Michael M. Butler writes:
> > In a sense, but, pre-nanotech, the notion is that the GI
> > would be marginal, just enough to scrape by on. The incentive
> > to earn more will remain unchanged; only the soul-destroying
> > scrounging for bare necessities will be absent.
>
> This will be true for some. Others will spend it on, or trade it
> for, whatever is foremost in their mind.
Might be even worse. After a generation, people born into such a society
would not know any other way of living than being idle. Most people with
high potential would be silently discouraged by their elders as well as
peers. The result would be an idle, no-good society; no development, no
purpose, no nothing. A bunch of people living like monkeys.
Or maybe it's not so gloom? There's often a very thin line between a good
solution and a bad solution. Maybe this
guaranteed-income/nano-generated-resources society can be tweaked in only a
few places to produce a society that does *not* discourage its members from
curiosity, research, and action. And that does not multiply like rabbits.
Yes, I would actually be willing to say that it's all in the way it's
executed. We would simply have to experiment and find out. We already have a
few negative examples; for instance, Egypt (the whole country is 80% funded
by tourism) got it wrong. But if we are able to find or produce some
positive examples, and analyze the difference, we would be heading in a good
direction.
- denis
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