Resource Based Economy Requires Electric Grid Modernization First

Those wishing for serious political change should take a look at electricity technology infrastructure. Major investments into smart meters, public energy ownership + storage, HVDC transmission cables, modernized electric grids, and a digital network to manage it all.



Let's provide a bit of context for advocacy of something as seemingly dull sounding as digital electric smart meters.

Conceptualizing and verbalizing political alternatives to current socioeconomic stagnation is widely understood to be preferable to mere critiques. As important and vital as a critique is, it has little power without provision of an alternative to fill the vacuum. Critiques are now a booming mainstream industry with today's internet enabled resurgence of muckraking journalism. Provision of serious socioeconomic alternatives is in the early stages of becoming a major trend as well. Online video debates and video replies to recorded educational speeches are a modern example of 18-19th century political debates via pamphleteering.

Similarly, provision of an alternative is toothless without certain technological infrastructural components to make it viable and workable. Tangible investments into physical precursors that make any major political alternatives possible ought to be focused on more than ever. All of the above 3 approaches to social change (critique/alternative/technology) gain maximum power when conducted in parallel with certain emphasis on actual technology induced physical change on the ground. For example, a political faction ought to focus on energy production and distribution regardless of whether the group advocates more political decentralization, more centralization, or a novel hybrid of both for different areas of societal management. Precise vast storage of energy, transmission of it over large areas, and precise computer tracking of production and distribution of vast quantities of electricity is needed to make each different political concept work.

For the most part, specific policy proposals currently are not often tied to technological solutions but rather monetary incentives and disincentives (there is currently an elite driven trend towards soft paternalism). This carrot and stick approach to prod the herd into an even more technologically complex society in the 21st century is inefficient. Considering that economics is an engineering challenge, there is a better way. Government ownership of electric generation used to be more widespread in the United States and contributed to rapid regional development from 1930s to the present. Surviving remnants of it such as the Tennessee Valley Authority are the best examples of a wide scale public system of beneficial power management.

It is immediately clear how ability to manufacture, transmit, and monitor electricity directly affects ability to provide a life artery to any policy proposal in raising human standards of living. The only discussion here concerning public ownership of a sophisticated electrical smart grid (acting as a sort of "skeleton" on which developmental and social projects can grow) is whether ownership is at the municipal, state, regional, national level, or a federated sharing combination. For instance, if a city owns a fission reactor and produces a megawatt of power, does it reserve 20% of it for use by its regional and national neighbors? Or conversely, does it receive a stipend of additional 20% of power from a regional outside authority? Does the city sub-network just continuously release surplus power into the larger grid or is it collected in local large scale energy storage facilities? [You may begin to notice here and in later articles that electric power achieves certain characteristics of money such as liquidity which can be taxed and redistributed as needed.] Various economic projects involving housing, employment, healthcare, and general infrastructure will require for municipalities to figure out their energy generating and energy sharing arrangements. For them to do so, they first need technological components to make futuristic power management possible.

This cannot be stressed enough. Vast majority of what The Pragmatist suggested over the last few years is not possible without the above. Electric smart grid (and overlapping digital data grid to monitor/control it) is the distilled essential for any future society. We can call it various colorful names to promote it (circulatory and nervous systems of a society for instance) but after much deliberation it is clearly the primary step to take. Even if a high tech liquid direct democracy is achieved, it will not be able to accomplish as much without public energy accounting that the grid allows. People's will and political will is shaped and checked by underlining physical technological realities. A lot of current political and social projects would not be possible in a society at a 19th century level of technological and electrical development. In this way, much like economics is an engineering challenge, so is politics and popular consciousness.

Resource based economy and resource accounting is not possible without very effective energy accounting first. Smart Meters and grids give rise to possibility of technocratic governance.

During the hay day of America's Technocracy movement in the 1930s, the main piece of literature (explaining the functioning, goals, and reasons for an empirically managed society) emphasized the need to measure the total amount of electrical generation on the North American continent in real time. This was to understand exactly how much power various extraction, production, and distribution industries use in order to drastically reduce inefficiencies in the national economy and to have the highest possible load factor at all times. This type of informational awareness was obviously not possible at the time especially considering the additional energy accounting complexities that Technocrats advocated (such as energy certificates to be issued to each individual).

Figure 1. Click to Enlarge

As of 2014, North America is covered by a handful of regional wide area synchronous grids (Fig. 1) that are themselves in the gradual process of merging into a continental Unified Smart Grid as mentioned in the previous article. The backbone of the Technocratic vision is thus forming. Potential susceptibility of smart grids to cyber attacks and infiltration necessitates public involvement for security reasons. As the most vital infrastructure component in the country, government authorities have a responsibility to ensure safe, constant, and reliable functioning of the grid as a whole. Military grade encryption will also be required here to ensure that this "Energy Internet" is free of outside disruptions. Subsequently, public control of the energy industry allows public leverage over all other heavy industry. "Security reasons" are a good way to market technocracy to groups in society which may not otherwise be as open to it.

The energy usage of machines that dig up, process, turn raw resources into finished product, and transport it to your locality can now be tracked accurately. The flattening of production and distribution chains that has occurred in recent decades under the guidance of such multinationals as Siemens and Wall-Mart already allows careful monitoring of the entire process. A two way directional energy grid further enables the measurement and control of energy usage of every piece of hardware within this chain. Efficient public industrial and infrastructural policy is now possible via these precise assessments of non-monetary costs. Currently, the cost of any project is measured in money where many blind spots, inefficiencies, and corruptions can be found (such as bloated overhead, middlemen, and undue distortions from non-physical financial sector.) Smart meter management software allows projects of the future to have a transparent real time digital record of the entire process on the physical level. This enables audit of records at any time and subsequent rapid corrective actions.

This ultimately will result in ever increasing representation of technical experts in governmental bodies at all levels. Fusion of technical cadres with governmental cadres is the smoothest way to gradually and peacefully replace the latter. Government cadres increasingly filled with greater and greater proportion of electrical and software engineers is by definition a growing technocracy. This may not exactly be 1/3 of the national legislature staffed with technical experts and scientists like in France but the necessity of greater physical efficiency in government puts us on the road towards legislatures staffed like that.

HVDC cables allow regions, provinces, and counties to act like metropolitan areas

With rapid projected urbanization for most people throughout the world, it may look like very large cities will inevitably become dominant political actors that leave scattered towns, small cities, hamlets, and villages between them increasingly economically and socially isolated. This doesn't need to be the case as hundreds of towns and/or entire counties can band together via efficient high powered long distance transmission HVDC cables and function as singular large cities. Much like diverse energy sources of various strengths can join together into a virtual power plant, local governments can collectively function as one unit without actually politically merging. For example, rather than the economy of New York State being dominated by New York City, counties in upstate New York may use the smart grid technology to work together to manage their energy, resource, and development needs. Hundreds of small spread out populations and political units can thus create a decentralized entity with population, economic size, and political bargaining power similar to a nearby metropolis. Additionally, being able to see precise electrical data for any sized political unit allows municipal role modeling behavior, emulation of successful technical projects, mutual learning, and rapid adaptation of what works. There is no need for small city mayors to wait for urban sprawl from nearest two large urban centers to swallow the town so large infrastructure projects can begin. Distributed generation of electrical power on a regional scale finally enables them to collaborate and pull resources together on projects larger than would otherwise be possible. A highly spread out region of 5 million people can create a similar concentrated economic focus as a densely packed and compact city of 5 million.

First resource based economy (RBE) experiments will likely be conducted in smaller cities. Their success will not only depend on their ability to generate their own power independent of the larger grid but their ability to trade surplus power to the larger grid as well as cooperate with fellow resource based economy settlements via HVDC smart grid network. As mentioned earlier in the article, regardless of whether one's policy requires more municipal autonomy/localism, municipal collaboration, or centralization, these emerging electrical platforms facilitate any proposal. However, our focus here is infrastructural ability of say, 10-30 small RBE cities to act in a synchronized political unison even if separated by hundreds or thousands of kilometers. Much like transnational corporations achieve certain critical mass with economies of scale, smart grids will allow spread out political experiment social units to reach economies of scale with collaborative energy use.

Regardless of where a person stands on the political spectrum, it appears that a political faction that makes best use of modernizing the electric grid first will begin to dominate in the market of ideas.

Technocracy Movement Becoming Popular Again

There is a potent reason why the Western world is seeing alternative samizdat publications and sites spread like wildfire. The quote below encapsulates it and is from the online Technocracy Study Course (Available in PDF.  Emphasis on pages 121-143 if you don't have much time.) 

What is all the more shocking is that Technocracy Movement was very popular in the 1930s (the quote above is from the 1947 version) and stood as an all American alternative to some of the more European systems being proposed at the time. Educational conferences like the one pictured below were common and many prominent technocrats went on to serve in helping build the new FDRist state in the 1940s-1960s period.

The continental plans at the time appear grandiose to a post-industrial, post-cold generation but considering the pace in construction of continental economic unions and mega engineering being back in vogue due to China, we may return to similar thinking soon.

Wages in a Resource Based Economy

Compensation in resource based economy will be underlined by energy accounting



The main question that technocrats all over the world are asked is "how will we get a herd of 7 billion monkeys to transition away from the current fiat monetarist system towards a real economy based on resource and electrical energy quantities? How will they be motivated beyond promise of self-aggrandizement and greed?"

Simple answer is that transition to a resource based economy will involve all the same gimmicks used by rulers since the dawn of civilization: greed, fame, honors, and promise of some inequality (although much more reasonable and controlled than currently). Some key differences from the present system are an ever rising safety net baseline to meet basic needs of the populace and compensation in material/energy backed units. Late 20th century methods of artificial scarcity management, central bank printing presses, and Soviet rations have run their course.

Here is one basic outline among many: ( sidenote: The Pragmatist is not an unofficial media arm of any existing technocratic organization even if I provide a link to a wonderful technocracy video introduction at the top right corner of the blog. Check it out! There will be many competing energy accounting and resource accounting systems in the coming decades and they will begin to converge in basic themes eventually.)

1) 10 wage compensation levels with level 1 wage as guaranteed minimum income and level 10 wage as maximum income (10 is used here for metric system style simplicity, it could very well be 6 or 8). There are physiological limits to how equal humans are but there are also physiological limits to how unequal they are. One human receiving no more than 10 times the amount of reward, living space, fame, and electrical output is about right. No human, no matter how strong or gifted is more than 10 times smarter, stronger, productive, "better", than the weakest (multiply IQ of 20 by 10 as an example).

2) At the age of consent everybody starts as a level 1, receiving say, 10,000 units of electrical energy as a basic living stipend (in addition to minimum level 1 modular housing unit, level 1 simple food ration, and provision of equal baseline education and healthcare for all). A level 10 would receive a stipend of 100,000 electrical units to do with as he/she pleases since amount and increase in top compensation is pegged to level 1 baseline.

3) Although transition period may involve brief return to deflationary "sound currency", income eventually will be provided in amount of electrical energy available to you for a certain amount of time. For example, a level 3 person may get 30,000 units of energy a year or 576 units a week. If he or she doesn't spend these 576 units that week on art supplies (or additional non-stipend clothing, grooming supplies, level 8 rare food, etc) then the units don't roll over. They "expire" and return to communal use to provide extra kick for energy intensive infrastructure projects. Nobody could thus hoard up or create a banking lending system with their saved up energy within the common grid. Obviously on the side shenanigans can be done with off grid energy supplies and batteries but common grid can be easily kept separate from it. A person trying to compete with common grid and create "energy banking" would be like a mom and pop store creating water/food banking. The energy wage system is a communal and very macro safety/incentive net.

4) Societal honors, social pressures, education, societal attention, and better mating opportunities are the incentive to educate yourself further to qualify for higher wage level compensation. Some may prefer to marry or have sexual relations with apes of only certain levels just like currently. It is relatively easy to create social mechanisms to encourage personal growth, especially when basic needs of shelter, good nutrition, and healthcare are met (one just has to look at how people are compelled to improve themselves and pursue various non-graduation/non-wage related interests on some of the better college campuses).

5) The rise of maximum income wage is tied to rise in minimum income stipend to create incentives for strongest people to improve conditions for the whole herd. Thus if level 10 leadership builds enough new power source infrastructure to raise the amount of electrical power they give themselves from 100,000 units annually to 200,000 units annually, the provision of minimum stipend for level 1 people will also double from 10,000 to 20,000. This way, the gifts of the strongest create a real and automatic trickle down. An enterprising level 10 living in a house 10 times larger than level 1 house may ask his or her level 8-10 colleagues to contribute their energy towards a new experimental project or an idea.

6) This is very easily calculated by seeing and tracking the total amount of electrical energy available within relatively decentralized global "energy Internet" power grid. Amount of energy flux density within any given area is readily seen as well as deficiencies by relating the energy amount to population per square kilometer. Energy accounting is thus the base of the resource economy superstructure. Calculating energy production and distribution is essential for all other material production, material rationing, and distribution. This is a no brainer and rapid construction of new and better energy sources will be the primary societal and leadership task of level 10 people.

7) Electrical compensation is tied to the amount of schooling that was needed for the task and amount of hours spent on the task. Thus a level 10 after years of training, has to work the entire 20 hour workweek until retirement at the age of 40 (yes those aren't typos, think about the technology enabled progress in leisure time that occurred over the last 100 years from 16 hour workday turning into 8 and so on).

8) To repeat, 20 hour workweek and retirement at 40 (with a generous stipend to almost match the wage level) to allow fresh talent to take control in a fast paced 21st century environment where exponential progress in technological gadgets, implants, biological and pharmacological augmentations makes late retirement a danger to the whole planetary herd. Gerontocracy at all levels is a public safety risk of enormous proportions. The elderly should be comfortably and rapidly retired with allowances for extra talented ones to continue working without societal coercion that presently exists (like losing a home). A level 5 would work 10 hours a week correspondingly. We should see surprising amount of volunteering at this stage of human development by people who are restless to utilize their training after years of school. We already saw rise in mass scale volunteering in Anglo-American space in 1960s-2010s period and in Soviet space in the 1920s-1950s period. If there is a grand exciting societal construction project, a new wave of volunteering will automatically be generated considering the new 21st century incentive structure, safety net support, and moral encouragement.

9) Level advancement can also be provided as honors for certain heroic tasks, extra special inventions, contributions to the herd, etc. This can be democratically decided to prevent corruption. Corruption itself at political level greatly reduced by systems such as examination with democratic popular input for highest scoring candidates. 

10)  Systematic targeting of land monopolies that currently exist in the form of landlordism to prevent too much centralization in energy production and distribution and to eliminate last remnants of feudalism. Modification to underlining land ownership structure from private to communal  is essential to prevent creation of unhealthy regional patchworks where areas with access to harder energy supplies (fission reactors) are able to browbeat neighbors. Eventually, with enough globalization and agreement on level 1 stipend standards for continents, some agreement needs to occur on global level 1 stipend goals.

Upon closer examination, none of this is utopian since controlled inequality and greed/sex based reptilian brain incentives are preserved. If one appreciates the sheer technological potential that humanity is looking at with transhuman augmentation, nanotechnological mass production, AI, AND if one understands that the time horizons we're looking at stretch into the 2050s, THEN the simple replacement of monetarism with more rational energy accounting described above is definitely not utopian. Current 2012 living standards enjoyed by more enlightened human wage slave plantations of Japan, Scandinavia, and Germany would have sounded similarly rather "utopian" to people in the 1850s. Yet we don't have to wait till 2150s due to the technological progress in means of production and distribution continuing to accelerate.

Some unanswered questions

"So will level 4 person get 4 times the food or 4 times the quality of the food or combination of both? Will shelter and food on higher levels also be provided on a stipend basis or will the additional electric units will be required to pay for it? What happens to rich people and their mansions currently? I can already visualize ways to abuse the system, what do we do with the shameless scoundrels? I certainly would like to spend my annual 50,000 units after my 10 hour workweek not on a level 5 shelter but maybe on three level 1 shelters in different sectors and a new kitty cat and maybe 2 cars instead? Can I forgo a stipend in clothing to get more energy units and what happens if..."

It is... too... early... for that.... First it is important to understand why we're on this road to begin with. 

Defining Left-Libertarianism in United States

Easiest, most marketable, practical, and productive way to unite dissident movements in United States is to utilize the umbrella term of Left-Libertarianism.




This article is less about existing left-libertarian constructs, some of them stretching back to the egalitarian ideas of a small minority of US founders. It is more about the emerging peripheral fusion between two seemingly antagonistic dissident political forces, the ones behind the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements.

Previously I wrote that there are enough commonalities between the two dissident groups to create a very concrete and mutually agreeable political platform to be shared by both libertarians and progressives. That was written long before the other dissident shoe dropped in the form of OWS and before Ron Paul and Ralph Nader agreed to join forces. The platform was thus very general and tilted to the Tea-Party faction. Now that both sides are roughly co-equal in public consciousness, it is time to re-examine the dynamics of what can only be called Left-Libertarian political emergence. Ultimately, any framework for restoring the economy on the North American continent (to make it a healthy global pole as described in the previous article) will have to involve constitutional political reorganization favorable to both dissident sides.

Here at The Pragmatist, ideology and ideological titles are generally disliked. That is due to ideology stagnating society if adapted by the public as a guiding framework on a large scale. The individual brain and thus society at large defers its ability to think by going on an autopilot. However, there are two instances when an ideological name can work alongside pragmatism of thought and action (something that IS liked on this website unsurprisingly):

1) Memetic engineering. Ideological titles can be used as a cynical marketing tool on a tactical level. Left-Libertarianism has the effect of triggering entire meme clusters among the very energized Internet literate demographics. Many within OWS have always sympathized with the anti-imperialist message of Ron Paul and may see a way to co-opt a number of post-financial crash libertarians. Many within Ron Paul's faction have similar thoughts about co-opting new recruits from among the medley on the OWS left. Left-Libertarian label at the very least serves as a starting mechanism to bring the dissident groups together for a serious strategy centered discussion.

The fusion is accelerated as Left-Libertarian label neatly peels off entire layers of libertarians from the Tea Party. This is more possible by the day since majority of younger/Millennial libertarians have had time to thoroughly study how the Tea Party was co-opted by corporate forces. Many of them have chaffed at rubbing shoulders with elderly conservative religious crypto fascists and having to exert energy to ideologically educate them to be more in tune with Ron Paul's vision. The GOP primaries (and the ongoing total meltdown of the once national party) has heightened the tensions within Tea Party allowing desertions to accelerate.

2) Formation of a formal alliance with a Left-Libertarian label (or multitudes of unique local alliances as the case may be considering numbers of Occupy and Tea Party groups) also serves to pragmatically force thought about the platform and ideology of such alliance. Although ideology with a relatively coherent platform stagnates the mind by deferring thought, a relatively undefined ideological hybrid without a tangible mutually agreed platform increases thought. In the case of Left-Libertarian label, the thought is forced in these particular ways:

___a) Those on the Left/OWS side of the equation have to think of how to fuse/define/summarize their thought in order to better balance the relatively more coherent and united libertarians. The far seeing among them will realize the sheer utility of first trying to find major points of agreement among social democrats, socialists, zeitgeist followers, communists, technocrats, etc and second to think of most strategic ways to combine these points of agreement with the libertarians.

___b) Thought is also forced on how to fuse strains within previously existing left-libertarian dialogue and make it applicable to the particularities of post-financial crash American dissident forces of Tea Party and OWS.

___c) Thought is forced on logistics, marketing, and operational/technological aspects of a Left-Libertarian label.

Thus we see a potential for an ideological label that pragmatically begins to will substance and definition into being. What starts out as a marketing ploy acquires a life and genuine belief on its own. Not only that, but it actually serves to solidify OWS/left in general in case there aren't enough committed leftists and libertarians who want to work together this closely. Total collapse of such dialogue is not likely due to the current form of libertarianism burning out in the minds of many American intelligentsia. It is unlikely for Ron Paul's thought to continue rapidly increasing in the general national imagination (after the current last campaign hurrah). This is due to the amount of people educating themselves about the causes of the financial crash and the inefficiencies of run away capitalism in general. We should therefore see youthful OWS leaders supporting Left-Libertarianism to better define themselves and youthful libertarian leaders supporting it to not become marginalized/irrelevant.

This process is already happening without the title being prominently talked about. The key word in the last paragraph is "youthful". Left-Libertarianism serves as an effective political consolidating tool for the Millennial generation as it begins its long struggle with declining Boomers for reigns of power. All stripes of Millennial political activists are defined by technological optimism and ability to rapidly leverage decentralized communication on a tactical level. It naturally follows that technology will increasingly play a key role in whichever political program Left-Libertarians eventually settle on. Ideas of Henry George, Thorstein Veblen, King Hubbert, Jacque Fresco, and Buckminster Fuller are increasingly becoming popular again. These ideas are often seamlessly compatible with decentralization and technological optimist of Millennial thinkers. Technology may serve as an even better glue among Left-Libertarians than disgust with the corruption and inefficiency of the current neo-feudal system we live in.

Marketing, the engineering and production of psychological states, is the key instrument of power and if dissidents want to become relevant they will have to utilize proper labels and label clusters for maximum effect. Left-Libertarianism taps into the current American zeitgeist and allows existing libertarians to become involved in the project of building society of the future while saving face publicly.

Third Industrial Revolution

Nanotechnological manufacturing will have more impact on humanity in a few decades than agricultural/industrial revolutions had over thousands of years. Such rapid change in production/distribution will push towards global unification to prevent potentially devastating occurrences




As of today, every major state power in the world is actively pursuing nanotechnological breakthroughs to give itself a geopolitical advantage. Public and private enterprises are seeing sharp increases in financial and logistical support. Although the global economic depression weighs down the hands of many civilian branches (legislative/executive) by increased centrifugal pulls of populist and oligarchic factions, military leaderships and intelligence services understand that allowing foreign powers to make a nanotech leap can be disastrous. Whichever society is able to produce the first fabricator is but a few steps away from being able to cheaply and exponentially produce advanced weaponry and weapons systems in bulk. Even Iran is dabbling with nanotech lately by giving Ministry of Agricultural Jihad (ministry name not a joke, check the link) some money for agricultural product research. Whether they'll be making better fertilizer or better fertilizer bombs remains to be seen. Supposedly there's already been some nanotech use in an explosive device that had more destructive power than US's MOAB while being lighter in weight.

In recent years we saw an increasing number of breakthroughs in manufacturing processes of nanoscale parts. The advancements stand to produce larger quantity as well as better quality of objects on the scale needed to build the first fabricator. This video shows a visual sketch to give a person an idea of how an advanced fabricator (one made a number of version generations after the first proto fabricator is created) in mid 21st century can produce publicly approved items.

The processes shown in the video might seem fantastical and impossible but a number of scientists (such as the polymath Richard Feynman a few decades ago) have shown that there is nothing standing in the way from the side of physics. As of 2009, dozens of very optimistic research papers have not been shown to be completely wrong yet. We also have plentiful evidence of advanced nanotechnological systems working splendidly due to the presence of self replicating machinery such as cells in plants, animals, bacteria, and human beings. There is also not one single manufacturing process (to assemble parts for the first crude fabricator and put them together) to be derailed since a number of roads within biology and chemistry can lead to same desired results.



I have written how existing non-nano mass production technology is already capable of feeding and providing a basic material stipend to all people in the world and how that is slowly and painfully leading to global unification efforts. Creation of the first factory producing product on nano level will put a nail in the coffin of defining economics as a study of allocating scarce resources. Although different branches of economics try to parade themselves as empirical science, economics has been estranged from empirical research into human welfare for over half a century. Nanotechnology will reunite economics with research into material logistics of how much energy is needed to constantly raise the minimum human welfare (and correspondingly how many more fabricators are needed to mass produce parts of new energy plants to power production of new material goods for all). Technocratic societal organization as a concept will re-emerge again after having been stifled under the disastrous ideological jihads of the 20th century. Both varieties of state capitalism in Soviet Union and United States overlooked the empirically proven possibilities of providing for their people.

The sheer transformative potential of the first fabricator (to change human condition more in a few decades than agricultural and industrial revolutions did over thousands of years) makes control over nanotechnology development top issue for world's power elites. The most likely scenario will be creation of international protocols concerning non-proliferation of dangerous nano technologies. The protocols can only extend further with time since:

1) knowledge of fabricator production may be easier to spread than that of nuclear warheads
2) energy needed for fabricator production and then energy to feed the fabricators may be a lot lower than uranium refining
3) fabricators will be able to mass produce deadly viruses and explosives to be used by non-state actors

It is thus logical that key technologically advanced countries will follow their eventual economic unification with political unification. This in turn will be followed with the North Hemispheric block (EU, North American Union, Europe, Russia, Japan, China) extending into global political unification of either imperial non-exploitative nature (Soviet model of unification), imperial exploitative nature (Anglo-Saxon model of unification), or most likely an imperial hybrid of both (EU model).

This will be to keep tight control over nanoscale production and to prevent large scale violent crime by non-state actors that is motivated by either luddite, ideological, or religious reasons. Western elites have been blabbing their mouths for some time now about economic global unification under the guise that "only international cooperation can solve global problems". Gordon Brown ( the leader of a country that is in much worse debt situation than United States proportional to its population) has had the nerve recently to say world needs to work together to solve things like hunger. Such blatant attempts by Anglo-Saxon leaderships to weasel out of national bankruptcies and acquire greater control over south hemispheric natural resources will fail. Economic and then political global unification will occur however with Eurasia in the political driving seat. Only this backdrop can properly release the third industrial revolution of nanotechnology manufacturing while greatly reducing potential for violence.

China and Russia have been funding large scale crash programs in nanotech development (Moscow is now determined to match US in annual public investment dollar for dollar). They however lack the benefits that years of investment has brought to nanotech research in the West. They also don't have the benefit of decentralized nanotech laboratories with enormous private funding. It is thus logical that the rapid construction of centralized nanotech centers by Chinese and Russians is to make use of the nanotech intelligence acquired through industrial espionage (or mass hiring of foreign talent after economic crisis deepens in the West). They will be prepared to rapidly emulate efforts in case breakthroughs occurs in Japan, South Korea, Western Europe, or United States.

Some give the name of third industrial revolution to the rapid increase in globalized capitalism. That is a historically incorrect way of looking at advances in manufacturing and agricultural processes. Globalization just changed the location of production whereas the second industrial revolution rapidly changed the quality and quantity of industrial products through better technological application of technology such as the assembly line. Having cars made abroad by former peasants to save money is not revolutionary when it comes to material progress. Neither is it revolutionary to use technology to move capital investments around rapidly to places where these peasant workers are willing to labor more to survive. Nothing evolutionary industrial in moving capital where the proles are under more crude coercion.

Nano level assembly will usher in such an exponential technological increase in manufacturing productivity that all socioeconomic systems we're familiar will rapidly disappear from sight. There will be a much larger break between a post scarcity world than one between a hunter gatherer world and an agricultural world (not mentioning the rather small differential jump from feudalism to capitalism).

Amidst these dark economic times and convulsions of inefficient market systems, there is a lot of optimism to be had. Economic depression is more likely to drive a company to try to offer an advanced product that is not just a tiny incremental difference over the old version. Nokia for example recently had refocused its research money towards luxury high end phones (demand for luxury items doesn't really dip during bursting of bubbles unsurprisingly). People are less likely to buy an object that is just a mild improvement such as a Pentium 4 was over Pentium 3. Hard economic times lead to greater application of new technology and pushes companies to offer something new enough to be worth buying. The more misery that this shrinking economy creates the more hopeful and amazing the possibilities of nanotech production will seem.

Technological Progress Causes Permanent Global Unemployment

Less than 20% of world's population is ultimately needed to produce ALL the goods and services.

Exponential technological progress and corresponding leaps in efficiency can only create rising unemployment under the current economic system. The problem remains even if every citizen is provided a graduate school education.



College graduates working as waitresses, jugglers, baristas, and improvising craftsmen are not signs of an economic downturn the way we tend to think of it. It is just an inevitable symptom of mechanization and rising efficiencies due to technological improvements. Mechanization is not just the biggest cause of unemployment domestically (compared to usual scapegoats like outsourcing) but internationally as well if you look at all of human population as a whole.

Research and development of more efficient machinery to replace human workers has not stopped with Henry Ford's death. The subsequent results do not just affect blue collar workers of course. The Internet and constant breakneck improvements in communication technology systems are constantly eroding white collar sector and driving down consumer prices.

Although economic/political system of United States is very inefficient at providing higher education infrastructure at an increasingly affordable price ( one of the more visible signs of supply not fulfilling demand as intended), mechanization makes itself felt nevertheless. The quarter of Americans who somehow acquire the resources to get a Bachelor's degree are increasingly finding themselves doing "service sector" jobs that don't need even a high school diploma. There is the fact of cut throat competition that human replacement brings (with the corresponding rise in power of the capitalist class that buys the labor).

This is tired old news but the problem of mechanization would not be solved even if the state built thousands of grad schools to make sure that the new generation of workers all have PhDs. Germany and France provide most of their people with access to higher education through advanced state capitalist economic schemes yet each country had relatively higher unemployment compared to United States. The only reason why United States did not have Eurozone levels of unemployment in the last 20 years is because the elites restricted supply of new university construction. If American public was supplied with education that it craves then we'd see the same riots, car burnings, student movements, and street protests as in Germany and France.

European oligarchs have long decided that keeping their poor citizens uneducated is too blunt in terms of spitting in the face of the general public. Considering that even the relatively technologically backward Russians were able to provide education for most of their society within 2 generations, German and French authorities could not deny their people the same without facing revolt. Considering it is also a spit in the face to ask a chemist or a media major graduate to serve food and booze, the elites in Berlin and France also provided welfare provisions and emulated United States with plugging menial labor gaps with immigrants. These measures have worked for a few decades and now are also breaking down as technology makes most people and their labor unnecessary. Obviously most people in the world (or France for that matter) can't be neuroscientists, investment bankers, software database experts, or consultants even if they were certified for that. American elites are facing an even greater crisis since the economic system of United States was only sustained by class/race inequalities and decades of ideological state propaganda.

(A sidenote: provision of graduate level schooling, health care, and affordable housing to everybody in a country is but a logistical engineering problem that can be solved very cheaply (in terms of energy/labor expenditure) with today's efficient tools. It is not even a problem of the state needing to own all means of production and distribution. 2009 technology allows the state to control just a bit of the vertically integrated industrial chains in order to rapidly build up the however many university buildings needed (besides the sheer cheapness to create a national standardized Internet curriculum and the supporting broadband architecture).

At the beginning of 20th century, many workers decided that although they could work 15 hours a day, they didn't want to. They wanted to work just 8 hours a day by virtue of being alive in a resource rich sovereign state. The economic system of the time of course easily fired those who wanted some time during the day to themselves. The result was that thousands of workers engaged in years and years of strikes, skull crushing violence in the streets, and appeals to reason ("this is horrible human condition, I don't like this, change it since technology allows more time during the day"). The oligarchic reforms, such as creation of 8 hour workweek and some safety nets, are well known. The efforts to prevent social instability and violence are repackaged as saving capitalism (and demonstrating capitalism's adaptive qualities) in today's history books. They also show that society did not collapse when the shift to an 8 hour workday occurred. Technology made it more than possible. When less than 1% of the population are needed to grow food and ( less than 30% of population needed to make knives, cars, computers, plates, jeans, and umbrellas) humanity can finally engage in mass reduction of daily energy expenditure.

Although one of the world's dominant economic experiments (free market capitalism as nicknamed by its ideologues) stagnated a lot of technological progress through inefficient distribution of education and key infrastructure, technology kept advancing exponentially nevertheless at least on micro consumer level. Mass unemployment is coming regardless of shifts to and from center-left or center-right socioeconomic structures. Even if the state started to aggressively employ millions of people, it would just delay the inevitable effects from mechanization. Although many of the rich and economic experts expect everybody to be content with doing service jobs for one another ( with the Marxist mantra of "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" repackaged as "I'm a biology major but I can cook let me bake you a pie. I've studied computer repair but can cut hair let me be your barber") the authorities know this is not sustainable in a profit driven system. The current slide into an international economic depression will reshape the world even more so than the depression of 1930s. Oligarchs will try once again to preserve capitalist structures by reducing unemployment through provision of new welfare safety nets, reducing competition between workers through idling them in universities or sending them to war, and shifting political support towards more state capitalism.

As more engineers, scientists, researchers, and mathematicians publicly realize just how much more efficient 21st century direct state provision of goods and services is, it'll be increasingly difficult for governments of the world to justify their efforts at placating the rising tide of unemployed and underemployed. State capitalism can only go so far in the face of material reality. Rising unemployment among large swaths of the population, social stagnation, falling profits is the only outcome of 19th century Laissez Faire economics grafted on top of 21st century scientific possibility. The rich will have to decide whether to push the world's rising unemployed further into suffering and possible violent revolt or to provide a livable stipend and thus try to preserve personal power and some profit.