J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Category: Utopian Speculations Page 9 of 10

Global To Do List (Next Ten Years)

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On September 14

In Utopian Speculations

Get out your notebook.

There are infinite arguments for having either an optimistic or pessimistic view of the future of human beings on Earth.  For example, on the plus side, there are more human beings who are happy, well-fed, well-educated, and living without immediate fear of violence than at any other time in history.  Efficiencies of mass production and electronic communication have brought unprecedented wealth and information to billions.  Every day new scientific discoveries enable us to improve our lives and expand our knowledge horizons.  Positive, enlightened values like tolerance, freedom, caring for the environment, and personal responsibility are the on rise, worldwide.

There is just as much ammunition in the pessimist’s magazine.  Global warming will likely wreak havoc on our croplands and low-altitude communities.  Hundreds of millions still live in abject poverty, without access to clean drinking water and nutritious food (not to mention electricity, education, internet access, and most other luxuries many take for granted).

Not a joke.

A great deal of the world’s wealth is controlled by corporations who act with only profit-making in mind, abusing the environment, worker’s rights, and the health and well-being of both communities and customers.  Even worse, international organized crime gangs headed by sociopaths operate unchecked, dealing in arms, drugs, and human beings.  Our entire economic system is a pyramid scheme based on perpetual growth (which is impossible, at least until we escape the planet) and ignoring externalities (like the environment).  Many countries, including our own, seem to exist in a state of perpetual war, and xenophobic attitudes (as anachronistic as they might seem to the blog reader) are deeply entrenched in many communities.  Human health in threatened by a sea of chemicals (and poor quality Frankenfoods) of our own making.

Frankenfoods.

Human beings have triggered a new epoch of mass extinction by destroying nearly all of the old-growth forests on land and the great reefs of the sea.  Nuclear war is still a threat.  And we have zero protection against the ultimate calamity — a large asteroid hitting the Earth (don’t think it can’t happen).

Holding both the positive and negative in one’s mind at the same time is the most difficult path.  It’s much easier to take either a Panglossian or nihilistic attitude, as neither requires action. Take your pick: 1) Everything will work itself out, or 2) Everything is hopeless.  The true character of the extremist is laziness. The rest of us, who have a more balanced view, are compelled to roll up our shirt sleeves and actually do something to improve the world.

As a thought experiment, I’m going to write three posts in which I will attempt to prioritize the top five global to-do list items for a ten year, one hundred year, and one thousand year time frames.  Nothing in particular qualifies me to make such a list, except that it’s a question that interests me.  The results might influence the future choices I make about charitable giving, writing topics, etc.  Maybe some of you will be inspired to make your own similar lists (which will no doubt be different).  The main criteria I’m going to consider will be protecting and improving quality of life for the most possible people.

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On Video Games, Motivation, and The Psychedelic Realization

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On August 29

In Gaming, Mental Health, Metaprogramming, Utopian Speculations

Is the cake a lie?

Jane McGonigal has some provocative ideas about the potential benefits of video games.  Her TED talk is a good introduction to her thinking, which can be summarized as follows:

  • Young people in countries with strong “gaming cultures” (think U.S. or South Korea) put some serious hours into gaming (especially MMORPGs like World of Warcraft) — hours roughly equivalent to total secondary school education.
  • The massive amount of time invested in virtual game worlds causes a permanent shift in psychological makeup, generally for the positive.
  • The qualities developed in these uber-gamers include a sense of “urgent optimism,” the ability to “weave a strong social fabric,” the enjoyment of “blissful productivity,” and the experience of “epic meaning” (she explains all of these terms in the TED talk linked above).  All in all video games create “super-empowered hopeful individuals” (at least in the context of their games worlds).
  • These positive qualities can be harnessed and used to solve real-world problems, via the use of “world-saving” games that promote social awareness and include real life actions (one example is a “peak oil” game designed by McGonigal that encourages players to make changes in their real lives that will reduce their real life oil consumption).

I found McGonigal’s talk to be thought-provoking and refreshing.  I think she may be on to something, but overall I find her views to be Panglossian.  McGonigal sees the millions of hours we collectively spend in game worlds as an escape from real-world problems and suffering.   She seems to overlook the possibility that video games themselves might be a causing real problems.

Gamers, hard at work solving the world's problems.

Well-designed video games can be so addictive that susceptible types (myself included) can be pulled in to a degree that will appear, to any dispassionate outside observer, to be excessive, destructive, and possibly demented.  More so than other forms of entertainment (novels, movies, magazines, etc.), it is easy to lose entire work-weeks to video gaming.

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The Singularity Already Happened – Part II

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On June 26

In Evolution/Biology, Utopian Speculations

The Singularity -- The Rapture for tech nerds?

In Part I of this post I challenged the idea of Vernor Vinge’s Singularity.  I also promised a response from Vinge himself.  While he hasn’t yet responded to my email inquiry, he did write a brilliant follow-up essay, in 2008, entitled What If the Singularity Does NOT Happen? The article includes dramatic section headings including The Age of Failed Dreams, A Return to MADness, and How to deal with the deadliest uncertainties? Recommended reading for anyone who likes to speculate about the future.

Rise of artificial malevolence.

In Part I, I attacked Vinge’s premises from the original 1993 paper, all of which center on the inevitability and exponential acceleration of technological progress along various vectors (computer/brain interface, artificial intelligence, biological intelligence enhancement, and the possibility of “emergent” intelligence from very large networks such as the internet).  I argued that improvements in the computer/brain interface will offer limited gains (because brains and computers actually aren’t that much alike).  I pointed out that A.I. progress has stalled out, at least in terms of “general intelligence” (some specialized information processing applications are moving forward).  I also floated the idea that the kind of “superintelligence” that futurists and science-fiction writers like to speculate about, mega-minds that operate on entirely different levels that our own puny minds can’t even conceive of; that kind of intelligence might be a fantasy.  The cognitive space might be a closed space, like the periodic table of elements (we probably don’t know all of them, but we know most of them).  Lastly, I presented the blasphemous postulate that raw intelligence might be overrated.  Major upgrades in civilization are probably more a result of other human qualities, like persistence, ambition, stubbornness, fantastical imagination, and curiosity (though the last two are arguably subsets of intelligence).

But what if I’m wrong?  In what shape would my wrongness most likely manifest?

I think there is a real possibility that The Singularity will happen, but it won’t radically change life for corporeal human beings.  Instead, an additional layer of reality will operate “on top” of life-as-we-know-it.  In order for this scenario to unfold, the following preconditions would need to exist:

  • significant advances in quantum computing, and a continuation of Moore’s Law for at least another decade or two
  • successful simulation/modeling/reverse engineering of the human brain (and entire nervous system) to the extent that human consciousness can exist/operate on an artificial substrate
  • the creation of truly immersive virtual worlds (Star Trek holodeck level and beyond)
  • migration technology; bioware systems that allow consciousness and identity to gradually shift from wetware systems (body-brains) to hardware systems (quantum computers)

The blue elves are here to stay.

Full virtualization of brains, bodies, and worlds — this is one facet of Kurzweil’s Singularity scenario.  To me this scenario seems much more likely than the rise of superintelligent (and possibly malevolent) machines.

Imagine dozens (or hundreds, or millions) of fully immersive virtual worlds, each with their own flavor, physics, social norms, etc.  Each would have numerous virtual denizens — real people who experience life just like we do.  The worlds would also host a number of part-time characters, people living simultaneous corporeal and virtual lives.  Imagine what kind of new experiences and possibilities could exist within this new layer of reality:

  • extreme longevity/immortality
  • travel via instant teleportation (effective FTL travel)
  • mental manipulation of “matter”
  • the option to share thoughts/perceptions/memories (mind-melding)
  • freedom from disease, disability, and physical suffering
  • full range of options for physical appearance (supermodel?  winged unicorn?  Godzilla?)
  • a “variation explosion” for humanity (not unlike the Cambrian explosion); many new types of humans

The list goes on and on.  Some of these you already see cropping up in existing virtual worlds (World of Warcraft, Second Life, etc.) — what is obviously missing in these cases is virtualized consciousness — players are not really in these worlds — they’re still looking at them from the outside (though imagination goes a long way).

Another Big Dodge

At various times in the history of civilization, human beings have escaped population collapse via technological trickery.  The invention of agriculture and dawn of the Neolithic age is one example (though it came at a great cost).  The invention of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer (via the Haber process) is another example.

Without Haber–Bosch, you probably wouldn't exist.

The gradual migration of humanity into virtual worlds might be our next “big dodge.”  There is a limit to the number of human beings our planet can comfortably support, and there is evidence that we are getting uncomfortably close to that limit.  We have thinned the ozone layer, triggered a process of global warming, damaged the oceans, destroyed most of the world’s forests, polluted the air and waterways, and so on and so forth.  We risk collapse of natural and food-producing systems.  How are we going to solve this problem?

It’s possible that humanity will clean up its collective act, provide better stewardship of the planet’s natural resources, and avert disaster.  It’s also possible that human population will naturally decline due to socio-cultural factors (education of women, increased literacy, reduction of world poverty, access to birth control, increased economic burden of child-raising, etc.).  But what if population keeps growing and environmental stewardship doesn’t radically improve?  We’ll have a big problem.

Will the Singularity be the next big dodge?  Perhaps virtual population will increase into the hundred billions, or trillions, while corporeal population gradually declines to one or two billion, or perhaps stabilizes around six or seven.  An ever-growing virtual population is one way we could continue economic growth (virtual people would still produce and consume “goods” and services) without negatively impacting the planet (digging up metals, cutting down trees, sucking up oil, etc.).

The Singularity Already Happened

There was a moment in human history, long ago, that irrevocably changed how human beings would experience the world.  This change was momentous; it completely destroyed “life as we know it” for all of humanity.

Early arms race artifacts.

The Singularity I’m referring to happened approximately 45,000 years ago.  It is, of course, the birth of human technological culture.  For tens of thousands of years, anatomically modern humans lived their lives with the same simple tools and the same traditions; culture was frozen.  Something (perhaps trade amongst cultures, perhaps specialization of labor, perhaps a genetic mutation related to imagination) triggered what we now call progress, that disconcertingly rapid cascade of technological and cultural change that makes each generation appear somewhat alien to the next, in its habits and proclivities.

That’s what the birth of a new evolutionary layer looks like.

Multiple Singularities

All reality can be described in terms of complicated desserts.

Reality is a layer cake.  Each layer is dependent on the layer below, and operates within the rules of all lower layers, but also has its own unique set of rules.  For example, biological interactions can be described in terms of chemistry, or even physics, but you won’t really understand what’s going on in the biological realm unless you understand Darwinian evolution.

My hypothesis is that the evolution of the universe can be described in term of multiple Singularities, with each resulting in the birth of a new evolutionary layer.  The story so far might look something like this:

1st Singularity: Big Bang
Evolutionary layer created: Atomic (stars, gaseous clouds)

2nd Singularity: covalent bonds
Evolutionary layer created: Molecular (planets, solar systems)

3rd Singularity: self-replication of long nucleotide sequences, and/or cell membrane
Evolutionary layer created: Biological (prokaryotic lifeforms)

4th Singularity: development of cell nucleus, and/or cell/tissue specialization
Evolutionary layer created: Somatic (eukaryotic lifeforms, animals with bodies, Darwinian evolution)

5th Singularity: development of complex nervous system, emergence of interiority/emotions/motivation/intelligence
Evolutionary layer created: Social (tribes, families, mating rituals, early culture, primates/hominids, also cetaceans, dogs, etc.)

6th Singularity: tool trading and/or specialization of labor, emergence of technology/cultural progress
Evolutionary layer created: Cultural/technological (memetic evolution)

7th Singularity: virtualization of consciousness?  fully immersive virtual worlds?
Evolutionary layer created: Synthetic intelligence, programmable reality

8th Singularity: ???

The bubbleverses.

Note that each Singularity is local, it happens multiple times in multiple places (including the Big Bang, if you believe any of various theories of multiple universes).

What really interests me is this: are there any generalizations we can make about Singularities?  What causes them?  Can they be predicted?  Can they be modeled/simulated?  I’ll discuss my thoughts so far on that subject in a forthcoming post entitled The Game-Changing Algorithm Nobody Is Looking For (Part III — Mutant Nodes).

The Singularity Already Happened – Part I

By

On June 19

In Evolution/Biology, Utopian Speculations

Buckle your seat belts, here we go.

In 1993 science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge authored a paper introducing and describing the idea of The Singularity, a near-future Rubicon for humanity; we create machines with superhuman intelligence, thus changing everything forever.  In the post-Singularity world, all the old rules are thrown out, progress accelerates exponentially, and the real action shifts away from humanity and towards our cybernetic spawn.  Human beings are relegated to the sidelines as intelligent machines take over the world (or, in darker variations of the scenario, humans are enslaved or exterminated).  In the best-case scenario, super-intelligent, immortal man-machine hybrids peacefully co-exist with the “unaltered” (i.e. regular humans).

Vernor Vinge -- this joker makes up wacky ideas for a living.

Vinge’s paper on The Singularity is clever, thought-provoking, and insightful.  It’s exactly the kind of “how big can you think” speculation a good science fiction writer should come up with.  Unfortunately, some groups of otherwise intelligent people seem to have swallowed Vinge’s paper whole and uncritically, elevating his fevered speculations to a kind of futurism gospel.  Vinge’s paper is loaded with tantalizing specificity; The Singularity will probably occur between 2005 and 2030; it will be preceded by four “means” that we can currently observe unfolding in our technology newsfeeds (biological intelligence enhancement, advancement of computer/human interfaces, large computer networks becoming more intelligent, and the development of machine intelligence and the possibility of machine consciousness).  This specificity gives the paper the feel of prophecy, at least to the unsophisticated reader.  Science-fiction connoisseurs, on the other hand, will see through the purposefully affected serious tone of Vinge’s paper; in fact he is riffing, presenting a range of wild possibilities as if they might actually happen.  That’s what science fiction writers do.

V.C. wunderkind Steve Jurvetson at The Singularity Summit, explaining how The Singularity will involve lots of corporate logos.

The inventor/entrepreneur Ray Kurzweil is particularly fond of the Singularity concept, and has written extensively about the subject in books such as The Age of Spiritual Machines and The Singularity Is Near.  He is also a co-founder of the Singularity University. Recently featured in the New York Times, Singularity University describes its mission as  “to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies in order to address humanity’s grand challenges.”  I’m skeptical; Singularity U seems like a really good way to separate rich white male tech nerds (for the most part, anyway) from fifteen thousand dollars, in exchange for nine days of hyperactive white-board scribbling, gallons of free coffee, and a bag of Silicon Valley schwag (including a personal DNA test kit).  Exponential technological progress is going to change everything.  We don’t know how exactly, but there’s going to be a big change and then everything will be different.  It might have something to do with your smart phone, social media, artificial intelligence, anti-aging technologies, space travel, and/or renewable energy!

There’s probably no harm in the existence of Singularity University.  By all accounts the people who run it are idealistic (not hucksters), and the people who take the courses can generally afford it.  But what is it, really?  It’s just more riffing, just like Vinge’s original paper.  The professors at Singularity University aren’t going to bring us any closer to The Singularity, because The Singularity is illusory.

WHY THE SINGULARITY WON’T HAPPEN

Let’s examine some of the premises of Vinge’s original paper, and discuss them in turn.

Premise #1: Improvements in computer/human interfaces will result in superhuman intelligence.

We’ve already had some improvements in computer/human interfaces, and they’ve proved to be fun and convenient.  The mouse is nice, as is the trackpad.  The portable computing device (laptop or smart phone) comes in really handy.  And we can easily imagine an implant that allows us to access the internet via thought alone, or a contact lens micro-screen that projects data over our visual field.

Oh -- that's where they are.

But let’s get real for a second.  Those of us with internet access already have near-instantaneous access to a good chunk of the world’s knowledge, right at our fingertips.  Has it changed us that much?  Instead of arguing about who was in what movie, we just look it up.  Where are the Canary Islands, exactly?  Just look it up.  What’s the four hundredth digit of pi?  Just look it up!

Having access to unlimited knowledge hasn’t changed us that much.  It’s fun, and enormously convenient, but it’s not revolutionary.

Well, what about access to computing power?  Computers can run enormously powerful simulations, and do enormously complex computations in the blink of an eye.  Won’t that make a difference?

Once again, look at how we currently use the enormous amount of computing power available to us, and project forward.  What do we do with it now?  We watch TV on our computers.  We play computer games that accurately represent real-world physics.  Maybe our screen-saver analyzes astronomical data, in search of signals from ET, or folds proteins with the spare cycles, but in neither case do we pay much attention.

Improving the interface between brain and computer isn’t going to make a big difference, because the brain/computer analogy is weak.  They aren’t really the same thing.  We’ve already gone pretty far down the computer/human interface road, with the big result being increased access to entertainment (and porn).

Premise #2: Increases in computer processing speed, network size and activity, and/or developments in artificial intelligence will result in the emergence of superhuman intelligence.

Daniel Dennett has an interesting counter-argument for people who like to speculate about superhuman intelligence by comparing human intelligence to animal intelligence, and then extrapolating to superhuman intelligence.  The speculation goes something like this; cats can’t do algebra — they can’t even conceive of it — but people can do algebra.  So couldn’t there exist an order of mind that can perform complex operations and computations that human beings can’t even conceive of? Some kind of super-advanced alien (or future A.I.) mathematics that would befuddle even the Stephen Hawking types?

Dennett points out the problem with that argument; humans possess (we have evolved) a completely different cognitive faculty that cats don’t possess.  We have the ability to think abstractly.  We have the ability to run simulations in our minds and imagine various futures and outcomes (we can run scenarios).  We can think symbolically and manipulate symbols (words, numbers, musical notation, languages of all sorts) in infinite numbers of configurations (why infinite?  because we can also invent new symbols).  In short, human beings can perform abstract mental operations.

Cats have a different relationship with symbols.

This is not to say that cats will never evolve symbolic cognition, or that the human brain has stopped evolving.  But once we possess the imaginative faculty, once we evolve the ability to perform abstract mental operations, once the cat is out of the bag (so to speak) then there can exist no idea that by its very nature is off limits to us.  Sure, some areas are difficult to contemplate.  Quantum mechanics falls into this category.  Quantum mechanics is entirely outside of our range of sensory experience (as human beings).  It’s counter-intuitive; it doesn’t necessarily make sense.  But this doesn’t mean we can’t think about it, and imagine it, and create analogies about it, and perform quantum calculations, and conduct quantum level experiments.  Of course we can.

I believe Dennett makes this argument in Freedom Evolves (but I don’t have it handy to check — it might be in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea).

I’m not saying that humans are the “end of the line” or the “peak of the pyramid.”  It’s possible, even probable, that our descendants (biological or cyborg or virtual) will be smarter than us.  It’s also likely that the future of evolution (and I mean evolution in the broadest sense) holds “level jumps” that will change the very nature of reality (or rather, add layers).  Perhaps our descendants (or another group’s descendants) will be able to manipulate matter with their minds — Akira style.  Now that would change things up.

Even the polarphant must obey the rules of Darwinian evolution.

My point is that we should question the idea that superhuman intelligence can even exist.  Certainly superhuman something-or-other can exist, but intelligence and consciousness are the wrong vector to examine.  Sure, it’s probable that something out there (either elsewhere in the galaxy, or in the future) is or will be smarter and/or more aware/sophisticated than we are, but I question the idea that an entirely different order of cognition can exist.  The cognitive space is like the chemistry space; there is not an entirely different set of elements somewhere else in the universe (or in the future or in the past).  It’s all chemistry: hydrogen and helium and lithium and so forth.  Same for the quantum physics space, once we have all the quarks and gluons figured out on our end we can surmise that it’s pretty much the same stuff everywhere.  Same for the biological space — of course not every animal in the universe is going to have a genetic code sequenced out of adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine, but I’m guessing the rules of Darwinian evolution are universal.  The same is true for cognition/intelligence/consciousness — it’s a space that includes manipulating abstract symbols, imagining and simulating possible futures, performing calculations, and being aware of one’s own perceptions/thoughts/emotions/identity (meta-awareness or self-consciousness).  Of course you can divide up the cognition/consciousness space into various developmental sub-levels (Ken Wilber is a big fan of this) but I don’t buy the idea that there are vastly different orders of cognition and consciousness that exist somewhere out there, in the realm of all possibility.

A very large truck ... but still a truck.

The other problem with Premise #2 is the idea that making something bigger or faster changes its nature or function.  If you increase the speed of a computer, then it can do what it already does much more quickly.  With the right programming, for example, a computer can explore a logical decision tree and look for a certain outcome; thus computers can be programmed to be extremely good at chess.  A very large network is just that — a big network — it can facilitate communications among billions of people and quasi-intelligent agents (bots, computer viruses, and so forth).  But it doesn’t become something else just because you make it bigger or faster.

New functionality does not emerge unless new structures emerge.  In nature, new structures can emerge via the process of evolution.  In the realm of technology, new structures and functions are designed, or they evolve out of systems that are designed.  We’re not going to see spontaneous intelligence (superhuman or not) emerge from the internet unless we turn the internet into a giant evolution simulator.  You could of course argue that is already is, but if so, the evolving agents are funny cat videos and naked lady pictures.  It’s memetic evolution; the funniest or sexiest or most heart-warming videos and pictures and posts thrive (get reposted/replicated) and the more complicated long-winded posts (like this one) enjoy the anonymity of obscurity.  It’s not the kind of network that is going to spontaneously generate superhuman intelligence.

Only the strongest (lolcat) will survive.

Premise #3: The emergence of superhuman intellect will result in a radical transformation of the world.

Smart people, rather myopically, tend to take this idea for granted.  Of course super-intelligence will be super important!

Historically, extreme intelligence only amounts to something when it is paired with other human qualities, like ruthless ambition, innovative inventiveness, disciplined practice, or preternatural persistence (Thomas Edison, for example, had all of those qualities).  Look around — don’t we all know someone with a shut-in uncle who got a perfect score on their SAT’s?  Or an unemployed, weed-dealing neighbor with a PhD in Semiotics?  Intelligence is a nice thing to have, but on its own it’s just a brain burning brightly — until it’s all burned up.

Can you read? Thank Johannes.

When extreme intelligence is paired with motivating factors, the world does get changed.  Gutenberg’s movable type printing press has proved influential, to say the least.  The ambitious work of Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla gave us cheap, universally available electricity, long-burning light bulbs, and dozens of other important inventions.  Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, The Woz, and many others ushered in the era of personal computers.  Maybe one day we’ll have a particularly ambitious A.I. contribute a new mobile gadget or something.  But FTL travel?  Teleportation?  Singularity-level tech?  I don’t think so.

Look at the A.I. curve.  It’s much different than the processor speed curve.  The latter is going straight up; the former goes up and down in fits and starts.  The most promising approaches to A.I. are those that are attempting to reverse engineer the brain, and how the brain learns (artificial childhood).  Maybe, if those go really well, we’ll get an artificial inventor who will invent cool stuff.  But maybe we’ll get an A.I. that majors in Semiotics, proves unemployable, and deals weed for a living.

This post is getting too long, and I don’t want to completely doom its chances of reproductive success.  I’ll save the rest of my thoughts on this subjects for Part II, which will include:

  • When and where the real Singularity happened
  • Why I might be wrong (and in what way)
  • Vernor Vinge’s response

The Paradox of Entitlement

By

On May 3

In Culture Rants/Shares, Politics, Utopian Speculations

Proud to be an American (dog).

The United States as a nation is going through a kind of identity crisis, attempting to reconcile our sense of being a hard-working, family-oriented, religious (or at least spiritual), and tolerant people on the one hand, weighed against the evidence that we are in fact financially overdrawn, somewhat xenophobic, materialistic, individualistic, and possibly a bit lazy (or at least in love of shortcuts and get-rich-quick schemes).  Part of this national narrative is the discussion of entitlement, both in the sense of the government programs that constitute the social safety net, and in the personal sense that we are individually deserving of a sense of dignity, safety, and other basic human rights including food, shelter, healthcare, right to work, and education.

The political Right frames this discussion with phrases like “nobody owes you a living.”  The Right, in its eternal quest to create a society of perfect individuals, is chiefly concerned with personal character.  Even the avuncular Mr. Rogers is not safe, FOX “News” recently accused him of corrupting an entire generation via the overgenerous doling out of praise and the encouragement of unconditional self-esteem.

Does the Right have a point?  Maybe they do.  Some child psychologists suggest that parents are better off praising the actions and efforts, rather than qualities, of their children.  In other words don’t say “You’re a good artist,” instead say “You worked very hard on that drawing and it came out nicely.”  Too much of the former leads to timidity and risk-averse behavior; the child become focused on protecting their reputation of being “smart” or “artistic” and thus avoids taking risks and taking on difficult tasks.  And we’ve all heard stories of how children of recent immigrants work harder and more willingly than other kids, probably due to parental encouragement.  Do we, as a nation, give our children too much praise, and let them off the hook too easily when it comes to hard work and discipline?

The other side of the coin is that nations that have the greatest sense of collective entitlement often have the highest standard of living.  Take France, for example.  As is quoted in the Michael Moore film Sicko, “In the U.S. the people are scared of the government, in France the government is scared of the people.”  A democracy born of the guillotine.  The French enjoy entitlements that put our own to shame, and they get them because they clamor for them, initiating country-closing general strikes to get their way, as necessary.  These are people who strongly feel they deserve a fair shake from their government.

Is that the crux of it?  Fairness?  As citizens of a nation, when we hold up our side of the social contract, what do we expect in return?  In the United States we expect safety (even though we have rarely suffered invasion, and never occupation), and cheap gasoline.  Personally I think we should expand our sense of entitlement to include universal healthcare, public education (including university), well-funded scientific and medical government research programs, complete support for the mentally and physically disabled (including the infirm elderly), modern efficient infrastructure (water, energy, transportation), protection and conservation of the environment, reasonable regulation of the private sector, and so on and so forth (the classic wish-list of the political Left, more or less).  If the free market has already tried and failed (as it has in each of these areas) then our only realistic option is biggish government.  Or does anyone want to go back to a private firefighting service?

Private-sector thugs paid for by your tax dollars.

What’s the downside of a high sense of entitlement?  The obvious answer is higher taxes.  There’s no way around it; public services cost money.  But even at our current tax rates, there seems to be room for improvement, and even the possibility of paying down some of our scarily gigantic national debt.  I would like to see less pork in the budget, and a smaller portion of my tax dollars going to private mercs like Halliburton, KBR, and Blackwater.  Depending on how you look at it, up to 55% of our national budget goes toward military spending.  There really is room to cut, especially if we limit our military adventurism (occupying other countries) in the future.  But that’s another blog post …

Ultimately I think citizens (in relation to their government), and children (in relation to their parents) should have a high sense of entitlement.  What goes along with entitlements is responsibility; a willingness to uphold your side of the bargain.  For citizens in a democracy this means a willingness to pay your fair share of taxes (unlike the Greeks), a willingness to participate in the democratic process (thus hopefully curtailing the extent to which that process is hijacked by private/corporate interests), and a willingness to extend tolerance and respect (and charity when needed) to your neighbors.

The Power Elite

The Power Elite (the filthy rich, the captains of industry, the manipulators of democracy) fear an entitled citizenry.  Should we, as citizens, start to demand a reasonable return on our tax dollars (in the form of social services, and turning off the gushing money spigot that feeds private military contractors) as well as a reasonable return on our dollars spent in the private sector (in the form of reasonably safe, durable, high-quality products, competent services, decent customer service, social responsibility, and non-predatory behavior), then profit margins might suffer.  The Power Elite want to keep our sense of entitlement down; they want us to swallow whole the idea that our fate depends on hard work, deferred gratification, self-reliance, and other forms of bootstrapping (despite the fact that their own wealth comes mostly, with the exception of a few scrappy entrepreneurs, from inheritance, nepotism, dividends, and government pork).  This is why the interests of the Power Elite align so closely with the political Right, who elevate the idea of a more perfect (or at least more efficient) individual over the idea of a more perfect (or at least more fair) society.

Paradoxically, our individual fate does depend, to a great extent, on the personal values and attributes that the Right holds so dear (self-reliance, hard work, deferred gratification, and so forth).  In practice, however, if we model our society on the assumption that these traits should or do universally exist, then the end result is the exploitation of the working class.  Nobody owes you a living.  Work hard and don’t complain.  In other words, don’t demand that you have a right to healthcare, education, civil rights, and everything else you pay for with your tax dollars, law-abiding behavior, and other forms of loyalty to your country (and are thus entitled to).

Ayn Rand, we gave it a go.  Your champion of champions, Alan Greenspan, took it all the way.  We learned what an unregulated free market looks like.  Greenspan admitted he was wrong.  The failure of the idealistic Right was not as spectacular as the failure of the idealistic Left, but it was still spectacular.

The Conversation Going Forward

Freedom fries -- yum!

I’m not suggesting that be more like France is some sort of national panacea.  But I am in favor of removing the stigma from the word entitlement, instead coupling it with responsibility.  I think David Brooks has thought carefully about this topic, and I agree with his assertion that instilling middle-class values is an important element of narrowing the achievement gap (both between low-income and middle-class U.S. kids, and U.S. kids in general vs. kids from countries with higher levels of academic achievement).  I also agree with Michael Moore on most points — we should demand public healthcare, fair treatment from corporations, and so on.

One problem is that there is very little intelligent conversation between those with Right-leaning values (self-reliance, hard work, a robust and relatively unencumbered free market, fiscal conservatism in government, strong national defense) and Left-leaning values (social equality, public healthcare and education, protection of the environment, worker’s rights, and corporate accountability).  These sets of values are not always in conflict, and there are many solutions and courses of action that we can pursue, as a nation, that satisfy all of them.

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