As Karl M. analyzed relationships of labor, reproduction and capital in
the era when there was pervasive need for human labor, we need new
analysis for the era when no one needs any human labor (5-6% of
population needing to work is practically "no one").
What is the value of the attention when the purchasing power is zero?
The most likely uplifting answer is, after the redundants are given some
food and shelter ("basic income"), pacification. The dystopian
prediction being kill them all.
The human drive to be useful to the society - the most dangerous drive
in the new context - needs to be managed, channeled and neutered. I
think that we can see the outlines of the things to come in gaming and
VR. As porn has domesticated sex, these industries have potential to
domesticate this last link we have with the so-called "humanity". This
requires more production ingenuity than porn, and if we're lucky it
cannot be fully automated, so some jobs after all. Panem et circenses,
this time industrial strength.
Back to the new economy, the direct value of the attention will be
proportional to the savings on brute-force pacification. Which means
that increasing the costs of brute-force pacification is the end game,
the new objective of the class struggle in the 21st century: unruliness,
Nixon's Madman doctrine trickling down to level of the individual.
On 9/18/17, 17:06, John Hopkins wrote:
We in the west exist in a different energy-harvesting regime, but one
that concentrates our attentions with impressive thoroughness. It has
many tentacles, many of them screen-related, though as pointed out, IoT
quickly insinuates itself into tampons, medicine, wine bottles, toilets,
... everything ...
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