The Question, Question

Human dignity will always block progress if it undermines the perception of what other people might think of you (status), so we must remain critical by asking at every turn, “Who benefits?”, adding a healthy dose of cynicsm by asking “Why bother?”, and finally “Why submit to a bureaucracy, falling back on rote training and a paycheck, while filling the emotional void with the perception of status, with a dismissive view toward the “client”, when individuals can do for themselves for free?”

With such questions in the top ranks of the inventory, we can begin to reform and realign seemingly conflicting agendas into one that (eventually?) benefits everyone. If the benefits are not mutual at the onset, a timeline needs presenting to show those that do the “heavy lifting” at every beaucratic level how everyone will economically benefit, moreso than previously. A good start in this direction is putting executive payment to a vote by those within the company. By distributing the decision in this way, the oligarchical mould begins to take democratic responsibility, making executives have a greater interest in those below them, and everyone else better able to evaluate the functions of executives. The trick then is to present what executives do in a truthful manner, which would best be served by a somehow incorruptable party to investigate and present the existing processes of the company as a whole.

Because such an initiative could only be afforded by executives themselves, assuming (remotely rather than internally corruptable) government measures aren’t taken, such reports and perspectives will be glossed over to abide by those who pay them, much like the perspectives projected by mass media. If such a minor experiment of income transparency is done successfully, the company can work toward becoming more efficient as a sort of introverted panopticon every member peers into to see ‘who’ is doing ‘what’. The top of the capstone involves money, so such transparency should start there.

The Software Question

Every line of code should be a commons to swiftly meet a need. Github has done well initially, but such packets of code needs to become more modular, in the likes of Docker, to become a sort of public encyclopedia, a Wikipedia for code. The process could begin by making code for a ride sharing program public, the best of it placed into a sharing economy “dock”, observed on the front end as a web portal for any service, from ride sharing to contract labor, to the licensing of creative content, from music to video. Such modes have been described as platform cooperativism. What we can anticipate is a popular portal through which any variety of platform can function, with back-end commercial costs distributed, so service providing members can share in the costs and benefits, building with each piece a Unicorn Crushing Monolith. That is to say, to the privileged among us, if you have a stake in software, you should probably continually re-evaluate your portfolio.

The Hardware Question

Musk’s Gigafactory nearing completion is a testiment to the latest manufacturing techniques up to now. 6,500 employees under one roof will produce, from raw material to finished product 500,000 electric vehicles each year. With some insider expertise and a billionaire ally, Gigafactory style systems can today be copied as is done by Tesla competitor Faraday Futures. For highly complex hardware components like multi-core processors and motor vehicles such centralised and grand scale makes sense, however, only a handful of producers can benefit within each industry, making collusion easier to retain inflated consumer prices. Therefore, if a process can be multiplied into factories located closer to demand, a noble goal would be for sales tax to cover the construction and maintainence of the factory and its attendant suppliers, if any.

Printing metal by means of laser sintering

The notion of 3D printing is something to consider, even in the near term, as the barrior to fabricating alloy based products by means of laser sintering are becoming more affordable, although desktop models are considered a distant possibility.

It is here the future of manufacturing can be imagined as one box with one multi-toolset producing an item for another box that finishes the process with another multi-toolset in a conveyor belt-like fashion until such machinery can be replicated in the garage and then more elegantly in the living room.

The greatest cost to software development is (renting) hardware. To dissolve such costs, cooperative platforms would do well to develop a hardware arm with a nod to Open Source Hardware Association producing computer hardware that can store and wirelessly transmit encrypted data as a type of distributed grid to compliment the existing Internet, ensuring information freedom with the goal of making cloud storage and processing prices obsolete. Wherever insurmountable communications tolls are faced, costs can be crowdsourced in the same way the Mozilla Foundation or Wikipedia is funded.

The Banking Question

Banking profits are approaching half of all corporate profits, marking plenty of room for competition. Cryptocurriences like Bitcoin does solve the problem of money creation, but for these types of money to replace Reserve Notes, Bitcoin must form another layer, such as an interest bearing depositor account, to promote lending and investment. Investment managers here only get paid if the investment is profitable and ethical or punished via a feedback system like that of Ebay or Amazon customer reviews. Investment managers with the highest feedback get the bulk of funds while managers with too many strikes get the boot. Investment details should be made public for ethical reasons. Such lending and investment clarity can remove BitCoin’s market volatility backed by productive assets. Once a non-partisan digital currency is determined more stable than traditional forms, while making higher returns than traditional savings accounts, adoption would surely skyrocket, and with it, ever leaner enterprise.

The Governance Question

Government can reframe itself to serve the public interest by making the public interested it what it does. The first of its roles should provide public services, unfortunately in practice the primary role of government is to enable vested interests. This should not be considered a fault of government, but a fault in the public participation in the policy process.

The remaining shackles of employment where last brought under serious question in the United States when several dozen professional economists, academics, and activists called for a basic income in the mid 1960s spear headed by Robert Theobald, a name presently a footnote in political history, but one that should offer further magnification as AI and Robotics better replicate human productivity, progressing the futility of employment — 1/3 of which has become contract labor. Fortunately the topic of basic income has increased in recent years, last notably in Finland, if but as a sparse experiment.

Once distributed manufacturing is a norm with the prospect of AI and Robotics looming, investment capital will remain, if but diminished. Backed by distributed hardware nodes, software will be more like air, and as autonomous vehicles come online, hardware will begin to follow the same path as software.

With little else to turn, still dependent on human capital, investment might try to seek refuge in devious ways, whether in protectionist tolls to transport systems, areas of land, or patents on raw material itself. To prevent this, large firms providing a wide benefit can be temporarily subsidized, while R&D (perhaps wisely external to the institution in question) works to off-load proprietary means into common reserves.

A basic income should be provided to all people of an amount industry and ecology can tolerate.

Once non-partial digital currency is found to work well in the private sphere, the same process can apply, appropriate for public services. Here a commitee of investment managers, with the highest of approval ratings, can decide on bids that benefit the public. This group would ideally personally depend on such public services, ensuring builds of the greatest quality at the most competitive price. For grand scale projects, multiple committees should be called at each stage of the development process to ensure public benefit.

In the United States, if health services were placed in the public domain, or as a single-payer system, healthcare costs would be greatly reduced, medication prices would be capped, and if medications too were placed in public domain, any amount of profits would go back into the provision of care. Funding would be dedicated to cures for disease, no matter how few suffered, without pressure to profit from a majority market. The National Health Service in the United Kingdom can provide a template for a US National Health Service.

Genome sequencing and diagnostics are plummeting in costs, enabling customized preventative care, which will greatly reduce the need for costly medical intervention.

Indeed, the ultimate goal of government should be not to govern at all.