A World without Work: Nigel Cameron at TEDxLacador
Hi Steve and Charles,
Several points – in no particular order of priority.
Evolution is often mis-characterised as being all about competition.
It is true that competition is a driver of evolution at the lowest level, and it is also true that all major advances in evolution are characterised by new levels of cooperative behaviour. Two chapters of Dawkins 1976 classic (Selfish Gene) are devoted to the sorts of strategies needed to stabilise cooperation.
No human being can live alone. We all require social cooperation to survive. We require our mother to feed us, and people to teach us language, and all of the many levels of complexity that come with modern social life.
Science is essentially a cooperative endeavour.
And we must also all be responsible for the consequences of our actions, to the best of our abilities. And the further out the ripples of consequence travel the less chance we have of accurately foreseeing what their impact may be.
Politics is many things. Sometimes it is a pure power game, sometimes it is the art of the possible, and often it is a game played at many levels simultaneously.
It seems to me that the concept of money is nearing the end of its social utility.
Markets are a great mechanism for allocating scarce resources, but they cannot deal meaningfully with real abundance, and real abundance always has zero market value. Lots on that subject on my blog site http://www.tedhowardnz.com/money
I am cautiously optimistic for our future, provided we can bring together abundance, freedom and responsibility in a cooperatively stable manner. And robotics seem to me to offer the greatest potential in that.
