Political Action

Updated August 2023

Why vote Ted Howard for Kaikoura?

Because we are at the time of greatest change, greatest risk, and greatest potential benefit in human history.

The possible benefits, and the possible risks, from Artificial Intelligence, seem to me, beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt, to dwarf all other classes of risk (or benefit) combined.

It seems clear to me that the future will either be better than most imagine possible, or we won’t have one; and that will more than likely be decided in the next three years. I really do not see anything more important for our common future than this.

Currently, my best guess at the risk posed by AI over the next 3 years, is something like putting 2 bullets in a 6 shot pistol, spinning it, putting it to our collective heads, and pulling the trigger.

Absolute safety is a myth, there is always some risk to life, eternally, but it should be possible to reduce the risk from AI to something more like being hit by a bullet being fired in a random direction from 2km away.

I started a software business in 1986, which I still operate, so I have some real experience of computers and what they can do, of solving complex problems, and clear memories of people saying what they couldn’t do – but what they are now doing. The freely available version of ChatGPT is already a faster and better programmer than I am, for many classes of problem. The paid version (GPT4) is about 100 times more competent. GPT5 is already planned for about 18 months time and will be about 150 times more powerful (and cheaper to operate).

My major purpose for standing for parliament is the long term survival of humanity – me and everyone else; with as much freedom and resources as we can responsibly manage.

Kaikoura.org contains some stuff directly related to this election. TedHowardNZ.wordpress.com contains most of my writings over the last 13 years (and a few from before that time).

I will work towards ensuring a long term future for humanity; where individuals have the freedom to do whatever they responsibly choose (and responsibility is necessary at every level of freedom and complexity); where the needs of the environment, individuals and communities are appropriately balanced; where diversity is accepted and respected; all to the best of my limited and fallible abilities, in cooperation with any and all who are willing to work with me.

Please vote Ted Howard for Kaikoura MP.

[from prior to 2023 – edited slightly]

What will advanced automation do to the economy?

When automation is able to integrate advanced AI with robotics, then all jobs done by humans will be able to be done by robots.

That breaks our current economic system.

We need a transition strategy.
Let’s keep it really simple:
$55 per day, every day to every person over 18 – tax free.
50% tax on all income and capital gain (that is not from moving your place of ordinary residence).
Everyone earning less than $130K per year is better off.

We have an opportunity to establish very high levels of cooperation that deliver prosperity and security far in excess of anything attainable under a market based set of values.   AI (Artificial Intelligence) and robots will do most of the work that people do not want to do, giving people unprecedented levels of resources and freedom, which will demand new levels of responsibility from everyone.

It seems that we (as humanity) already have the technical capacity to deliver an abundance of all of the essentials of life to every person on the planet. The major thing stopping us doing it is our societal addiction to the concept of markets and their derivative measure of value – money.

We can use distributed trust networks and automated production to deliver goods and services and security to all that is orders of magnitude beyond anything that has existed in history (even for the wealthiest).

Markets are a great tool for allocating scarce resources.
Markets are a great tool for incentivising work that no one would otherwise choose to do.
Automation gives us the ability to deliver universal abundance.
And markets cannot deal with universal abundance, as universal abundance has zero value (price point is by definition zero). If you doubt this, consider oxygen in the air, arguably the most important thing to any human being, yet of no monetary value due to its universal abundance.

This simple fact has profound implications.

It means that no market system can ever have internally consistent incentives to deliver abundance of anything to everyone, as there is no money in it.
Not only that, it means that markets are incentivised to destroy any universal abundance that exists, and turn it into a scarcity that can be marketed for a profit.

So long as we remain addicted to markets and money, there will be billions of people in poverty that are there for no other reason than a few people want to make a lot of money. And most of the rest of us will lead lives that are fundamentally and unnecessarily insecure in many essential aspects.

In this sense, the monetary system is about power and control of the few over the many – and as such is really the ultimate political tool of our time.

For me, it is clear that the existing monetary and political systems pose dangers at many different levels.

Creating political, legal, and technical systems that support every individual in being independent of all others, and then encouraging cooperation between potentially independent individuals, seems to me to be the most powerful and secure way to create our common future. If you want to understand the mathematics and logic of that then study games theory and evolution, particularly the works of Axelrod and Maynard-Smith and of course Richard Dawkins 1976 classic “The Selfish Gene” (which, contrary to the title, is actually a superb explanation the profound role of cooperation in evolution).

It seems clear to me that governance can most powerfully deliver security, liberty and opportunity to everyone if it focuses on delivering an abundance of those things required by all humans, to all humans; and then leaves individuals to exercise their own choice and creativity about what they do with their lives {which may or may not include market based activities}.

Human beings are extremely complex. Human nature is extremely complex, and very context dependent. We are all primed for cooperation, and we will all compete if we have to.

It is possible to characterise all major developments in evolution as new levels of cooperation in action.

We have the most profound opportunity in the history of evolution to create a new level of cooperation that includes every sapient entity (human and non-human, biological and non-biological).

And of course, there are planetary limits, boundaries which may not be crossed without extreme consequences.   So we need to have some set of systems that closely approximate Kate Raworth’s “Donut Economics”, where the entire system is designed with recycling and waste minimisation in mind.

And climate change is a real risk, and there are technologies available to address those (and other) risks, but implementing such technologies without a foundation of global cooperation and respect for diversity delivers greater risks than those we set out to mitigate.

So we need some profound changes in understanding of the complexity present in reality, that accept the fundamental role of cooperation in the emergence and survival of every level of complexity, and the fact that any real expression of freedom will necessarily result in diversity, and all such diversity must be accepted and respected, as a necessary part of long term security.

We are in a time of profound risk and profound opportunity.  It would be a shame to squander such an opportunity, by ignoring the very real risks.

.
Critique of Bastiat’s The Law
A post on the lure of certainty.

Some quotes from George Bernard Shaw that seem to point towards the essence of something:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

“nothing is ever done, and much is prevented, by people who do not realize that they cannot do everything at once.”

“One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.”

I can be patient.   I can work consistently, persistently, over the long term, toward goals.

Authorised by Ted Howard – 1 Maui Street, Kaikoura