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Our future slave economyWell, now that I have your attention, try not to jump to unflattering conclusions. I’m not advocating human slavery, or even animal slavery. I’m not defending such slavery either. What I am doing is making some realistic observations about human slavery, before getting to the main point of my discourse on what I regard unashamedly as the virtue of a new form of slavery.
Human slavery, as practiced for thousands of years, was an economic system that generally predated the industrial revolution. Slaves were the capital goods of that era. They were the producers for those who owned them. Before slavery, when an enemy was captured on the field of battle they were killed. Slavery, was therefore a win-win compromise for both the victor and the vanquished. The victor gained an unsalaried laborer and the slave gained his life. It wasn’t by any means a fair trade, but it was better than the alternative. In the mean time the owner feared he’d lose his slave and the slave hoped he’d regain his freedom. The kind of slavery I am writing about lies in the future. It is inevitable, inescapable and arguably, could be essential. It will make a great difference to the lives of those who own such slaves. It will ensure tremendous scientific and social progress, and will enrich the lives of millions of human beings everywhere. And it will do so without exploiting or hurting other human beings. I am referring to artificial intelligence, automatons, robots and androids. Manufactured beings with the ability to do anything and everything work-related, that flesh and blood humans can do. They will be our future slaves, performing the many tasks we shall no longer be required to do. Presumably there would be child-minder robots, companion robots, household chore robots, industrial robots, construction robots, mining robots, law enforcement robots, military robots, translator robots, manufacturing robots, farming robots, transportation robots, engineering robots, teaching robots, medical robots and many more types of robot designed for specific and necessary tasks. Robots would also continuously design and manufacture new generations of robots. They would also repair and maintain themselves. In a future world with very, very limited opportunities for human beings to work for financial compensation, more than 95 percent of the world’s potentially economically productive population will be unemployed. This means they will have no means to earn an income, which they would need to do unless of course every necessity and luxury were free. Let’s consider that possibility. Living in a world with no financial currency. Would such a world be economically, socially and politically viable? Perhaps. If mining robots were to extract raw materials from forests, quarries, mines, oceans and even our solar system’s moons, planets, asteroids and comets, then manufactory robots could create all the components we need, and industrial robots could create the manufactured products we want, from houses to food, clothing, luxury items, and health products. Every necessity and service would be available to all of us without charge. Money would become unnecessary and therefore, redundant. It would become a mere historical curiosity. However, if human beings still use a monetary currency two or three decades from now, then we can safely assume it will be in the form of electronically generated credits. In an envisaged future slave economy, individuals, families, communities, entrepreneurs, industrialists, towns, cities and countries, will all own or have access to “slave” robots that they can utilize, or rent out to earn an additional income if they have a need or opportunity to do so. Such private and public incomes would then continue to finance the government through taxes and other forms of public funding. A third possibility, in a world of intelligent robots where practically all human beings are no longer gainfully employed, is that governments (or perhaps a single world government) might decide to issue electronic credits to human beings, much like a monthly pension payment. Such credits would be automatically generated at the end of each month by a central computer. Such electronic credits would provide financial security for the Earth’s people, and also serve as a means of control by government to ensure that individual human beings purchase only what they require or desire. A fundamental difference between tomorrow’s world of artificial intelligence and today’s predominant reliance on human intelligence, is that humans of the future would no longer pay taxes and that computer generated credits (the same amount for everybody) would serve the purpose of restricting consumption rather than the traditional usage of financial compensation. In a world of intelligent robots there will no longer be trade unions, or conventional mass human work forces. The era of intelligent robots will effectively usher in the dawn of a totally new economic system, based predominantly on a technologically advanced slave economy, sustained almost exclusively by human-like mechanical creations with artificial intelligence. As elaborated above, we can also expect a super-advanced post-human financial system, that will effectively liberate human beings from dependency on the traditional capitalist economic model. The modern mechanical slave economy will be unavoidably socialist in form. There will be very few opportunities for displays of individuality. Modernity would, in fact, be a trade-off for reduced individualism, but greater security, mobility and leisure. Human slavery was cruel, both physically and mentally. However, slave robots will be programmed to carry out instructions and perform certain tasks. Of course, they will not have emotions of any kind. The only income they earn would be for the benefit of their owners. Yes, they would be slaves; but they would also be machines, or labour-saving devices, designed to make life good for human beings, who would then be free to pursue a happier, less stressful more intellectually stimulating life. An artistically and technologically innovative existence not unlike the lifestyles that became possible during the times of the ancient city states of Athens and Rome, and those of the later Italian renaissance. Ultimately, millions of intelligent robots will exist as physical and thinking extensions of their owners. They will perform many of the tasks their owners used to carry out, leaving human beings to devote their newly available free time to their families, hobbies, sport, adventure, travel and intellectual pursuits. That’s a further trade-off we should all be able to live with. It is a lifestyle our children and grand children will one day come to take for granted. What do you think? Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Get a free sample of my new book "DIPLOMATIC NOTES - Memoirs of a Diplomat". Click here >>> Web: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk
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Equal Opportunities For AllIn my view, Affirmative Action and Black Empowerment are too often misguided attempts to socially engineer a condition of equal responsibility and equal pay, irrespective of equal experience and equal qualifications, a futile exercise in a world where inequality in any form is the norm. These attempts, funded and promoted by government, using taxpayers’ money (thereby compelling white taxpayers to pay toward their own disadvantage), are generally a waste of time and effort.
Why? Because replacing an advantaged person with a disadvantaged person; replacing a man with a woman; replacing a white person with a black person; or replacing an old person with a young person, appear to be the major objectives of such social engineering strategies, whereas the objective should be to replace the less effective person with a more effective person, irrespective of personal circumstances, gender, ethnicity or age. Ability and cost-effectiveness should be the key criteria. Not token equality, revenge or reverse-discrimination. Generally, our country’s Constitution addresses equality as a means (equal opportunity) and not an end (literal equality). Nonetheless, paragraph 9 (2) of South Africa’s Bill of Rights, refers to promoting “the achievement of equality.” In this context, “equality” could be misinterpreted by some to imply “literal equality.” Irrespective of how the Bill of Rights is interpreted though, there are still far too many political leaders and rabble rousers, either intentionally or unintentionally, fuelling unrealistic expectations of literal equality. Therefore, we need to remain constantly aware of what is meant by “equality”.Popular issues like income and land ownership, if looked at in racial terms, are certainly not literally “equal.” For “equality” in terms of income, more than 90 percent of South Africa’s non-White population would need to be experiencing the same average standard of living as the White population. But this would be a situation much closer to literal equality, than equal opportunity. As there will likely be a wealthy class, a middle class and a working class for the foreseeable future, literal equality is an unrealistic expectation. Giving a plot of land to every South African family would be politically popular, but would be neither rational nor realistic. However, making leasehold land available to individuals, cooperatives, farmers and communities could help to partially resolve the issue of landlessness and land-inequality by addressing land-availability, particularly to Black South Africans. Literal equality, though, in terms of land use, ownership, value or income would simply not be feasible. The cost, size, location and quality of plots of land cannot all be the same, so vast differences in value would be an inevitable consequence of those differences. Literal equality is not a normal condition in our ever-changing world. It’s one of the reasons why most human beings have the inborn capacity to adapt to whatever ills and challenges life throws their way. Can any two people be equally beautiful, equally strong, equally intelligent, equally influential or equally happy? Perhaps for a few minutes or hours they could be equally wealthy, but as soon as one spends more money than the other, inequality is the result. Even in the natural world, there is no actual equality. The sparrow kills the worm; the hawk kills the sparrow. There’s also no equality between worms, between sparrows or between hawks. It’s a condition they never even think about. Trust me on this. But, to get back to human beings. The only kind of equality worth anything at all is equality of opportunity. After that its up to the individual to achieve the best possible result. An athletics coach who trains two people of the same gender, weight, height and age, to run the same distance, using the same training techniques, doesn’t expect both athletes to cross the finish line at the same time. Invariably, one will finish ahead of the other. That’s how life is most of the time. There are winners and losers, and a lot of people in between who are neither total winners nor total losers. The American Declaration of Independence famously declares that “all men are created equal.” However, the statement contains a caveat that is not written down, but implied, because the intent of this observation is that “all men are created equal under God.” In today’s less God-fearing more politically correct world, the statement might declare that, “all people are created equal under the law.” There is certainly no intention to imply that all people are literally equal, a situation that some 240 years ago was even more unbelievable than that notion is today. The law cannot make you literally equal. It can only treat you equally and ensure that you are treated equally by others. There is a very useful lesson to learn from the Second World War when hundreds of thousands of young men and women were disadvantaged by having to give up their jobs, their opportunities for further education and their dreams of a better life, in exchange for the dangers of war over many years. Those soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen who survived the war came back to a much-changed economic environment, where success increasingly depended on new skills and higher education. It was an environment unsuited to the meager resources of so many young men and women who had sacrificed their ambitions, their hopes and aspirations in order to serve their country in its time of need. They had fallen down the socio-economic ladder and needed to be able to climb back up. America’s response to this situation came in the form of the G.I. Bill (officially, the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944). Payments to returning military personnel included accommodation and tuition fees to complete high school, and attend university, college or vocational/technical training school. Low cost mortgages and low interest loans to start a business were also available. In addition, one year of unemployment compensation was payable. By 1956 almost 9 million Americans had made use of the G.I. Bill to further their education. Over the years the G.I. Bill was extended to cover American military veterans of all wars and is still in place today. What disadvantaged South Africans need, irrespective of their ages, ethnicity, race or gender, is a socio-economic ladder they can climb that is better and more effective than the current political game of musical chairs, commonly termed Black Economic Empowerment or Affirmative Action. In South Africa, Public Service housing subsidies, 100 percent housing loans, and education bursaries served to help many white civil servants improve their lives before April 1994; and such benefits should still be available today to benefit not a single ethnic group, but all South African citizens. Up to one million illegal immigrants, mainly from the Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho, live and work in South Africa. Most of them are hard-working, industrious, people who add to the economy of South Africa through their labor and as consumers; but also place a great strain on our country’s social services, for which they don’t pay taxes. Unless they become legal residents and pay taxes, their presence will continue to place an unnecessary burden on the South African taxpayer. Therefore, they need to either be returned to their countries of origin as soon as possible or assisted to become legally-naturalized South African citizens. Education and training, employment opportunities, accommodation, food and access to health facilities are basic requirements for socio-economic advancement. The government, in partnership with the private sector, needs to design and implement a human development plan that will enable currently disadvantaged South Africans to look after their own needs in future. Taking some existing facilities into account, and borrowing from other examples like the G.I. Bill, could form the basis of such a plan. So instead of introducing a system of dependency, the government’s goal should be to promote individual independence as widely as possible. Its objective should be to create opportunities for all South Africans who are failing to achieve social mobility and economic security, instead of creating false expectations of literal equality in the form of equal wealth and equal land ownership. Equal opportunity and not literal equality, should be our goal. By equipping South Africans with individual skills, education, business or farming expertise and the means to acquire land and accommodation, they would individually be better able to progress economically and socially. Although the government and private sector may collaborate to create an environment of equal opportunity, the end result should be entirely up to the individual. Returning to the athletics coach analogy, when training is completed, opportunity is created. It is then up to the athlete to finish first, last or in between. Well, that’s my take on equality. What do you think? Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Get a free sample of my new book "DIPLOMATIC NOTES - Memoirs of a Diplomat". Click here >>> Web: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk The decline and fall of South Africa When the elections of 27 April 1994 took place and Nelson Mandela was elected as the first President of a non-racial, democratic and free South Africa there was hope in the hearts of virtually every South African, even those living in foreign lands. The atmosphere in South Africa was one of exhilaration, joy and relief that the animosity of the past had been curbed. It would take time to dampen it entirely, to a point of relative normality. Nelson Mandela was a man who was prepared to do that, and could.
Although I did not support the ANC (regrettably, I voted for the PAC as the most viable opposition party; and thankfully, for the DA to preside over the Western Province), it was a party that, at that time, was filled with many passionate and competent senior leaders who had the future of South Africa, the building of a rainbow nation and good governance under our imperfect, but adequate, Constitution, as their collective national priorities. Those were heady and ambitious times. They were also achievable, if pursued progressively, tenaciously and patiently within our financial means and being constantly aware that successful transformation cannot take place in months or years. It takes more time than that. Yet, in the space of almost a quarter century (an entire generation), unemployment has soared, more South Africans live on our streets and beg for handouts at city intersections, squatter camps have grown, crime has ballooned out of control, corruption by government officials seems to have become compulsory, physical altercations in parliament have become commonplace and millions of our people still live in tin shacks. This is not progress. This is hell. So, where did we go wrong? The short answer is, we tried to run before we could walk. We decided to punch above our weight. This was also a fault attributable to the Mandela administration. Instead of focusing on our domestic needs, we strayed too far into the international arena and failed to learn from history. Our foreign policy took centre-stage as we focused on human rights (US President, Jimmy Carter had done the same, with disastrous consequences), multilateralism and regional interests instead of national interests. No doubt, Thabo Mbeki (an avid internationalist), who was one of two Deputy Presidents under President Mandela, had a key role in these misguided policies. From the early years of our new democracy we began to open new embassies and consulates abroad as we extended our pursuit of diplomatic acceptance and new relationships in the international arena. There are certainly advantages to pursuing new diplomatic relationships, but it’s not necessary to invest in physical diplomatic infrastructure in so many countries. Why on Earth do we need an embassy in Haiti? South Africa has diplomatic missions in 126 countries (only the United States has more missions abroad) at a yearly cost of about ZAR 3.2 billion ($244 million) to keep them going. How many low cost houses could we build for even a small chunk of that? A small country like Singapore has a few missions abroad and uses roving ambassadors based in Singapore to pursue diplomatic contact in other countries. Are we incapable of borrowing good cost-effective ideas from successful countries like Singapore? Apparently, yes. We prefer to emulate losers like Cuba. Under President Thabo Mbeki we joined every imaginable multilateral organisation and focused heavily on the goals of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the African Union (AU). Mbeki seemed to spend more time out of South Africa then in the country taking care of business at home. We even made it a foreign policy goal to reform the United Nations and make it more representative. We also foolishly believed we could prevent the Second Gulf War when it was obvious to most observers, including me, that America’s ultimate actions were unstoppable. Our country took money from foreign governments to fund the ANC’s election goals and the South African Communist Party (SACP) set about pursuing its own foreign relations with communist parties abroad, often to the detriment of South Africa’s national interests. Now we have the corrupt and stupid Jacob Zuma presiding over our country. A man who seems to believe the treasury is his personal bank account and the military services are his personal security guards. He places the interests of his cronies, the Gupta family, above the interests of our country and seems to believe the South African people exist to serve him and the ANC. Actually, Mister President, you are there to serve us. And, while on the subject of service delivery, where is it? Now, the latest step downward, as South Africa regresses toward the dictatorship of Zuma’s ANC, is the unhappy possibility that his arrogant and incompetent former wife may become South Africa’s next President. Despite her supposed medical background, Nkosazana-Dlamini Zuma was a disastrous Minister of Health, an expensive, incompetent and out of her depth Foreign Minister who once let a convicted sexual predator off the hook (the husband of our current Foreign Minister), and a deservedly loathed and directionless head of the African Union. Apparently our President couldn’t stand her as a wife, but now he wants to foist this useless addle-brained bully on the people of South Africa. Under the leadership of Jacob Zuma, South African bonds have been relegated to “junk status” by the world’s premier rating agencies. This is no mean feat. It obviously required sustained thought about his personal enrichment and his reliance on the Guptas to be able to destroy our country economically in such a relatively short period of time. His appointment of a malleable sycophant as Minister of Finance was certainly a master stroke in his apparent plan to ensure the death and burial of our once hopeful democracy. I have no doubt his former wife will continue his legacy should she attain the lofty, and apparently profitable, heights of presidential power and privilege. What a pity there is no Hippocratic Oath (I particularly like the part that reads: “I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm”) for Presidents. It would then be so much safer for the rest of us. Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Get a free sample of my new book "Hail To The Chief". Click here >>> My next book "Diplomatic Notes - Memoirs of a Diplomat" is launching soon. Web: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk Source: Gareth van Onselen, Sunday Times, http://www.timeslive.co.za/sundaytimes/stnews/2015/11/15/SAs-spends-R3.2-billion-a-year-on-diplomatic-missions (accessed 23 April 2017) Some thoughts about living in an age of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence ![]() The future’s only as close as tomorrow and it is hardly ever kind to the unprepared. As today’s achievements in science and technology accelerate toward maximum velocity in the next 40 years, we must begin to prepare now. There are potentially some very serious issues to address; events that, if ignored today could make the lives of our grandchildren miserable tomorrow. Keep in mind, the future is impatient. It cannot be stopped. It waits for nobody. Therefore, humankind needs to act and we need to act. We can begin to do so by anticipating and solving some of these looming problems before it’s too late to do anything useful. If we don’t respond quickly enough, the unrelenting unstoppable waves of imminent chaos and catastrophe, like a giant tsunami, will drown us in our collective sleep. So, what are the most urgent of these potential crises? Current evidence and opinions suggest that a half dozen key issues should be high on the world’s current agenda. If we address them now, we’ll be better prepared to adapt to likely seismic societal events thirty or forty years down the road. There are a number of crucially important changes and challenges the next generation will have to deal with. For example, the development and consequences of robots with artificial intelligence; the impact of intelligent robots on employment trends and their impact on education. Science and technology in the coming decades will be increasingly important in a variety of fields from agriculture and animal husbandry, through medical science, engineering, transportation, robotics, artificial intelligence and space exploration as well as many other specialist categories. With automation and robots changing our economic systems dramatically (money as we know it might even become redundant), poverty will rise at a phenomenal rate, unless we have safety net provisions in place well beforehand. With reduced human employment there will be fewer public revenues from taxation. Fortunately, public expenditure will also diminish considerably as a result of robot employment at all levels of government. With so many human beings unemployed, unqualified for available jobs, and unable to earn a salary, governments will need to find positive alternatives for the enforced idleness of the formerly employed. Therefore, we have to decide now how the unemployed can gain access to sufficient funds to be able to support themselves in the absence of salaries. We will then only need to address the question of how to channel their available potential into re-training programs, small business activities and recreational opportunities. These, and other consequences of human progress have huge implications for human life in the decades ahead. They cannot be ignored. So, let’s explore all these issues and try to get some idea of what the future of our children and grandchildren may look like. 1. Robots and Artificial Intelligence Of all the items produced by science and technology, the development of the robot (in effect, an autonomous mobile computer) with artificial intelligence and the agility of a human being will have the most far-reaching and significant influence on the lives of future generations. It will be a friend, an advisor, a tutor, a child minder, a care giver, a servant, a translator, a body guard, a sentry, an alarm system, a data base, a driver, a GPS, a paramedic, a two-way audio and video device, and a worker. Let’s not forget though, that with progress comes poverty. It has always been that way. Scientific and technological progress will enable human beings to do less. Consequently, they will earn less and could become poorer. Therefore, we need to plan now for the days, not too far away, when artificial intelligence and a new population of robots will take over many of the jobs and livelihoods of human beings. Ironically, with the advance of science and society, our economy will begin to resemble a slave economy in which robots work for no money for those who don’t work at all. Despite the important distinction that twenty-first century “slaves” will be machines, not human beings, we can perhaps learn from the slave economies of the past. For example, as recently as the nineteenth century, in some societies it was necessary to own slaves in order to prosper or live a good life. Therefore, ownership of at least one robot, preferably more, could provide future generations with the means to earn money and live a reasonably good life. Each generation of robots will be a technological improvement on the previous generation, because robots will also design and manufacture future robots and upgrade artificial intelligence more effectively and efficiently than human beings can. No doubt we will one day reach the stage where robots or androids are virtually indistinguishable from human beings and where human beings become cybernetic organisms (“cyborgs”) or bionic beings – sophisticated mixtures of technology and biology. The development and improvement of robots and artificial intelligence will determine how future generations coexist with a population of robots that look after them and ensure that their human needs are met in every possible way. In the future, life can still be good for human beings if we plan now. 2. Robot Employment There are very few jobs in the world today that cannot be replaced by robots with artificial intelligence. For example, driver-less cars, trucks, busses and trains; pilot-less aircraft; and seagoing vessels with minimum crew complements and no captains, will reduce unemployment and increase safety and efficiency without negatively affecting the operations of such vehicles. Physical security, too, will experience great changes, particularly in the form of body guards, sentries, security services, guard dogs, soldiers and even police services, due to the more advanced capabilities of robots. Factories will be able to get rid of more than 95% of their workforce and robot replacements will work 24 hours per day, without compensation. They won’t go on strike, take vacations, be late for work or get sick. Military and security services will also be reduced in numbers as robots replace them. In addition, banking and the service sector will need far fewer workers as robots take their place. Manual labourers in agriculture, forestry, construction, waste control, cleaning services, community services, and road repairs would also have to make way for robots. Human activity in the form of labour, intellectual thought, artistic creativity and recreation gives purpose to the lives of human beings. Without purpose, life becomes pointless and futile. The Robot age will force governments to find new outlets for human activity in ways that encourage individual satisfaction, peace and stability. >>> Continued in Part two, the next blog post >>> Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Get a free sample of my new book "Hail To The Chief". Click here >>> My next book "Diplomatic Notes - Memoirs of a Diplomat" is launching soon. Web: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk |
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