The Ultimate Enthusiast Economy
People who actually care design the best products.
Innovation creeps in from the edges. Who was responsible for inventing and upgrading mountain bikes? Was it a bunch of suits in a drafting-room looking to make a quick buck? No, it was a group of biking enthusiasts.
Who created the one of the most popular video game genres (MOBA: Multiplayer Online Battle Arena)? Was it a video game company? No, it was some nerds using the Warcraft 3 map editor to create a game within the game (DOTA) that eclipsed all other activity.
Even the website Etsy is specifically designed for small time producers making custom novelty gifts for products and references with cult-like popularity.
We live in strange times.
People work harder when they love their job. Many enthusiasts put in countless hours working on projects for free simply because they enjoy their hobby. What happens when crypto comes along and monetizes this workforce? What happens when every home in America has a 3D-printer in it with access to hundreds of thousands of schematics? What happens when enthusiasts get paid to do what they love doing?
This is where we are headed, and it's going to be mind blowing. This new emergent workforce is going to put in ten times the effort and collaborate ten times more effectively. Productivity and innovation will explode outwardly in cascading fashion, reaching all corners of the globe.
Automation
We already have the means to free up a massive percentage of the work force. In fact, laws are in place to do the exact opposite. You can't pump your own gas in Oregon because we need those jobs. You can't set up automated warehouses in California because we need those jobs. Automatic checkout is bad because jerbs.
Uh, no, we don't need those jobs.
The only jobs we've created in the last decade are low-paying jokes that no one wants to do, and no one should do. What we need is decentralization. We've been bandaiding this broken economy for decades with zero real solutions to big problems. Something has to change, and that something is coming very soon™.
It's time to work toward a future that doesn't involve redundant jobs that people hate and can already be accomplished by automation. It's time to shift the spectrum of the vast majority of people despising their station to the exact opposite. We no longer have any more excuses. The clock on traditional economy is ticking.
The workforce is making a shift away from doing what needs to done. Automation can already do most of that for us. The Hobbyist Economy is on the horizon and Steem is positioned at the starting line. Everyone here will find themselves on the right side of history, while the centralized leeches of the old system will be plucked off this emerging one.
I am certainly a proud hobbyist! I love to fix things for fun and keep myself engaged. The jobs just to do a job are increasingly starting to dry up then what will the companies and governments do?
There will be riots and random acts of violence. People don't like to see their friends and family get pushed through the meat grinder. At the same time they have no clue how to constructively express those frustrations.
I remember the early days of the internet, when clipper chips and ISP level censorship; cookies and back doors; pr0n and mp3s were the topics of interest in the hacking forums. One thing that struck me then was the claim that the internet naturally routed around censorship, avoided hurdles and walls, bad content and propaganda.
I see manufacturing and finance is about to embark upon the same convolutions and laissez faire paths that information itself has in the information age. Leeches, black holes, and walls, whether financial, social, or industrial, are going to be routed around.
Today industrial capitalism is practically the sole option to attain goods and services. Exorbitant profit makes many industries less than ideal for consumers, and as technology enables us to route around problems, those industries like manufacturing, media, and government that either fail to evolve to rake in less of the benefits we want to attain, or simply cannot, will be ignored to death.
Freedom will increase our prosperity beyond our wildest dreams, and the primal desires and needs of people will become the force of history that leaves primitive and barbaric society and culture in the dust of our wake.
Thanks!
What do you think about AI? Do you think it will help the automation process? Because I'm quite skeptical about this. I'm not sure if 100% automation is a good thing. We certainly can't handle the current state of the earth so why should we go further? First, we have to fix what is broken.
Don't get me wrong. I'm excited about all this too. Just thinking out loud here.
99% of the time the intended purpose of AI development is to automate. I don't see this changing any time soon.
I envision decentralized city-states, all with their own constitution and rules of consensus. Each one of these governance systems is bound to have a basic income coin that distributes the products of automation fairly. Unfortunately, such a fairy-tale solution might not come to fruition for another 50 years.
When the main driving force is no longer making as much money as humanly possible we become open to doing the right thing instead of doing the profitable thing. Obviously reducing pollution and improving health are going to be number one concerns going forward. Privacy is also a concern, as you mentioned earlier with 5G.
Consider the interim, as 3D printing, aquaponics, cryptocurrency, and mesh networks continue to burgeon, enabling the enlightened and purely greedy alike to profit from these new paradigms.
Insofar as legacy mechanisms are less profitable, whether socially or financially, they will be eschewed for nascent and developing technology.
While the transformation of society may not be complete for 50 years, I doubt it. The exponential pace of technological development, should it continue to accelerate, will birth even better mechanisms to increase the cost/benefit ration of adoption, which will render legacy mechanisms obsolete, because they provide fewer benefits for equivalent investment.
We will see that it is profit itself that drives the adoption of a post market economy, as money becomes a waste of resources that can be expended to attain to goods and services directly without handing a cut over to capitalists as profit.
Do you know if someone is trying to regulate this? Do these private companies have any kind of restrictions developing AI?
Yes, this may take some time.
We can see this with TESLA. They are promoting electric cars which is a good thing. At least better than gas cars.
I'd like to see a world where the profitable thing is not as important as the right thing. But unfortunately, it's not like that. We have been taught differently. I can see this phenomenon, especially in the west. Some places in the east are not like that. But they're becoming like that. Which is pretty sad. Because their old culture is rich in knowledge.
hi @edicted im sorry, i don't comment on your writing, it's just that i want to say "Happy new year" hopefully in 2019 get the best for us.