Incremental Ownership and the Near Future

Part of what concerns me about discussions online: an underlying assumption that a previous "order" of sorts needs defending, on the part of all political parties. But that previous "order" has already moved on in some important aspects, which I hope to touch on in this post in a positive sense. Plus, too much concern about a future taken over by robots and other related "power mongers" makes some conversations either too antagonistic or self defeating to do much good! Or...if one hears the words "capital" or "labor" in casual conversation, it's fairly safe to assume that present day evolution of knowledge capacity isn't being fully accounted for in the dialogue. How did we struggle so for individual aspiration in recent centuries; only to collectively give it all up for the idea of robots taking over our best mental capacity, or else destroying the robots (let's just dig ditches with spoons) so that the robots won't rob our minds!

Also, some econoblog discussions are difficult for me to take part in directly, and one of those is taxation. Taxation is presently a problem because fiscal concerns have been overwhelmed by many existing disciplines, which now compete for the limited tax monies. I believe that most transfers utilized for skills would actually create more wealth through direct arbitrage coordination of  higher (and lower) non-repetitive level skills use. What's more, allowing more economic actors in this regard - even with an established time base for monetary reimbursement - would still produce greater aggregate wealth than is presently possible. Another problem area is the ongoing dialogue of finance itself, with its morality plays, twists and turns. Attempts to reform finance especially don't seem to accomplish much, for every time such reforms are tried, the consumer seems to pay the difference. Incremental ownership and flexibility in terms of housing and construction reform is the best way to change the problematic nature of finance, for the long run. The gradual growth level target of NGDP reflects such a common sense approach, where one doesn't automatically reopen the contractual "floodgates" just because some element of economic growth got particularly interesting.

Bungled attempts at corralling both skills and lifestyle expectations have led to the demographic asymmetries of the present, where it appears one generation "must" somehow pay for earlier generational excesses! As both skills use and living circumstance remain captured by local interests and long term contracts, (please take your eyes off the debt load...a small part of this picture)  the ways we are expected to live and access work are much more restrictive than actually necessary. However, less restrictions do not mean we necessarily get a base, crude existence, as some would tell us. On the contrary! Less restrictions mean that not only would technology be freed to provide us beautiful and low maintenance environments, but we would also be free to actually explore the ways we wish to work with one another, and learn from one another. What's more - if we allow ourselves true value for our participation -  technology could also free us to expand our personal space, one incremental step at a time. That way, no Keynesian need pull out their hair over consumer debt loads, and no Austrian need go into lockdown over government debt loads.

Technology greatly augments our ownership capacity, which has been hard to remember because of recent limitations to exclusive gains for most technology. Once I finally became familiar enough with computer use to start using it for word processing, that meant my notes and scribbles would (only recently) finally start making some sense. However, we inadvertently lost the technology capacity that would allow our living environments to become simpler and easier to maintain, which means we have aging wood structures for homes which - especially in the south - tend to get eaten up by termites, hit by floodwaters and hurricanes and are just in general sitting targets for deterioration without easy remedies for replacement. Plus, these stuck in the mud...er, ground homes cannot pick up and go with us when opportunities arise. They certainly can not be pulled apart, if and when we need to go our own or separate ways. Thus one, both or several of their inhabitants suffer. In fact, such suffering can ripple out into communities and over long spans of time.

We could have made lightweight, pull apart and strong building components: components which augmented our ownership capacity by overcoming immobility, gradual deterioration, and lack of resources for adequate maintenance. We still could, and by incremental means that would allow us to buy further components whenever we gain income, with self contained units for specific parts of what we need. With construction reform, economies of scale and innovative land use, no one would need long term contracts for such building components. If we can hurtle down the road towards each other in lightweight cars, lightweight home components surely ought to be safe. However there are lots of people to convince that incremental ownership is desirable. It would be best to convince them now, instead of building more of the kinds of homes that can be such a stretch, to sacrifice for. This is all the more important now, as not every community is capable of recreating adequate work opportunities. Before too long, people may finally have to leave some of their immobile homes behind to find where the opportunities actually are.

Psychological gains from incremental and small scale ownership would be more significant than some may realize, as this is not the easiest mindset to duplicate in a simple experiment. However, plenty of experiments do an excellent job of illustrating one's positive mindset and problem solving ability, when we feel and believe ourselves to be in control of our environment (as much as possible, at any rate). Such an experiment is quite similar (I remember a dejected poor dog whose control was taken away), and suffices to show the social gains possible, should we allow one another more incremental means to regain control over our destinies. By the way, small and tiny houses (and apartments) have indeed come on the scene in recent years. But these have yet to take advantage of full scale manufacturing gains, which mostly leaves them beyond the reach of many low skill workers and are primarily for those with higher incomes.

The above discussion concerning construction (yet again)  provides ample options which could limit  many finance problems of the present, not to mention the government and businesses enterprises which presently own our living quarters more than we do. Not only that, the incremental nature of gradual ownership patterns could go a long way to help public understanding how nominal targeting also backs such incremental goals in the first place. Now, for the proposal that would limit today's need to transfer skills responsibility frameworks between generational settings: that of incremental skills use options through the course of one's lifetime. What this basically amounts to is our willingness to give one another the right to freely use our knowledge for one another.

By now the reader probably gets that when I talk about incremental ownership, I'm not talking about our monetary share of the robot workforce. Rather, we need to be able to add to our living environments and all other investment possibilities when the nature of our monetary compensation actually allows us to do so. But also in that same vein, we need the right of incremental use of our skills and knowledge capacity for the totality of our lives. Such responsibility is not only possible when we are quite young, it is also something our youth very much need, yet we have not known how to provide to them since education was formalized along with work laws that excluded youth. However, the right to educate (and even the right to heal, to a degree) on the part of youth is a far cry from some of the expected work conditions of the past, which understandably were put to an end. If we are willing to trust our youth to partake in economic life at a young age, the problems we have with economic entry at adulthood could fade into distant memory. No more daytime daycare needed.

What do we mean by incremental ownership in knowledge and skills use, and how might one actually untangle some of these from the institutions which can  no longer fully provide them? While this whole area is a candidate for potential coordination possibilities, at least some of the basic attributes and functions will be touched on in the next post.