calroc

The "problem" that basic income is trying to solve is the massive increase in productive capacity due to automation, of which the increase of unemployment is a symptom. It's not so much that supply would meet demand (and so prevent prices going up), as that basic income allows demand to keep up with supply even as automation makes more with less labor.

I have to disagree: There certainly are people who can keep (very) large systems in their minds and refine and extend them, but they are very rare and most of the people who might call themselves "Software Architects" are not.

It might be said that the definition of "size" for a computer system is exactly the degree to which it requires "architecture" to make it.

Under that interpretation one way to try to become a "Software Architect" is to study large systems and how they succeed or fail at their intended purposes.

If I had another life I would go search for this plant. It seems plausible to me and would definitely be awesome to find it if it exists.

But psychopathy is a kind of divorce from reality; while it seems that the genius is somehow closer to reality than the normal person?

That's pretty amazing!

I sometimes use imagery of a toilet flushing and the thought going down, several flushes if necessary (imaginary water is free!) Also, imagining white noise (visual and auditory) washing out the thought, increasing in power until it wipes away the thought like waves on a beach erasing patterns traced in the sand and then fading out, seems to work well. (I suspect using (imaginary) noise might have some actual biophysical basis for why it works, but that's just speculation.)

Your friend could have gotten the same benefits while working on something that also was of greater (presumable) benefit to others than "Cat Snaps".

(I speak as one who has tremendous respect for the good that cat pictures have done for the world.)

The point of spiking trees isn't to hurt people, in fact the tree-huggers tell the loggers that the trees have been spiked so that they won't attempt to cut the trees. The point of the tactic is to prevent damage to the forest, not to actually hurt anyone.

    No new features, no improvements, nothing -- just the same language, for a decade.

Am I alone in being excited by this? I am figuratively drooling over such stability.

I've been saying for years now that Star Trek forms the best commonly-known model for what future "economics" will be like. It's really awesome to read a well-thought-out treatment of that idea.

Some points in no particular order:

* In the limit of nanotechnology and fusion power we can produce anything (physical.) This forces us to confront our essential challenge which is the development of good character. All forms of government are attempts to manage human wickedness. Corollary: it very nearly doesn't matter what form of government obtains if the people in that government are virtuous.

* Permaculture (modelling agricultural systems on natural ecologies) is a non-technological mode of abundance.

* Communism: The Smurfs.

* It seems to me that the "natural" economic system varies with personal "distance". Broadly: immediate family/friends -> communistic; (Are the Amish commies? No.) neighbors -> barter / reciprocal gift-giving; strangers -> capitalism.

* If there is something to that last point then as the Internet shrinks personal distance we should expect a general trend from impersonal capitalistic forms to more personal "altruistic" forms (Gittip, etc...)

* As technology advances we are forced to become unwilling to "solve problems with bullets". If you are willing (for any reason) to commit violence you will perforce be kept from the really potent weapons. Already so-called "psych-ops" have become the cutting edge (no pun intended) of warfare: eliminate the enemy's desire to fight. It is only a matter of time before hippy-dippy shit becomes the obvious counter to hostilities by the intrinsic logic of warfare itself. ("Men Who Stare at Goats" is a documentary.)