F.E.D. Dialectics: ‘The Elon Musk Singularity’ [and Equitism]. GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

‘The

Elon Musk

Singularity’

[and

Equitism].

GLOBAL STRATEGIC HYPOTHESES.

Dear Reader,

Elon Musk has stated, recently, that the extraordinary productivity of emerging android robot workers, equipped with AI minds, will be so great as to make possible, and, likely, to make necessary, for human-social survival, a society no longer based, primarily, on the social relations of social reproduction known as wagéd-labor and salaried labor.

From a non-Marxist [non-Leninoid], Marxian view, the historically rapid irruption of such robotic worker technologies constitutes, at least initially, the advent of a new, hyper-productive form of fixed capital, which, due both to its expected magnitude of productivity increase, and its historical sudden-ness of irruption, will cause a profound change in the presently-prevailing, predominant social relation of social reproduction, i.e., the capital/wage-labor relation, that is, will cause a social revolution, e.g., a ‘metafinite singularity’ that transforms the social relations of production beyond the capital-relation.

Such a social-relations revolution does not necessarily mean “blood in the streets” – an outcome more conducive to ‘“the mutual ruin of the contending classes”’ than to the self-«aufheben» transition into a new, higher successor system to the capitalist system, and to the resulting ‘Global Renaissance’, that such a transition promises. But it does mean a profound transformation of the basic social relations of our contemporary society.

Remember what Marx wrote, in Capital III, about the kind of upsurge/acceleration in the ‘societal self-reproductive self-force’ that we are just beginning to witness:

“A development of the productive forces which would diminish the absolute number of labourers, i.e., enable the entire nation to accomplish its total production in a shorter time span [M.D.: i.e., in a shorter span of aggregate human labor time], would cause a revolution, because it would put the bulk of the population out of the running.” [Capital, volume III, Part III, Chapter XV, IV. Supplementary Remarks].

Elon Musk proposes that direct payments from governments to robotic-production-induced unemployed human former workers is the solution.

He expects that the productivity surge due to android robotics will be so colossal that the oft-cited “Guaranteed Minimum Income” reform is not what the AI-robotization of production promises.

Rather, Musk holds, it promises a “Guaranteed HIGH Income” reform.

Note, at this point, that what we call ‘The Elon Musk Singularity’, though related to, is not identical with, the earlier widely propounded, Ray Kurzweil “[Technological] Singularity”, which Kurzweil predicted will occur in 2045, as the “point” at which machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence.

In Marxian terms, by multiplying the classic Marxian profit-rate formula, s’/(c + v), by 1 in the form of ((1/v)/(1/v)), yielding –

(s’/v)/( (c/v) + 1)

– with v denoting the production-cost of wage-labor, and taking the limit of the latter expression as v à 0, we obtain the “infinities-involving”, purely-quantitative, divisions-by-zero “singularity”:

Lim_v_à₀((s’/v)/( (c/v) + 1 )) =

((s’/0)/( (c/0) + 1) ) “=” ¥/¥.

That, in Marxian terms, is ‘The Elon Musk Singularity’.

However, any “v = 0” scenario for our impending robotized economy is misleading. Even if the final stages of the production supply chain for many products were to become “fully-automated”, devoid of human workers – still a big stretch of the imagination – there will still be earlier links in that chain were some human work, at least of planning, supervision, checking and coordination, will still be required. Note also that the products of such production chains will not be costless, worth only, e.g., $0.

Even if (s’/( c + v)) becomes ‘v-less’ at many links in that chain, there will still be, e.g., materials-costs and plant/equipment “wear-and-tear” depreciation costs, c, in those links’ (s’/c) profit-rate, albeit that classic Marxian s’ would dwindle.

Even given prevalent AI-robotized production, some residual human labor costs must remain for the foreseeable future. Even if the human costs of production of the legacy c are all eventually worn out, even given robots building robots [robotic self-reproduction], and robots producing the raw materials of production and the non-android machinery of production, etc., for the reasons given above, v will not reach absolute 0: no “singularity” involving “infinite” quantities will arise. But a ‘metafinite socio-politico-economic singularity’ will arise from such a degree of robotization of social production.

We think that Elon Musk’s ‘“direct payments from government to robotically-unemployed citizens”’ needs to be institutionalized, as a constitutional human right and property right.

We think that the Seldonian model of ‘Equitist Political-ECONOMIC DEMOCRACY’ provides a direct way to do accomplish that, via the interconnection of two of its three new, key All-Citizen Equities – ‘Citizen Birthright Equities’ and ‘Citizen Stewardship Equities’.

The ‘Citizen Birthright Equity’ Social Trust Funds could be set up so as to deliver ‘‘‘dividends’’’, e.g., monthly, to, at least, on an emergency basis, all robotically-unemployed Citizens, as a result of their ‘Birthright Equity’ equal ‘‘‘shares’’’ in socialized production. Initially, this would mean equity-stock shares in the “public sector” of socialized production’s profits, while the ‘Citizen Stewardship Equity’ sector of socialized production is still in its infancy.

‘Citizen Stewardship Equity socialized producers’ cooperatives’ are formed when qualifying ‘Citizen Stewards’ Collectives’ are granted means of production to fulfill their underwritten business plans, by their underwriting, competing Social Bank(s), in return for a monthly ‘Social Rent’ on those social-property means of production, paid from their earnings in market competition with other ‘Stewardship Cooperatives’ in their field, and with remaining capital-equity enterprises in their field.

Given the expansion of that new, ‘Stewardship Equity’, ‘socialized producers’ cooperatives’ sector of the economy, the ‘Citizen Birthright Equity Shares’ dividends would increasingly be paid to Citizens from out of the ‘Stewardship Equity’ sector’s ‘Social Rents’.

For more information regarding these Seldonian insights, and to read and/or download, free of charge, PDFs and/or JPGs of Foundation books, other texts, and images, please see:

www.dialectics.info

and

https://independent.academia.edu/KarlSeldon

For partially pictographical, ‘poster-ized’ visualizations of many of these Seldonian insights -- specimens of ‘dialectical art’ – as well as dialectically-illustrated books published by the F.E.D. Press, see –