Work: Apologies to the fish
Concerning the Cumulative Nature of Wealth, Bucky Fuller stated that: "The intellectual productive ability of science and technology which displaces the individual as a productive slave is cumulative to the whole history of intellect." Buckminster Fuller, "Ideas and Integrities," Macmillan Publishing Co., 1963.
Standing before his class in Labor Relations at San Jose State College during the same period, Professor Pete Zidnak put it more succinctly. He told his students: "There will come a time within your lifetime when there simply won't be enough work to go around."
According to Fuller: "In the principle of mass production industry, the significance of the individual as a machine of production continually diminishes and his importance as a consumer increases proportionally."
Zidnak's simpler conclusion was to let the folks left out of the workforce as the result of technological advance go fishing.
In 1963, the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 5.7 percent and was headed for 3.4 percent by 1969. "Not enough work to go around" failed to resonate loudly with a bunch of 20-something undergrads getting ready to conquer the business world. Now that those undergrads are baby boomers trying to enjoy their golden years with gas at the pump costing $4 a gallon and grown children moving back to the nest, it resonates more loudly. Somebody failed to get the message!
Fuller believed that wealth through technology is now without practical limit. He used the physicist's law of conservation, which states that energy cannot be created or lost, to illustrate his point.
If energy cannot be lost, there cannot be realistic energy depletion or debt. Debt indicates depletion and borrowing from diminishing sources. Absolute debt cannot occur in the new economics made available through the accomplishments of science.
To illustrate this principle, he used the telephone. Back in 1877 when commercial service began, telephone messages were limited to one conversation per section of copper wire. As technology improved, messages per given section of wire increased to several at a time, then to scores, then to hundreds, and so on. Apparently the chief engineer of the Bell Telephone Company stated in 1936 that the stocks of copper owned by the telephone company, obtained by scrapping old equipment, would be sufficient for them to expand their service from the United States network to a world network without buying any more copper. That was 1936. Now phone providers are in the process of scrapping copper completely. Cell phones, Internet based phone service offered by way of cable television, and fiber optic wiring are supplanting the lines. Re: "Hanging Up," The Press Business section, July 9, 2013.
It was just a couple of years ago that the president informed us that the U.S. controlled only about 2.5 percent of the world's oil reserves. New technologies have since put the lie to that political rhetoric. Now that same president is patting himself on the back for America's increased oil production. The fact remains that as long as we allow political forces to keep us in the bondage of contrived scarcity and debt, we will continue to be more and more dependent upon their largesse.
"Because debt is a convention of traditional government, it will be increased to eventual absurdity. There is no other means of eliminating it in a democracy. Revolution could eliminate it only by democratic suicide." - Ibid, Fuller
"The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help." - Ronald Reagan
Even if you're an Al Gore believer and Cliff Harris detractor it must be apparent that something is wrong with the status quo. Maybe it's time we all relax, wet a line somewhere nearby, and rethink our assumptions. Might as well go fishing; we sure can't afford to do much else with oil at $110 a barrel.
Bob LaRue is a resident of Hauser.
P.S.: I apologize to the fish for the foregoing. You can blame the choice of metaphor on Dr. Zidnack.