentioned, if I haven’t mentioned it before, and that is the rise of labor automation represents the strongest contradiction inside of capitalism’s evolution. Capitalism has been a system, but the environment has changed. Conditions have changed, and these contradictions, many of them, in fact have emerged. So, here you have a system that by exact definition requires a labor force that is employed in order to get money and hence purchasing power to spend back into the system to keep cyclical consumption going.

Then, along comes the rise of automated technology, which over time is becoming cheaper and more efficient than human labor. The contradiction, of course, being that in the pursuit of cost efficiency companies will move towards automation when it’s cheaper and more efficient than human labor by force of the nature of business. That is just the way business thinks. Now, I highlighted these two tangents to frame the automation debate a little more thoroughly than this question posed. The answer to the first part of that question has to take this into account, because automation versus existing resource scarcity or the effect automation might have on resource scarcity is just simply too vague.

You would need to be more specific as there are so many other factors, but I understand what you’re getting at in terms of negative retro actions as the second part of your question also highlights. The question being once again, “How can more technology solve one problem while not increasing another?” Once again, there needs to be more specificity in such a question because it’s too widely speculative, and the answer is always that there is a push and pull. Everything has a negative retro action. The application of one problem solving device could generate new problems to various degrees.

Look at the current state of renewable energy. There are naturally various problems with various mediums in terms of environmental effects out there that need to be countered. So, naturally, you have to balance the consequence through analysis to figure out how you’re gaining while there still may be negative retro actions occurring but you’re still gaining on the whole. As one example and a very crude one off the top of my head, sure, windmills might kill birds, but many, many more birds are going to die in the long run if we do not stop the pollution that’s destabilizing the atmosphere. Anyway, this is all system science stuff. I suggest people look into this kind of thinking.

In terms of automation, it comes down to the manner by which such design the machines are implemented. I will say that if you had a direct economic interest to automate in all sectors with true efficiency parameters, changing our economies so people no longer require a labor for income with by extension the collapse of the consumption-based growth economy and all the vanity that comes along with that value system distortion we have inherited, I’m pretty much positive the negative retro actions from an intelligent application of automation would be far less caustic than the chaos we see today. Unions, it just goes on and on with the war between owners and workers.

So, why not just pull the rug out from under the entire thing on that level itself? That is just another level of defense of this application. It seems perfectly logical to me that given this networked efficiency, if it’s done right, we would see a reduction in ecosystem destruction and resource overshoot. But once again, that is a system level outcome. So, other factors have to be taken into account. Okay, number two, “What methods do you think are best suited for future management of our environment? Ones that we can start to lay the groundwork for now, for instance, the internet is still our greatest tool for organization. How can we better use it to facilitate design changes?”

So, there are two questions here even though they’re interrelated, let’s start with the future management of the environment. In my third film, Zeitgeist: Moving Forward, there’s a section called project earth and it crudely outlines the most obvious rationale for global resource management and use. I guess if we’re going to consider the idea of method, it works on two levels. There is the method of technical and scientific organization dealing with resource management efficiency and other truly economic features. Then, there’s the actual temporal applied system to allow for such management, the tool itself. In other words, there’s theory and the principle of what’s required for an economy to work in an optimized way.

Being structurally cognizant of resource scarcity, resource utility, waste recycling, and other needed economic parameters. Then, there’s the actual method by which we do it, the programs, the hardware, and the physical networks. As much as I hate to invoke Amazon for any reason because of its monopoly status and abuse towards workers and so on, Amazon’s technical achievements are actually quite incredible when it comes to systems engineering. Inventories are cataloged with sensors, automated systems of transport, a frightening degree of general physical efficiency occurs through Amazon’s distribution and even some of its production mechanisms.

What’s happened with this exceptional technological efficiency as per the things we’ve talked about prior with the ephemeralization leading to zero marginal cost, is that they have been able to crush their competitors because of the efficiency of their network and the cost reduction they passed on to consumers. Stunningly, Amazon alone across the whole of the internet and e-commerce takes in 45% of the commercial activity. Shit, who needs any other mechanism when you have that kind of outrageous capacity for one institution from a technical standpoint? Now, obviously, it’s not a zero waste company and it’s not sustainable by a long shot, but I hope you see my point here on the technical level.

This is not about Jeff Bezos and Amazon as an identity. We’re talking about technical, physical efficiency through systems, not the market structure in pursuit of profit. In fact, while libertarians likely lose their mind at this statement, Amazon’s technical proficiency sets the groundwork for a truly efficient natural monopoly, given how global its reach is. Theoretically speaking, imagine if you completely nationalized Amazon and then turned it into a zero waste system of efficient production, design, and distribution, it’s easy to see how this kind of advanced infrastructure could work in a resource-based economy on the technical level, without the need for markets at all.

I hate to use that word monopoly, in fact, but I hope you see my crossover point, a natural monopoly means integrative design. In a future economy that’s truly efficient, it will be truly integrative and you will have an economic democracy where people participate through CAD systems and design, as I touched upon the prior podcast. They will engage a network like Amazon, and such robust infrastructure that Amazon currently possesses would be utilized for efficient and sustainable design production and distribution and recycling. So, all of this is simply to say that we do have examples of system level efficiency in pockets that exist, which serve as crude models for what we should seek in the future.

Now, more broadly and more specific to the question in terms of the mediums that could be used possibly through the internet to facilitate a new resource management system, incorporating the sustainability principles and protocols I’ve alluded to prior, which are detailed in the appendices of my book. So, I’m not going to go into it as it’s just too complicated for a radio show, but there was a project idea I put forward years ago called the Global Redesign Institute. While I was unable to, or currently haven’t pushed this kind of project because of the magnitude of it, other people have talked about it. So, it’s good to see the concept in general discussion out there.

But speaking to the question regarding management potentials, the Global Redesign Institute and the peripheral ideas surrounding it pretty much embrace this concept of designing systems online that are integrative, that are collaborative to show the mechanics of how such a new society that’s not based on markets, or at least limits markets as much as possible, could occur. So, you create a scaled down version of this resource management software, and it could function as a game application in the same way Buckminster Fuller had his world game years ago, for those who are familiar.

But given the state of technological advancement today, you can easily model, in a fictional sense, not necessarily referencing true earth resources, or the science behind their utility explicitly in a real life setting. Instead, you’d do it in a fictional setting as a form of a game, as I stated before. In that game environment, with that foundational arrangement that we have all the earth’s resources documented and connected, we know what we have, we know the strata of utility applications. You then show how people can engage this kind of system in a direct economic democracy. I suspect most people listening are familiar with CAD systems, or they’ve heard about them.

Computer aided design systems, which have become very powerful as a tool of material design, where you can actually apply real world physics and circuits and so on to the software to see the functionality of things in the system, as opposed to physical testing. Granted physical testing is probably going to be required at the final stage of many types of advancements, but it’s getting better and better in terms of computer simulation. So, let’s imagine a publicly accessed CAD system for the design of a good, but it functions not only with a personal involvement, you doing all the work, it also has a social component where everyone who was working on similar functional designs can interact directly with different degrees of judgment occurring between parties.

Building ways to harness our group mind collaboratively. But the real trick is to incorporate a kind of inferential, artificial intelligence that can understand what you’re doing. Look at the properties, materials, and goals, and physics, and all the science behind a given good and know what’s going to be most efficient at any given time based on a very rudimentary academic calculation of parameters surrounding economic functionality. So, if I could design such a program, which I wish I had done prior, but I don’t have that kind of background. I don’t have the money to fund it, but you design a program and you get it out there, and it shows the experience and the science behind efficient resource management and integrative design and the whole spectrum of zero waste, where you go from design, to extraction, to production, to distribution, to recycling in that endless cycle.

Probably, most importantly, you can compare the efficiency results to the shit we do today. That would no doubt be a very, very powerful educational tool, not to mention a preliminary development towards seeking and creating future systems of resource management and economic democracy. Anyway, I talked a lot about this in my lecture from 2013, I believe, in Berlin called Economic Calculation in a Resource Based Economy, if you want to check that out. So, I hope that helps with regard to the question. As I’ve commented, I’m preparing a talk in the spring, and this is one of the ideas on my agenda, but in more refined form, along with other practical elements that I hope to see get set in motion.

Finally, with regard to the Global Redesign Institute, historically, there is one level of discussion I did not bring up yet, and that has to do with creating an online environment to redesign the entire planet from a macro economic physical standpoint. So, there is a replica of earth with no existing infrastructure, and you enable users to literally redesign the entire planet based on efficiency principles, based on proximity, and all of the efficiency and optimize sustainability parameters that would be necessary. That’s another interesting idea that could be put in game form. Imagine people competing to get the best statistical score of how much efficiency they’ve created through such design.

I know there are a couple games already out there that do similar things, these design games, but I don’t know if they incorporate things like statistics, but if anyone knows, please let me know. In fact, if anyone knows about existing ideas of this nature that are already set in motion, perhaps for different applications, but the same ideas there, please let me know. Okay. I think I run that into the ground. On to number three, “Peter, did you see Michael Moore’s produced film called Planet of the Humans? What was your impression of the claims made in regard to renewable energy as it stands not being a solution?” Yup, I saw the film and I think there was great value in calling out the clear and obvious corporate takeover of the environmental movement as would be expected.

It should be no surprise that core players and the environmental movement often find themselves in bed with the enemy by force of their activist interests. It is the activist industrial complex once again. So, all the green-washing and illusions generally prevail, while that kind of moral sensibility takes a back door as is often the case, where people justify and rationalize these things they have to do that ultimately work against their long-term interests as an activist, but help them in the short-term financially or with their status or publicity or sales and beyond and beyond and beyond. In terms of the films actual analysis of the state of renewable energy, the whole thing, of course, was extremely sloppy.

The fundamental problem with critics of renewable energy applications, at least in this context, is they don’t look at the long-term trends and where we’re going with the increase of efficiency if fluidly allowed. They don’t take a systems perspective, a networked perspective when it comes to dealing with the inherent intermittency and general problems of each renewable source, hence they have to work together. That’s where the efficiency comes from, the integration of all of this. So, the two things I found repeatedly stated in that documentary was that, A, the resources we have to put into making these renewable systems work are deeply problematic because they require tons of hydrocarbons.

That is a trend that will slowly be eroded, as efficiency increases, coupled with the idea that, “Oh, wind can’t work when there’s no wind and the solar panels can’t work when it’s dark.” All of that stuff, which clearly is a system design problem. For example, imagine a home that is running not only on geothermal but also solar and wind, not to mention incorporating piezoelectric sensor and things that can take vibrations and convert them into energy. Basically, turning the entire home and all of its dynamics into one power generating machine. You combine that with the advent of superconductors (correction: super capacitors), which are on the horizon for battery storage.

Not only will you have more efficiency generated in most areas of the world than is needed by such a household, they will be able to output that efficiency to other areas as a form of redundancy. We’ve seen this kind of technology. You have a whole grid of people with solar panels in Germany, and they not only utilize those panels, they actually share their extra energy with each other through localized grids. Now, I will be the first to admit that the potentials are there. When you use integration and system science methods, I have no doubt you’ll have an abundance of energy that will be zero marginal cost in the future. The problem, however, is that nobody right now is really pushing it in the right way.

This should be a university project, once again, a Manhattan Project. How do you get this done without the interference of trying to fucking make money? Forget that whole marketing sales aspect of this equation and focus only on the efficiency technology and the science that needs to go into it. If you have the universities come together through a Manhattan Project, and sorry to be a broken record because I always use that reference when it comes to this kind of thinking. But if we had our priorities straight, I have no doubt that pretty much everything they complain about in Michael Moore’s produced documentary Planet of the Humans is fundamentally wrong.

Because it assumes the state we have now, and the inefficiencies we see in the market is the only way it can be. Overall, people really don’t understand when they make these analysis how polluted our technological efficiency environment and the science environment really is by the pursuit of money, by cost efficiency and the dynamics of capitalism itself. It does not put forward the proper design requirements needed to get off of hydrocarbons because it is individuated, isolated, and pursued for profit. No integration proprietary on and on and on and on and on and on and on. Now, all that said, I do agree with the general conclusion that the film makes, that people are going to have to learn how to live differently and more minimalistically.

The whole social psychology that’s been generated from this system that has polluted human psyches, promoting consumerism, and vanity, and materialism, and so on. It has pinged the selfish orientation of our nature, so to speak. Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, everything that we’ve conjured up, Valentine’s Day, to make sure people are buying and consuming and exchanging in reciprocation. This materialistic value system, it’s simply an abomination. It has no place in a civilization that’s trying to be ecologically and socially sustainable. As hard as it is for people to address their own values and lifestyle, it is an important reflection.

We all know the coveted cliche of the American dream and America as this empire has digested and absorbed so much of the planet’s resources and labor, outputs the most waste. Yet, if other countries tried to be just like America, the entire planet would literally blow up. It would be absurd and, in fact, impossible for the entire world to live like the average American, which is deep in excess, deep in waste, et cetera. Long story short, there has to be a cultural revolution, a revolution of consciousness towards minimalism, seeing value in human relationships, not excessive wealth and purchases and ownership. For me, if I could snap my fingers, I wouldn’t own virtually anything, instead integrating with a society that provides access.

I can also assure you that in this minimalism, if properly organized, creating this post scarcity abundance you’re going to have a population that is so much more peaceful and happier than we see today. That is not a conjecture. There have been numerous studies of indigenous cultures to poverty-stricken cultures that didn’t know they were poor. They find that there are higher happiness indexes in people that actually have minimalistic lives, as opposed to the rogue materialistic status driven societies. In the end, as strange as it may sound, abundance, after a certain degree of needs are met, becomes a state of mind. Our value as human beings relates to each other and our spiritual connection to the earth that gave birth to us.

Not the pursuit of further status accomplishments, or all the trivialities and pursuit of wealth anomalies we see today and take as normal. It is not normal. It is social distortion. It is perversion, neuroses, and general cultural sickness. As a result, once again, of the social system we have endured for generations pushing its incentives into us as a form of emotional conditioning, pinging the worst parts of our nature. This civilization simply doesn’t stand a chance if everyone is pining for bigger and better and more, as if greed is good in the words of Gordon Gekko. Since I’m on this tangent, a keyword here is cultural violence.

I can’t remember if I touched upon this before, but you have direct violence, you have structural violence, and you have cultural violence. Direct violence is what it sounds like, structural violence, as talked about before, has to do with institutional and system level dynamics that systemically create harm to individuals because of the system or the resulting institution. Then, cultural violence has to do with people that promote values that lead to direct and structural violence. I really can’t think of anything more culturally violent than the flaunting of wealth, conspicuous consumption, rogue competition, general materialism, and pretty much anything that promotes an excessiveness.

Well, here we are as a nascent species on the planet trying to figure out what the hell is going on, and yet we’re surrounded by all these humans distorted by a social system that want to ravagely consume everything and have everything and dominate everything, and so on. Anyone promoting elitist hierarchical values and materialism is ultimately promoting socioeconomic inequality, which is one of the most destructive forces in the world today, causing huge problems to public health across many demographics, but typically lower income individuals. I’m going to make a note here to do more on cultural violence because it’s a Pandora’s box of moral evaluation.

It is replete and ubiquitous. There’s so much expression in our society that systemically can lead to other people’s harm. We just don’t even see it because we live in such a grotesquely, competitive scarcity driven social order. That does it for me today. I really appreciate everybody listening. Excuse me, I’m a little lackluster, a little under the weather in fact, but I’ll be back next week to continue more Q&As, which I have many, many more. Trying to pick the ones that have the most value, of course, but keep submitting them. I doubt I’m going to do this for too long, but it’s good to get my brain moving in a different direction by inspiration from you folks.

Yes, I know everyone wants to hear conversations with people, and I certainly look forward to that. That’s a lot of legwork. So, as soon as I get an assistant happening with the show, we will start getting people on. Revolutionnow.live, this program is brought to you by Patreon, which could be accessed through revolutionnow.live, and my name is Peter Joseph, and everyone stay safe out there.