The Imminent Threat of Technological Unemployment

Part 1:  Technological Unemployment

The world is on the brink of a technological revolution in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the fruits of which will change society forever and usher in the fourth industrial revolution.  Automation technologies like self driving cars, smart robots, and disease diagnosing algorithms will improve and save millions of lives.  The downside is these advances will eliminate millions of jobs over a staggeringly short time period.

My goal in writing this is to convince you that we are on a path towards economic and social disaster given these rapidly approaching advances in automation.  I fear that the prescriptions that populist movements are proposing to reign in globalization, curtail immigration, and raise the minimum wage will only increase the onset of automation by increasing labor costs.  The recent populist backlash will pale in comparison to the political response when the robotic revolution takes hold in the next 5 years.

We are already seeing these effects today.

We are now inventing labor saving machines at a rate that is eliminating jobs faster than new ones can be created.  It is estimated that robotics will create 2 million high paying jobs by 2020, but in the process will eliminate over 7 million existing jobs across the 15 major developed and emerging economies.

For example, Foxconn, the company that makes computer chips for the iPhone recently replaced 60,000 workers with robots.  They have plans to replace their entire workforce with robots, and are targeting 30% automation by 2020.  Additionally, Adidas announced that it will move its shoe production from Asia to Germany by building a fully robot-operated shoe factory.

In a recent Fox Business interview, the former CEO of McDonald's, Ed Rensi, said "It's cheaper to buy a $35,000 robotic arm than it is to hire an employee who is inefficient, making $15 an hour bagging French fries."

Contrary to current political dogma, most US manufacturing jobs have been lost to technology, not trade agreements and globalization.  Over the last half century, manufacturing as a share of US GDP has remained constant, despite steady decreases in employment from nearly 25% to under 10% today.

This is exemplified by the recent decision by Carrier technologies to keep approximately 1000 jobs in their Indiana plant instead of transferring the jobs to Mexico to save on labor costs.  This is heralded as a victory for the working class, but the fact that Carrier also announced its plans to invest $16 million in automation technology begs the question:  how long will these jobs even exist?

The outlook is grim.

A 2013 Oxford study predicts that by 2050, 47% of US jobs that exist today will be computerized.  A UN report predicts that over two thirds of jobs in the developing world will be eliminated.  Larry Summers, former US Treasury secretary, predicts that by mid-century, over one third of US men aged 25-54 will be jobless.  For perspective, the unemployment rate in the US during the great depression at its peak was less than 25%.

This will have disastrous effects on the social fabric of our society.  Millions of disaffected workers, mostly men, will be unemployable and will likely never marry.  They will be primed for demagoguery, tribalism, and extreme forms of ethno-nationalism.  This has never worked out well in the past.

Books like "Rise of the Robots:  Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future" by Martin Ford, and "Men Without Work" by Nicholas Eberstadt explore these effects in great detail.

This is not the first time that technology has reshaped the economy, but it's never happened this fast.

The Luddites tried to save their jobs by destroying cotton and woolen mill machinery at the onset of the industrial revolution, and similar groups have echoed the same sentiment.  In the 1800's, the agricultural sector employed over 90% of the US population, but out of the industrial revolution emerged technologies that reduced the need for human labor, and now agriculture employs less than 1% of the population.

These groups incorrectly viewed capitalism as a zero sum game, and failed to realize the immense and wide spread benefits that progress and even disruptive innovations would bring.

This time it's different.

Part 2:  Machine Intelligence

We are no longer creating dumb machines that have to be explicitly told what to do.  The current generation of machine intelligence can actually think, solve problems, and react to new scenarios on the fly.  They use a technique called deep learning that uses hierarchical layers of simulated neural networks. These networks are given a goal and then trained on large data sets until they can create intelligent outputs.  This approach is biologically inspired and is similar to how a child learns.

Consider that all job tasks can be broken down into four types of work:

Routine physical work
Routine cognitive work
Non-routine physical work
Non-routine cognitive work

Traditionally, dumb machines could only automate routine tasks.  A spreadsheet can perform millions of calculations a second, but it could not determine if a picture contained a dog or a cat.  A robot can make thousands of precise welds, but it can't pick up a bolt in a box of screws.  As a result, automation was historically limited to routine tasks, and we have seen declining wages for these types of jobs since the 1970's.

This is all changing.  Deep learning powered machine intelligence can now automate non-routine work.  

In the 2010's, we are currently in the process of automating non-routine cognitive tasks with improved AI assistants, facial recognition software, voice recognition, advanced wall street trading algorithms, and systems like IBM's Watson.  Even highly skilled white collar jobs like medical pathologist will have to deal with the threat of automation.  Here are several examples of what has already been accomplished.

A team of 5 AI researchers developed an algorithm that is better at predicting pathology cancer outcomes than a panel of top experts that had nearly 100 years experience between them.  The computer programmers had a combined zero years background in biology or medicine.

IBM's Watson recently saved a patient's life from Leukemia by making a diagnosis that a team of doctors could not do.  Watson compared the patients genetic abnormalities to 20 million research papers in 10 minutes.  Given the fact that over 8000 new medical research papers are published every day, it is impossible for researchers to read them all.

The Google translate mobile app allows you to translate voice, text, and images in real time.  You can actually hold your camera up to any printed text, and have it translate it in real time on your phone's screen.  This star trek like ability exists today, and it's a free download from the Play store.

Looking into the 2020's, we will likely automate a significant amount of non-routine physical tasks in the form of self driving cars and trucks, manufacturing robots, service robots, and delivery drones.

If the future economy can automate the majority of work, how will people get an income?  Let's first look at some specific examples of automation that exists today or will in the near future.

Part 3:  Self Driving Cars

I believe the arrival of self driving cars will drive this conversation to the forefront of our politics.  It will be the in-your-face example of technological unemployment that is both relatable and impactful enough to force a national and global conversation.  Ten thousand office workers that are replaced by an algorithm operating on a server bank isn't a story that you can get behind.  Two million unemployed angry truck drivers, most of whom own guns, on the other hand, is.

The transportation industry directly employs nearly 3 million truck and taxi drivers, and millions more indirectly through insurance companies, mechanics, diners, restaurants, highway patrols, and hospitals.  There are entire towns whose existence is dependent on highway intersections, and all of these jobs are all going away in the near future.

For comparison, the coal industry at its height, employed nearly 300,000 people in the 1920's.  This number has steadily declined by tens of thousands of jobs per decade to around 150,000 today.  If this is enough to warrant national political attention, what will the response be to the elimination of one million transportation jobs in a single decade?

This is not hyperbole.  Stage 5 automation largely already exists today.

Tesla recently shared two videos that show a Tesla Model S driving to work hands-free from driveway to parking lot, available here and here.  In the first video, the car navigates down the driveway, through a neighborhood, onto highways, it merges with traffic, onto off ramps, it stops for pedestrians, it drives cautiously around construction cones, and obeys all traffic signals and signs.  It even drops the driver off at the front door, and then parks itself.

This technology is only going to get better.  Its all powered by deep learning algorithms that are trained on input and sensor package data.  Every time a Tesla is driven by a human or in self driving mode, it uses that data to improve its driving ability for all other and future Teslas.  Combine this with the next generation of dedicated deep learning hardware coming from Nvidia, and this technology is going to rapidly improve.

In 2014, the CEO of Uber stated their objective is to have a fleet of self driving cars.  They are already testing self driving Ubers in Pittsburgh, partnering with Volvo and Carnegie Melon.  Uber has also expanded into self driving trucks.  It recently purchased the self driving truck startup, Otto, which just completed its first delivery of Budweiser beer from the brewery to a distribution facility.  In April, a similar feat was accomplished by a platoon of networked, self driving trucks that drove across the Netherlands.

Most of the major car companies are competing and investing billions into self driving technology.  Ford predicts it will have self driving cars in 5 years.  BMW is also targeting 2021.  Tesla is probably a little closer.  Either way, the technology to replace millions of jobs is going to be commercially available sooner than most people realize.

Part 4:  Walking Robots, Automated Factories, and Robot Chefs

In the same way that electricity revolutionized every industry, AI is set to do the same.  Algorithms, service kiosks, and the internet of things will replace vast number of jobs in factories, warehouses, field technicians, call centers, restaurants, retail centers, and law firms.

If you follow these advances, it seems like 2016 was a tipping point where every couple of months science fiction casually became reality.  Here are some examples from 2016.

In February, Boston Dynamics, released a video showing off their latest version of Atlas, their bipedal robot.  The video shows Atlas opening doors, picking up boxes, getting knocked down, standing back up, and it even walks on snow covered hills in the woods.  How easy would it be to convert Atlas into a warehouse robot that stocks shelves or assist on construction sites?

In April, a Google-owned robotics company called Schaft, released their own video showing a smaller, less human-like, but still bi-pedal robot that can walk up stairs, can carry heavy weights, and even walk along a pebble covered beach.  One can imagine a robot like this being used to meet the massive demand for home healthcare aids for rapidly aging populations in the US, Germany, and Japan.

Also in April, Kinema Systems, released a video of their robotic arm called Kinema Pick that utilizes machine vision to break down boxes in a pallet, and move them to a conveyor belt with minimal instruction.  It uses machine vision to automatically recognize a box, and does not require bar codes or RF labels.  Imagine how seamlessly this arm could be used to unload pallets from self driving trucks.

Amazon purchased Kiva robots in 2014, and currently use their pallet-bots in almost all of their warehouses.  These pallet robots move modular shelving units, and human pickers pull the merchandise from the shelves and put them into boxes.  The complexity is amazing, but its striking how few human workers are present in such a large warehouse. Amazon wants to further automate their warehouses using robotic pickers to further replace human workers, and even automate the delivery process using self driving trucks, drones, and even flying warehouses.

Amazon Go is aiming for a new type of grocery store that completely eliminates the need for checkout lines.  By combining machine vision and deep learning, the store will know whenever you place an item into your bag and automatically bill your account once you leave the store.  This will eliminate checkout lines entirely.  This technology will be disruptive to the retail industry, a sector that employs over 7 million cashier and sales people, and it will be launched in 2017.

Moley is developing a pair of robotics arms that will prepare meals for you in your own kitchen.  These arms will chop vegetables, hold the pot while it whisks the sauce, and even clean up afterwards.  This sounds like science fiction, but Moley is aiming for a 2017 product release.  Imagine the impact Moley will have on the restaurant industry.

Robots are even going to school to learn how to pick and sort small objects.  Google has a robot school where arrays of robotic arms learn hand-eye coordination to pick up objects through trial and error.  Once they master this, all future robots with similar hardware will share the same skills through a simple software update.

These advances will enable entire supply chains, factories, distribution networks, and retail centers to be nearly fully automated.  This is both amazing and terrifying.

Machine intelligence does not stop at robotics.  It can also be used to automate tasks that require thinking, vision, and even abstract thought.

The crown example of this is when AlphaGo, a computer made by Google's Deep Mind project, beat the 18-time world champion Lee Sedol earlier this year at the board game Go.  The striking fact in this accomplishment, is that there are more possible moves in the game of Go than there are atoms in the universe, making any brute force calculation impossible.  Just months ago, this feat was thought to be decades away if not impossible for an AI.

In order to beat the top human at Go, AlphaGo had to anticipate moves and think abstractly about new scenarios.  It achieved this through a combination of reinforcement learning and deep learning where it practiced against itself million times to refine its own neural network until it developed intuition to beat a master Go player.

The CEO of Google's AI project Deep Mind, Demis Hassabis, has stated their mission is two-fold:

Step 1.  Solve intelligence.

Step 2.  Use it to solve everything else.

It seems that they are well on their way towards step 1.  If he is successful, that will be the last thing humans ever need to invent, but that is a conversation for another day.

Part 5:  The human cost of technological unemployment

Imagine the following thought experiment:  In a corporatist dystopian future, corporations get to ignore all labor laws with a singular goal in mind:  to maximize profits.  In this future, employees live and work in their places of employment under horrid conditions.  They earn whatever the market determines their labor to be worth, with no regard to quality of life.  They are connected to IVs with the perfect blend of nutrients and stimulants to maximize productivity.

This vision is entirely unrealistic.  Not because of ethical or political barriers, but because using human workers will no longer be the best way to maximize productivity.  Robotic workers are fundamentally better than human workers in nearly every way.

Consider the following traits about robotic workers:  they can work 24 hours a day 7 days a week, will never ask for a paycheck, never call in sick, never go on vacation, can work in the dark, don't require air conditioning, will never form unions, never demand better working conditions, never go on strike, never quit to take a better job, never go on maternity leave, or never sue for discrimination.  It can take months or years to teach a human worker a new skill, but a software update that is downloaded in minutes could transfer skills learned from other robots across the world.

The pace that AI is being developed is faster than humans can learn new skills.  Even if we completely reform the high school education system to produce a wave of students with world class critical thinking skills, change the university structure to 3 year programs with an emphasis on work related skills, and supplement that with free 6 month retooling programs at thousands of community colleges, these efforts will still fall short in combating technological unemployment.

There is a day rapidly approaching where the labor market simply won't create enough jobs to employ a critical mass of people who want to work.  Tens of millions of people, through no fault of their own, will suffer in poverty.  This will have devastating effects on society.

US and European politics are already seeing a rise in demagoguery and toxic forms of conservative populism from the effects of globalization and immigration that has disproportionately hurt low skilled workers.  What will western democracy look like when mass technological unemployment is added into the equation?  The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and The Atlantic have all written about this.  The outlook is bleak.

These effects will not be limited to developed countries.  Factory automation could also eliminate the development pathway of low skilled manufacturing in developing countries, potentially trapping them economically and culturally as third world nations.

So what do we do about it?

Part 6:  Universal Basic Income

Smith, Friedman, nor Keynes never accounted for mechanical minds that can think and outperform the majority of humans in their economic models.  The sacred dogmas of their economic systems are becoming less relevant.  What demand information is there to communicate by price if transportation and manufacturing costs are close to the cost of raw materials and energy?  Without jobs, what mechanism is there to create and transfer wealth among citizens?  If a robot workforce is developed en mass, what manufacturing or service niche can a country fill?

I am not going to pretend that I am an economist or that I can predict what future societies will look like.  However, I think its clear that our current economic systems and the status quo has no way of dealing with the technological unemployment that the next generation of machine intelligence will bring.

If we stay on our current path, we could end up in a techno-feudalism dystopia with a handful of tech trillionaires that own all of the robots.  The policy prescriptions to reign in globalization will not work to combat technological unemployment.  For the masses, this will lead to economic insecurity and social unrest.

The only option I see is to share the wealth created by automation in the form of a universal basic income (UBI).

There are multiple forms and variations of UBI, but in general its defined as a system where all citizens of a country regularly receive an unconditional sum of money from the government, in addition to any income received from elsewhere.  There would be no strings attached to this money, and every individual could live their life in whatever way they want to.

Even before the threat of technological unemployment there have been both left-wing and right-wing arguments for UBI.  From the left, it would increase equality because it would minimize the effects of gender and racial discrimination.  While for the right, it would reduce bureaucracy and shrink the government because anybody with a social security card and a bank account would get the same monthly electronic deposit.  The conservative economist, Milton Friedman, argued for a similar system in the 1960's, although he called it a negative income tax.

The UBI future could usher in an artistic renaissance while also rejuvenating the entrepreneurial spirit the likes of which capitalism has never seen.  How many artists didn't create art because they needed a day job to pay rent?  How many entrepreneurs chose not to take the risk of starting a new business because they had a family to provide for?  When income is decoupled from employment, people will be able to pursue their own paths towards happiness.  When given economic security, creative people will create.

However, the transition to a UBI society will bring many challenges and it will be far from utopian.  Work provides structure and meaning for millions of people.  It could create a generation of couch potatoes who never learn the value of hard work and rarely leave the comforts of their virtual worlds.  UBI would be disruptive to our culture, the social contract, the existing welfare systems, and it could close borders as rich countries try to curtail immigration to minimize costs.  Our basic financial needs may be taken care of, but humans are status seeking social animals, and we will find new ways to seek status and hate each other.

One of the great challenges of the UBI-generation will be how they adjust culturally and emotionally to a post-work world.

One of the questions is how we would pay for such a system.  Charles Murray, from the conservative think tank, AEI, has discussed the implementation of UBI in both an article in the Wall Street Journal titled A Guaranteed Income for Every American and in an interview with Bill Kristol.  In Murray's vision, UBI would replace social security, medicare, medicaid, food stamps, supplemental security income, housing subsidies, every other kind of welfare and social-services program, as well as agricultural subsidies and corporate welfare.

In my opinion, enforcing existing tax laws is a good starting point.  The 2012 report estimated that $32 trillion is being held in off shore tax havens, and the recent revelations from the Panama Papers confirm that corporations are hiding trillions.

UBI is slowly gaining traction and entering the main stream conversation.  It's been discussed by the US Congress.  Elon Musk recently said there's a pretty good chance we end up with UBI.  In a recent interview, even President Obama acknowledged UBI will enter our political debate in the next 10-20 years.  There are several UBI pilot programs that will soon be underway in the Netherlands, Finland, England, Ontario, Canada and Oakland, USA.  Switzerland even held a vote to implement UBI, which lost, but still received 23% supporting votes.

I really hope that I am wrong in my outlook.  For hundreds of years capitalism has created massive amounts of wealth, prosperity, and improved the standards of livings for billions of individuals.  I hope that the classic dogma that innovation will always create a net gain of jobs holds true.  However, given the trends that I have outlined above, I don't see how this could possibly be true.

Unless you can think of something better, I think UBI is the only viable path forward.  2016 is too early to implement a UBI, but its a conversation that we have to have now because somewhere between 2020 and 2030, I believe it will become a necessity.  If we do pull the transition off, I hope our future looks more like the world envisioned in the final chapters of the novel Manna than it does in the Disney movie Wall-E.

Donald Trump is President

I barely slept last night and I felt sick to my stomach all day today.  It truly hit me while walking back from dinner tonight.  I was struck with a moment of near convulsion and panic as the awful fact cemented itself in my brain.

Donald Trump is going to be president.

This realization still hits me at least once an hour.

Not only did he win, he won in a land slide.  He won Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, probably Michigan, and maybe even New Hampshire.

Democracy has spoken.  The republican establishment is out.   The democratic establishment is out.  Hillary Clinton is out.

The establishment ignored tens of millions of people for decades.  Donald Trump spoke to them, and last night they had a voice.  That voice may be rooted in fear, ignorance, and tribalism or maybe it stems from feelings of marginalization, economic insecurity, and a mistrust for the political establishment, our institutions, and media.  No matter the cause, they were heard loudly.

Make no mistake about it, I believe Trump is a dangerously unqualified sexist demagogue with fascist tendencies.  He is a narcissist who cannot help himself.  He is what the KGB would call a “useful idiot”, and has probably been groomed by the KGB for decades ever since he first declared his presidential aspirations in the early 90's.

On January 20^th, he will become the leader of the free world.

He will get to appoint at least one supreme court nominee, likely securing a conservative SCOTUS for decades.

He will repeal Obamacare, leaving 20 million uninsured.

He will likely back out of the Paris climate treaty because he thinks global warming is a conspiracy invented by the Chinese to hurt the American economy.  The 2 degree warming goal is now impossible to achieve.

With Mike Pence in his ear, he will likely overturn Roe v. Wade, and erase all progress on LGBTQ rights.

He will forcibly deport 2 million people and build a giant useless wall.

I felt pure outrage.  Every major policy point that I care about and have spent days, weeks, months, and years thinking about, researching, debating in my mind and with others… it’s all for nothing.  A demagogue who suckered millions into voting for him is going to undue all the progress that has been made and will block what needs to be done to move forward as a society and as a species.

But you know what?  Outrage is a stupid emotion and I am bored of it.  My time is better spent trying to understand what happened.  It’s time to look forward and solve problems.

We need to ask ourselves questions like, why did Trump appeal to so many people?  What similarities are there to Brexit?  Is this a global phenomenon across western civilizations?  Or is it just the UK and the US?  What can we learn about our own society?  Does globalism leave low skilled workers behind?  If so, how can we avoid this?  Will advanced automation have similar effects?

We need to look inward and to expose our own faults.  We need to reason from first principles.  We need to understand the world as it is, not as we want it to be.  We need real political and economic solutions to shape the future, that don’t marginalize and ignore the desperate or quiet needs of others.  If we don’t, we will fall back into our identity politics, we will continue to become more divided, and the fabric and shared values that hold our society together will continue to erode.  I believe the way forward has to be paved with honesty, compassion, and a pursuit of truth.

No more pathos.  No more identify politics.  Only truth.

CRISPR and the Human Genome

Introduction to CRISPR

Recent advances in genome sequencing and gene editing will soon enable amazing feats like curing genetic diseases, eradicating disease-carrying mosquitoes, and allow us to genetically modify food to feed the world.  Five years ago these ideas fell into the realm of science fiction, but due to these advances they will soon be a technological reality.  Humans will soon have the ability to direct their own evolution through the germ line editing of human embryos.

CRISPR/Cas9 is the tool that will enable this.  The CRISPR/Cas9 system was discovered in 2006 as bacterial defense mechanism that can detect and remove DNA from viral invaders.  When the CRISPR/Cas9 enzyme is combined with a programmable RNA guide strand, it has the ability to cut DNA with high fidelity.  This enables researchers to add, remove, or edit a gene at any location in the genome.

The public is largely unaware of the implications of CRISPR/Cas9 and how fast the research is advancing.  It has been described as the most important technology since PCR, and in just several years from its discovery, it has revolutionized the fields of biology, biochemistry, and molecular biology.  The beauty of CRISPR/Cas9 is how simple of a technology it is and how easy it is to use. It is already being used today by thousands of scientists in hundreds of research labs around the world.  You can even order your own customized CRISPR enzyme on a plasmid for the low price of $65 from Addgene.

Jennifer Doudna is a professor of Biochemistry at UC Berkeley, and is one of the co-discoverers of the CRISPR technology. In August of 2012, her group published the first paper that directly showed the mechanism of CRISPR/Cas9 in removing virus DNA from bacteria cells, and a follow up paper only five months later showing it can be used to edit human cells as well.  These landmark papers were the starting point of a whirlwind of new CRISPR gene editing advances.

By mid-2015 a Chinese research group had already used it to edit the genome in non-viable human embryonic cells.  British scientists recently received approval to edit human embryos to study what causes the high rate of miscarriage associated with in vitro fertilization (IVF).  DuPont predicts that it will have CRISPR/Cas9 modified foods on dinner plates by 2018. Bayer and CRISPR Therapeutics announced a $335 million joint gene editing venture.  Last August the Broad Institute raised $120 million from Bill Gates and other investors to develop gene therapies in adults.  Harvard Biologist George church recently held a closed door meeting with 150 top researchers and lawyers to discuss building a synthetic human embryo.

The CRISPR world is coming and it is coming faster than most people realize.

Realizing this, the world's leading CRISPR researchers held an international summit in Washington DC at the end of 2015 to discuss the scientific, ethical, and governance issues associated with human gene-editing research.

Stop and think about that for a moment.  The global gene editing research leaders, realizing that this technology is improving faster than anyone could have possibly imagined, and just held an impromptu meeting to discuss ethical issues like human germ line editing (aka designer babies).  What was science fiction just five years ago is now pushing our ethical boundaries of today.

I wrote this article to continue that conversation and to explore the latest developments of gene editing technology, to explore the ethical implications, and to share my own views.

Genes and Physical Traits

The effect of genetics on human traits is a highly politicized issue.  In the United States, there are people on the political right who flat out deny evolution, and there are members of the political left that seem to think evolution is for animals, but not for humans, especially when it comes to psychological traits.  Both of these views are in conflict with the evidence.  A 2015 Nature Genetics meta-analysis looked at the results from over 50 years of twin studies and found that for any given trait, physical or mental, was influenced roughly 50/50 by their genetics and their environment.

Recent studies have identified the genes responsible for the variation in physical traits such as height, skin pigment, and eye color between individuals.  A 2014 study published in Nature Genetics used a data set of 253,288 individual genomes to discover that at least 697 genes play a role in determining a person's height, and account for approximately 60-80% of the variance in height among people. It is also known that two mutations to the FGFR3 cause more than 99% cases of achondroplasia, a common type of dwarfism.  Another study published in Nature showed that a mutation in the MC1R gene is causes red hair and fair skin.  Additionally, a 2011 Nature Review showed it is possible to predict an individual's eye color with 90% confidence based on mutations in only six genes.  Another recent 2016 study published in Nature shows evidence that facial features such as nose shape and chin size are controlled by just five genes. 

Genes and Mental Traits

It is undeniable that genes influence physical traits in humans, but what about mental traits?

Evolutionary psychology is the principle that evolution influences not only our physical traits, but our mental traits as well.  There are those that subscribe to the theory of mind that the brain of a child is a blank slate and it is only through the environment that anything can be written onto it.  This view is almost certainly false, because a blank slate has no mechanism in which it can learn.  A human brain needs to have innate learning mechanisms already in place, and for a biological brain these have to be heritable.  Steven Pinker thoroughly debunks the notion of the blank slate in this book “The Blank Slate, the Modern Denial of Human Nature”.

With that said, evolutionary psychology is a difficult field to study because of the challenge associated with forming testable hypotheses that explain evolutionary events that happened millions of years ago.  One must proceed with caution because it is easy to rationalize your way into holding a potentially discriminatory position through lazy or incomplete thinking.  However, as scientists we should never be afraid to ask questions and gather evidence, no matter how the results may contrast with popular beliefs at the time.   

Many critics of evolutionary psychology fear that it may lay the groundwork to justify social inequality or discrimination against individuals or groups of humans.  Their general argument goes as follows:  If the ancestors of one group of humans experienced different natural selection pressures than the ancestors of another group of humans, then the average properties for any given trait may be different between the two groups.  If this trait is valued by society, there exists a biological justification for discrimination between groups.

I reject this line of thinking.  If the fear is that the wealthy simply have better genes than poor people, and by scientifically confirming it will somehow justify inequality, it won't matter because it will be true anyways.  In this hypothetical scenario, rich people will go through their lives ignorant of their innate genetic advantages, while the poor are continually disadvantaged through genetic bad luck.  To intentionally move forward in ignorance for fear of what may be true is not useful if one cares about maximizing equality in society.

Recent studies have looked at the effects of genes on individuals and populations on mental traits ranging from depression, a nation's happiness, psychopathy, intelligence quotient (IQ), general cognitive ability, and even their preference for cilantro. 

This NY Times article reports that researchers discovered that 20% of Americans have a mutation to FAAH, a gene that regulated production of anandamide , a molecule that interacts with cannabinoid receptors, and generates a feeling of bliss.  Out of 2,100 volunteers they found that people who had two copies of the mutant FAAH gene had roughly half the rate (11%) of cannabis dependence than those one or no mutant gene (26%).  A population study found that a mutation in the FAAH gene is consistently and highly correlated with levels of happiness between different nations.

A study of 28,000 European adults that compared the amount of Neanderthal DNA that they had to behaviors found that a significant fraction of the variation in risk for depression and even tobacco use.  A 2015 Nature Translation Psychiatry study found that genetic variation of the SKA2 gene is a predictor of suicidal behavior and post traumatic stress disorder.  A survey of nearly 30,000 people uncovered a single gene mutation that was found to be the cause of an individual's preference for cilantro.  Those who did not have the mutation reported a distaste for cilantro and that it tasted like soap.

These examples confirm that genes undeniably influence human mental traits, but its critical to remember that the environment matters as well.  Genes may boundaries on human physical and mental abilities abilities, but they do not represent destiny.  A psychology professor who studies psychopaths discovered that he had many of the gene variants that corresponding to psychopathic behavior, including a variant of the MAO-O gene.  Brains scans confirmed that he literally had the brain of a psychopath.  Considering that he was married, had kids, and never committed murder, he concluded that he was a “pro-social psychopath,” or someone who has difficulty feeling true empathy for others but still keeps his behavior roughly within socially-acceptable bounds.  He attributes his behavior to his warm and loving childhood during the developmental stages of his life when the empathy parts of his brain were being wired.

IQ is not a perfect or complete measure of intelligence.  However, what it does do very well is measure the psychological traits that are valued by western society.  Unsurprising, a 2013 study of 6,870 individuals found that IQ and happiness are strongly correlated.

It is foolish to suggest that IQ is governed only by genes, as it has been clearly demonstrated that environmental factors play a significant role.  A relaxed, well-rested, well-fed person who values and has access to education is probably going to score higher on an IQ test than a genetically identical person who is stressed, tired, chronically malnourished, who does not value, and has poor access to education.  An ideal environment can allow an individual to meet their genetic potential.

However, a 2014 study seems to indicate that genetics on average have more of an influence than the environment on IQ.  They show that between 40-80% of the variance in IQ is due to genetics, not environmental factors.  One twin study that compared IQ between sets of twins found that the IQ of identical twins were more similar (r = 0.86) than fraternal twins (r = 0.60), and both were more similar than adopted children compared to their parents (r = 0.19).  A 2001 Nature Neuroscience study used MRI to compare brain activity between identical twins and fraternal twins, and found a strong correlation between brain activity in gray matter and genetic similarity.

Scientists are now beginning to understand the how genes influence the neural networks that govern human cognitive abilities.  A 2016 study published in Nature Neuroscience  identified a network of over 150 genes that are expressed in the brain that reliably predict human cognitive abilities and memory.  A 2016 JAMA Psychiatry study looked at a population of 1,002 individuals and showed that a duplication of the 16p11.2 loci was associated with autism, schizophrenia, and a drop in 25 IQ points.  A 2016 study published in Nature discovered a positive link between cognitive function and physical health using a large dataset of 112,151 individual genomes.

As we move towards an increasingly technological and information based economy, with increasing amounts of automation for routine tasks, high paying and prestigious jobs are increasingly going to require creative and intelligent skill sets.  Groups and individuals who do not posses these traits are likely going to suffer socially and economically.  As we consider the effects of poverty and the effect that automation may have on the unemployment rate, it is worth considering that nobody alive today got to pick their genes.  Every single person alive today is an accident of biology, and their genes, for better or for worse, were selected by arbitrary and blind natural selection forces over many generations.  Due to the rapid and ever changing society that we live in, in many ways humans are survival machines genetically adapted to a world that no longer exists.  Much of human suffering can be attributed to this mal-adaption.

If a safe way exists to change our genes, than what are we waiting for?

The Dangers of Human Genetic Modification

There is a considerable difference between using CRISPR to modify disease causing genes in adults, and using CRISPR to enhance the traits of humans.  In both cases, the first step is to sequence the genome of an embryo, and the second step is to follow up by editing or removing the intended genes.  If this technology existed today, how many prospective parents do you think would elect to use it on their future children?

In a way, British parents have already answered the first part of the question.  British parents have access to a genetic screening test for unborn fetuses to test for an extra chromosome 21, the genetic condition that causes Down Syndrome.  Since the test has been implemented, 92% of expecting mothers decided to terminate their pregnancy when their unborn fetus tested positive.  It is clear that when given access to this kind of information without an available treatment also available, the overwhelming number of British parents decided to terminate their pregnancy.

What if genome sequencing improves to the point where it becomes trivially easy to sequence the full genome of every single unborn fetus?  Would British parents decide to terminate their pregnancy at the same rates for other genetic diseases?  This could lead to a nightmare scenario of "trial-and-error pregnancies" where parents are willing to repeatedly terminate their pregnancy, until they get the most genetically fit child possible.  It is not difficult to imagine that this could potentially discourage doctors from sharing genetic sequencing results with their patients.

Now imagine that if in addition to genetic sequencing, it was trivially easy to repair the disease causing genes as well. If given the option would a parent choose to cure their unborn child of one of the hundreds of known genetic disorders if it was safe to do so?  I think the answer would be overwhelming yes, but where do we draw the line on the use of this technology?  Choosing genes from either either embryo selection oand/or direct gene editing seems obvious to me, but what about other heritable traits?

This 2015 article in the Atlantic highlights numerous studies that show that people who are taller, more attractive, and smarter on average earn more money and live fuller, happier lives.  If a technology existed that would enable a parent to safely give birth to a child with these traits that they otherwise could not, is it moral to deny them access to this technology?  Does a parent have the right to edit the genes of their baby to give their future child the best chances to succeed in life?

Assuming the technology is safe and reliable, my answer to all of the above questions is yes.  We already select the genes of our children by choosing our sexual partners.  Except choose them based on features like how their smile makes us feel, the shape of their butt, and their personality traits which are already partly heritable, not on the content of their fully sequenced genome.  There is nothing sacred about our genes, they are the products of millions of years of arbitrary natural selection pressures.  Heritable personality traits that lead to successful evolutionary strategies eons ago may contribute towards human misery in modern society.  If we can safely change our traits to maximize our well being in the world that exists today, why shouldn’t we?

There is risk associated with both gene therapy action and in-action.  It is not inconceivable that one day CRISPR technology will be so reliable and our understanding of the human genotype-phenotype relationship so complete, that the risk of in-action will be greater than action.  It is at this point that we should fully embrace the gene editing technology.

How can we ensure that CRISPR is safe?

Despite our advances, no one can guarantee the safety of CRISPR gene editing in humans.  Ethically, I think we can only gain this knowledge through incremental research.  I envision CRISPR gene therapy research advancing in roughly the following way.

First, there will be further basic research in cell culture and improvements made to the CRISPR enzyme or the Cas9 RNA guide strand.  We are already making extremely rapid advances in this area.  For example, just within the last several of months there have been two reports of modified Cas9 RNA guide strands that significantly reduce or completely eliminate the number of detectable off-site CRISPR genomic cuts.  The British group has already received approval and funding to test CRISPR on human embryos to study infertility.

Second, CRISPR will be used to edit animals and foods.  Genetically modified mice will be used to create new models to study disease.  Chinese researchers have already genetically modified animals to make super strong beagles, autistic monkeys, and miniature pigs.  DuPont has announced their intentions to have CRISPR modified foods on dinner plates by 2017.  Again, it seems like we are well on our way in this second phase of research.

Once we are confident in the safety of CRISPR in animals and food, we will move onto gene therapies in adults.  In October, Elizabeth Parrish, a CEO of BioViva, a biotech startup company claims to have already undergone anti-aging gene editing therapy.  Another biotech company says it has plans to test CRISPR gene editing on people by 2017 to treat blindness.  

What lies beyond is the modification of embryos that are then brought to term.  This raises very serious moral concerns because embryonic modifications will affect not only the person, but their entire germ line as well.  Considering that an embryo cannot give consent for itself let alone every other human in its future germ line, this raises serious moral concerns.  We do not know what the unintended consequences of a large scale adoption of germ line editing could be.  What if problems don't arise until after several generations?  To completely understand this would require generational studies on CRISPR-modified individuals and populations.  If we decide to move forward with embryo gene therapies, it should only be in situations where the risk from the disease due to in-action is significantly greater than not performing CRISPR surgery.

Once we master curing genetic diseases, the next step is to modify our non-disease causing traits.  To feel comfortable about the safety of doing this (moral and philosophical concern aside), I would like to see at minimum, thousands of CRISPR-modified healthy babies, children, and young adults who have been cured of their genetic diseases, in addition to millions of healthy CRISPR-modified pigs, dogs, monkeys, and other animals.

Once we are absolutely confident that all the bugs are worked out, and we have a deep understanding of how genes work, combined with advances in IVF, epigenetics, and stem cells, should we move forward with multiplexing dozens, hundreds, or thousands of CRISPRs to modify as many embryonic genes as we see fit.  As we explore the solar system and the galaxy this may become a necessity.

Back to Reality

These are difficult moral questions that could be the basis of science fiction stories, but we need answers to these questions sooner than later.  Despite the fear of designer babies and increasing inequality, the technology to do all of these things is nearly upon us.  Do you have faith in the US congress to understand these nuanced issues and to properly legislate CRISPR germ line editing?  How many members of congress have the scientific credentials to understand what is at stake?

In my opinion, to ask if human genetic modification is ethical is the wrong question.  Competition in a global marketplace between countries with different value systems will make designer babies inevitable.  Imagine the benefits of a genetically modified society that no longer has the genes associated with cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, depression and have the genetic predisposition for high IQ and creativity.  A society that fails to adopt these practices could be left behind both economically and culturally in the global arena.  In my opinion, this is not a question of if, it is a question of when and how.

Instead, we should be asking the following questions:  Who will develop this technology first?  How can we ensure that it will be safe?  How will we ensure equal access?  If only the biotech-minded billionaires have access to this technology today, in 30 years their children may become the genetic elites that rule over the rest of us.

The End Game of Capitalism: A Transition to a Post-Scarcity Society

The Brilliance of Capitalism

Capitalism is one of the greatest inventions in the history of modern civilization.  We owe much of our modern prosperity and technological advances to the implementation of capitalism.  The alternative of a state run economy is too inefficient and requires a concentration of power that is too corruptible to sustain a high level of prosperity.  The beauty of capitalism is in the invisible hand of the free market, which is force that self-corrects and transmits the price of goods and services.  The invisible hand is an emergent property that naturally arises in populations of humans that exist a safe environment with freedoms of education, creativity, and travel.

The Limitations of Capitalism 

Despite the glaring success of capitalism, ultimately it is an amoral economic system.  The engines of the free market will drive forward independent of human well being or human suffering.  When left to its own devices, capitalism has a tendency to disproportionately favor greedy and self-interested behavior that results in monopolies, which stifle competition, innovation, and prosperity.  This is especially true for markets that have high costs of entry or have physical barriers, such as cell phone providers that share a limited range of the electromagnetic spectrum.  Additionally, due to the cyclic nature of the market, it is nearly impossible to prevent periods of reoccurring recessions.

Healthy capitalism requires a large consumer middle class population that drives demand and creates jobs.  The role of government in capitalism is to protect the middle class to ensure that a large population will always exist to purchase goods and services.  In this way, the government must impose regulations on the free market to protect the consumer from the dangers of unfettered capitalism.  Capitalism may be the best economic engine ever devised by humans to create prosperity and distribute wealth, but left to its own devices, unfettered capitalism will eventually cannibalize itself by consuming the consumer class.

Below I have identified three fundamental problems that are innate to capitalism and could lead to its downfall.  It is possible that unforeseen changes in technology, culture, market forces, or government regulations could render these predictions useless.  However, I believe that these three problems and their extrapolated logical outcomes are so fundamental to capitalism that the likelihood that they become true are very high.

The Finite Planet Problem

The essence of capitalism relies on the conversion of natural resources and ideas into goods and services.   However, in a finite world, natural resources are limited.   This simple fact puts an upper limit on the amount of physical goods that can be produced by humans, and limits the duration that capitalism can continue to be the engine of economic prosperity that it is today.  If the planet runs out of natural resources, capitalism can only continue by creating information based commodities such as art, entertainment, and computer programming.  It will be a major challenge for capitalism to create enough jobs out of creative industries alone.

Furthermore, as the cost of energy increases, the cost to transport goods also increases, and this cost is transferred to the consumer price of the physical good.  Experts have predicted that we have already reached peak oil production, and that demand for oil is going to exponentially increase as China and India become more industrialized, and the earth's population reaches an estimated 10 billion by the year 2050.  If the world's markets continue to rely on fossil fuels for the transportation of goods, the exponential increase in price for oil has the potential to wreak havoc on an already weak global economy.

But for the sake of argument, lets make an assumption that a technological breakthrough, such as solar or fusion energy, will provide us with a renewable source of energy for the next several hundred years to provide cheap transportation of goods and wide spread recycling of natural resources.  Even still, capitalism is faced with another issue unrelated to finite natural resources.

The Indefinite Population Growth Problem

The human population will not continue to grow forever.  Given a finite amount of livable and farmable land on earth, the earth can only support so many people.  However, long before we reach this hard population limit, humans will begin dying at an equal rate than new humans are born, and the population will reach a stable point at around 10 billion people by the year 2050.  Hans Rolling gives an excellent TED talk on this subject.  The driving force for the decreasing birth rate is education.  As women become better educated, they have less children.  If capitalism is such a powerful force that it spreads wealth and prosperity to every single living human, inevitably the education levels will increase to a point where the population begins to decline.

A general rule is that as a population grows, the economy also grows.  Considering that the earth's population has been exponentially growing for the last 500 years, this has been a very good thing for market growth and capitalism.  However, as a population growth rate stagnates or declines, the economy will shrink.  When an economy shrinks, it creates deflationary pressures which make money more valuable over time.  Although this sounds good on paper, (who doesn't want their money to be worth more over time?)  it has the potential to damage the economy because it will decentivize bank lending.  This is incredibly dangerous to job creation because bank lending is an absolutely essential part of job and industry creation.

In healthy capitalism, banks are tasked with helping to facilitate the movement of capital in the economy.  An inflation rate between 2-3% is ideal for this practice, because it creates an incentive for banks to loan money.  If inflation was too high, it would be unlikely that banks could get a return on their investment greater than the rate of inflation, they are better off purchasing physical assetts.  If we had negative inflation, or deflation, banks would have an incentive to keep their money, because without any risk their money will gain more value over time.  The bank's money will literally become more valuable by doing nothing.

Deflation tied to a declining population growth is already happening in Japan where the population has been declining for several decades, and their economic growth has been severally limited by the resulting shrinking economy and deflationary forces.  A government can intervene and force a bank to make loans, but this practice would harm the overall efficiency of capitalism, because it would handicap the ability of the market to self correct itself using the market's invisible hand.

But for the for the sake of argument, lets make another assumption.  Lets assume that our government and business leaders come up with brilliant solutions that perfectly balances a declining population with renewable energy sources, and both the finite natural resources and the declining population growth problems are fixed.  Capitalism is still faced with yet another threat to its long term viability.  

The Jobs Problem

As I mentioned previously, capitalism is faced with the monumental task of providing enough jobs for the expected global population of 10 billion people.  Without enough jobs, there is no mechanism to distribute wealth and prosperity in a free market, and capitalism as an engine of economic prosperity and wealth distribution will fail.  Emerging technologies such as robotic automation and computer artificial intelligence are replacing jobs that once only humans could perform.

In addition to increased automation of manufacturing jobs, there have been multiple forces that have been acting for several decades now that have lead to increased unemployment.  In the United States starting in the middle of the 20th century, woman in increasing amounts began entering the labor force.  This was a great force for social equality, but it drastically increased the labor pool.  Coupled with increased life expectancy, an increasing retirement age, exponential population growth, and globalism, employers began to have access to a much larger labor pool than before.  More workers competing for jobs, leads to more competition, which has lead to better educated workforce,  which leads to higher productivity.  Combined with automation, fewer workers are required to do the same amount of jobs.  All of these factors decrease the number of jobs required to meet demand, which leads to higher unemployment.  Higher unemployment gives employers even more leverage because if more unemployed workers are competing for the same job, they can treat their workers poorly and pay them less.  As wages go down, the middle class erodes, which leads to less demand for goods and services, and less well paying jobs.  Meanwhile, corporate profits continue to increase because productivity is so high.  This is a vicious cycle that drives up unemployment, and will continue until the middle class disappears.  A society that once had a booming middle class, will eventually consist of a large lower class and a small ultra wealthy class.

A large lower class will inevitably lead to massive amounts of poverty and all of its ugly symptoms.  With no safety net, the impoverished masses will resort to crime and trade on unregulated black markets.  Life in lawless frontiers will lead to a violent honor culture.  The poor will be segregated from the wealthy, and will not have equal access to food, healthcare, and education.  After several generations, this will result in a permanent impoverished lower class.  The alternative to this dire scenario is to create a massive welfare system that will require immense resources and will have to be paid for by the wealthy minority.  However, like most humans, the wealthy are self-interested individuals and as history has shown many times over, power and wealth is rarely given up easily or willingly.

The End of Capitalism

If the demise of capitalism is to happen, the fall will not be quick.  It will be preceded by a breakdown in the mechanisms that fairly distribute wealth, and it will be a long and slow decline that stretches over many decades or centuries.  The long term viability of capitalism to create prosperity and distribute wealth comes down to three questions:

1. Does Earth have enough natural resources to sustain indefinite growth?
2. Can the population continue to grow indefinitely?
3. Can capitalism create enough jobs to employ 10 billion people by the year 2050?

If the answer is "no" to any of these questions, than it is in our best interest to develop an economic system that is sustainable in a finite world, does not rely on indefinite growth, and maximizes the well being for the most amount of people possible.

Throughout history, societies have succumb to violent revolutions typically when the ruling class amasses too much power.  Capitalism has a tendency to produce wealth inequalities that can lead to violent revolution when the consumer class no longer has buying power or leverage in the market place.  Violent revolution is the ultimate trump card, but comes at an extreme cost.  Representative democracy is supposed to be a balance of power to prevent this, but ultimately any government is corruptible given enough time.  Today, thanks to rulings like Citizens United that gives corporations similar rights as people, and enables corporations to influence political outcomes with money, has essentially made political bribes legal.  This results in a consolidation of power between the public and private sectors that creates a concentration of power that is extremely corruptible.

A pessimist would say that this is an inevitable scenario because greed is human nature, and that society needs to to hit a reset button every 500 years to redistribute the resources so that it can start anew on fair ground.  I think that this cycle of violent revolution can be broken by creating a society with a fundamentally different economic system where greed and monetary wealth are obsolete.  What will this post-capitalistic society look like?

The Post-Scarcity Economy

Technological innovations will allow human societies to transition from a capitalistic economy that relied on scarcity to determine value, to an economy of abundance where scarcity no longer influences the value of a commodity.  In general, prices are high when a commodity is both in high demand and scarce.  If a commodity is in high demand, but abundant, then its price will remain relatively low.  If clean drinking water were ever to become scarce, its price would be astronomical.

Technological breakthroughs in energy production, manufacturing, and medicine have the potential to make nearly every commodity abundant.  For example, scientific advances in energy production such as solar, fusion, anti matter, and eventually a Dyson sphere around the sun will provide abundant renewable energy that will allow for cheap transportation, production, and eventually amazing feats like weather control and space travel.  Advances in manufacturing such as 3D printing, robotics, artificial intelligence, and eventually star trek style replicators will provide abundant and cheap manufacturing of shelter, food, consumers good, vehicles, roads, cities, space elevators, space stations, moon colonies, space ships, etc. Advances in medicine such as stem cell therapy, genome sequencing, gene therapy, organ growing, and decoding the human brain will eradicate all common diseases, depression, psychopathy, dramatically increase the human life span, and even allow humans to interact in computer simulated environments like in the matrix.

In an economy where everything is abundant,  money is obsolete.  It is true that no resource can be perfectly abundant.  Everything will be abundant, within reason.  If a steak costs a penny, you can easily eat 20 steaks in a week, but you still could not purchase 10 million steaks.  One could not purchase all the steaks in the world to corner the market by creating artificial scarcity.  Living in a near-scarce society simply means that in a practical day to day life, every material want will be abundant within reason.

The critical element in creating physical abundance is energy.  Given enough energy, every physical resource becomes renewable.  To implemented a fair and efficient way to share the renewable energy, energy credits can be given to every person.  If energy production is unlimited and free, the concept of ownership over energy will not makes sense.  This society will have to be constructed around the idea that every human owns an equal percentage of the energy output, and that it should be distributed equally among all people.  This will keep the invisible hand of the free market in tact, so that commodities based on human creativity can still flourish.

If all physical commodities become abundant, the only commodities that will remain scarce will be life, sex, and happiness.

A Society of Happiness

Societies that attempted to become utopias have failed in the past because their leaders were ignorant of human nature.  Marxist tyrants of the 20th century were impatient fanatics who wrongly thought of humans as blank slates that could be rewritten through massive social engineering projects in a single generation.  They were motivated by their personal dogmatic imaginations of absolute power and by an incomplete science of the human mind.  A successful human utopia cannot be based on the philosophy of a scientifically illiterate fanatic.  It must be founded on tenants of human nature that are discovered through honest empirical inquiry, and are always open to question.  A human utopia must be grounded in the human universals that create happiness.

Capitalism has created a culture that values wealth, monetary gain, and where self worth is produced by one's profession and career success.  The age of abundance will make one or all of these traits obsolete.  An often overlooked element of a utopian society is what will be left for the humans to do?  Think of the billions of hours spent by humans throughout history trying to survive or accumulate wealth, just so that we can maybe be happy sometime in the future.  We spend the vast majority of our lives sleeping or working.  If every waking moment of our lives is suddenly leisure time, what are we supposed to do?

Human happiness is very complicated.  There are many different kinds of human happiness.  In a post-scarcity society, where robots do all of the manual labor, and all of your material needs are met, there is no need to work hard.  Can humans be happy without hard work?  From my own experience, I know that hard work in of itself can be a source of happiness.  Seeing the fruits of one's labor is a deeply satisfying feeling.  It breeds self confidence and pride.  To take that way, is to remove a large source of human happiness.  A perfectly safe and sterile world is boring.  Boredom is a source of great human suffering, and the human mind is not adapted to a world that is boring.  In a society where every physical commodity is abundant, the human need for happiness will be a huge in huge demand.

This will create a massive entertainment industry. Our artists and entertainers will be tasked with keeping 10 billion human minds occupied.  We will literally have a society that revolves around the idea of maximizing human happiness.  Imagine a world where the greatest problem is how to create self esteem for every person through friendships, family, community, and love, and can to satisfy their curiosities through travel, art, fashion, science, and space exploration.  Even if this is possible, there will still be two human universals that will remain scarce:  life and sex.

The Scarcity of Life and Sex

The scarcity of life will be lessened by improvements in medicine.  The human lifespan will dramatically increase and consciousness will eventually be downloadable to a computer chip, and our minds will be able to participate in matrix style computer simulations.  An alternative to death will be digital heaven.

The scarcity of sex is a little bit more tricky.  The desire to procreate is hard wired in our genes through billions of years of selection forces that selected genes that promote competition and procreation.  Many facets of sexual attraction are born out of power inequalities.  In a world without power, how we will we know who we want to have sex with?  Will we fetishize everything? or create arbitrary power inequalities?  On the other hand, if people are sufficiently occupied with other forms of happiness, its entirely possible they will care less and less about sex.

The Post-Scarcity Transition

The transition to a post-scarcity society as described above will not be easy.  Once a post-scarcity society exists,  it may be easier to sustain, but getting there will be the hardest part.  It would be best to have a slow transition from capitalism, but technological advances in the next 20-30 years may force the transition before the world is ready.  Where do we start?  To remedy the problem of unemployment, could we create more jobs by changing the work week from 40 hours to 20 hours for full time employees?  At what point is it too inefficient to have X amount of employees doing the same job.  1 person working 40 hours is better than 40 people working 1 hour.  But what about 2 people working 20 hours?  Every compromise like this will lower the efficiency of the market, and hinder economic prosperity.  If we make the transition too fast the economic foundation of society will collapse before we can gain a foot hold in post-scarcity.  To be successful, it must be a slow transition over many generations, but we may not have this luxury.

One possible way to make the transition is that of the co-op.  Similar to the society described in Manna, if a million people all buy into a corporation for $1,000 each, they will have a trillion dollars to start this society.  Initially, they will have to buy land and technology, but as they grow they will be able to accept more and more participants, until they reach a tipping point where they are self-sustainable and money is obsolete.  At this point they will be able to allow an ever increasing amount of people into their society.

If the transition to a post-scarcity society is successful, capitalism should be fondly remembered as an imperfect, yet essential tool that brought humans out of the dark ages, and provided us with the stability and technological ability to make the leap.  The transition to a post-scarcity economy will not be easy, and will certainly require technological advances in energy, automation, and medicine that have not yet been made.  Given these advances and a devotion to equality and human happiness, humans may be able to break their cycle of violent revolutions and usher in a stable period of peace and well being.

Resources

This essay was mainly inspired by four books and essays that I have recently read:

Manna by Brian Marshall.  I highly recommend reading this short book if you are interested in what the transition to the post-scarcity could look like.  Its a great little scifi novel that can be ready in an hour.

In Praise of Idleness by Bertrand Russel.  An essay written over 100 years ago about the effects of increased automation on the worker.  Still highly relevant even today.

The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker.  Hands down the best book ever written about the human mind.

The Foundation Series by Isaac Asimov, especially Foundation and Foundation and Empire.  This series shows how certain truths can be extrapolated to their logical ends.