just wait and see

George Carlin wrote a lot about how the ‘big world’ is messed up beyond repair, how the system is so bad that it actually isn’t fixable..

And you know what, he is right, there is no way for an individual to fix anything that is wrong with our big world (The social problems) without burning themselves out before prior to making any impact at all. But he phrases it like it is us vs them. Like somebody decided that this is the way it should be because it works out better for them.

I disagree with this point, I think that the ‘system’ that is jerking us all around is a manifestation of some of the less popular human traits. Things like our tendency to go for short term gains rather than long term progress, our selfishness, and our own stupidity.

I think that it is a statistical certainty that someone in our world will get lucky and own the exact resources needed for control, and once this ‘random’ person (It could be you) gets into control, they just do what they always do, promote their own self interests.

And this has caused all the awful things like global warming, wage slavery, stupid laws (see software patents) and corruption within the authorities.

Unlike Carlin, I think there is a chance that we can pull out of it. But it wont be the result of any individual or group effort. The slim chance of us pulling through and achieving eutopia will come from 2 things, technology and open source (Or maybe copyright piracy).

There has been constant increases in efficiency since humans have started innovating. The pyramids were built with thousands of people, skyscrapers are now build with dozens. We are forever needing less labour to achieve the same amount of technical difficulty. The only catch is that we need exponentially more information (Data) to finish these projects.

The thing about labour is you need people to do it, people are expensive, and they need to do things that they don’t want to do. Information on the other hand is cheap and easily copied and reused.

Eventually labour will be completely eliminated to achieve ultimate efficiency. You can see this with the 3d printers, although they are pretty ordinary at the moment, they are heading towards being able to print anything as easily as you can print a text document.

Once this happens the cost for physical things approaches zero, you can just print it out anytime. However information becomes the main cost (Buying the blueprints for your car). This is where open source comes in. If you can find freely made blueprints there will be no costs to own anything because you print them out for the price of their weight in dirt.

This changes capitalism at its core, if resources aren’t limited then there is no fundamental economic problem.

This allows every human to redirect their focus from survival to self actualisation, leading to a new age of enlightenment.