Re: Population growth as strain on planet's resources
Create an institutional framework that's secure for small families
regardless of ethnicity, and you've solved the problem. I call
this framework my "global university".[1] It's supported by USA OS
and depends on new circuit designs for Motherboard Earth (ME).[2]
Said institutional framework depends on letting engineers bring
good things to life, unhampered by the LAWCAP mentality [3].
Below is a religious tract in Quakerese on this topic. Doesn't
matter if you're not into "God talk" -- easy to translate to
other languages minus this signifier.
Kirby
[1] http://www.teleport.com/~pdx4d/gstuniv.html
[2] http://www.teleport.com/~pdx4d/usaos.html
http://www.teleport.com/~pdx4d/motherboard.html
[3] LAWCAP (Fuller coin) decoded at
http://www.teleport.com/~pdx4d/gst2.html
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My leading is that we as Friends should not be too hasty when
it comes to embracing all the ideologies behind the
intellectual properties and "anti-piracy" campaigns.
It's easy to make this a cut and dried issue, one of walking
one's talk against theft, and I'm not advocating that thievery
become part of our faith and practice.
But I am also mindful that, as God's children, we have been
given that of God within ourselves to serve one another and to
create God's Kingdom in accordance with God's will. If we have
the tools to remove ignorance and empower individuals to escape
hellish circumstances, it is our duty to so use them.
Our capacity to serve our fellow human beings should not be
strictured by ideologies which exault selfishness above
service, and encourage us to regard the fruits of God's working
as entirely our own, to do with only as we please.
My information is that we have the know-how and tools, in
principle, to end death by starvation and transform this planet
into a more workable learning environment for all humans. Part
of what makes this doable is the infinite recopiability of
digital assets: the miracle of the loaves and fishes made
common place.
Whereas I am not advocating that people steal one anothers
intellectual creations, I am encouraging us to further develop
and support those institutional frameworks which reward humans
who choose to be generous with their works, who devise new
assets for the express purpose of improving the human
condition, and who therefore place no restrictions on the
propagation of their contributions, either through cyberspace
or by other means.
Many talented and skilled teachers, engineers, artists,
scientists ask not that their revenues be tied directly to
metered usage of their creations, by means of "royalties" for
example, but only that they be compensated for their labors to
a degree which supports them in being able to continue their
work, unobstructed. Salaries, grants and fellowships
accomplish this purpose, without forcing us to meter the
specific uses of a new invention or creation and demand payment
accordingly, often from people with little or no hard currency,
given how the system is rigged against them.
Indeed, many of our most talented already accept a guaranteed
income in exchange for their intellectual labors, as any patent
rights stemming from their efforts are assigned to a fictive
personage, a corporation, which in itself has no ability to
think or produce art, is lacking a human soul, does not have
"that of God" within it. Any profits from revenue on sales,
based on metered use, then accrues to the corporation.
So in many cases it is these soulless legal fictions which
puppet organized religion into marshalling the armies of faithful,
against their own best interests as human beings, into defending
the status quo -- human beings who, unlike soulless corporations,
feel the pain and suffering that goes along with disobeying
God's will.
So again, I encourage Friends to not rush to judgement, siding
with the soulless against real human beings. Is this really a
just war against your fellow humans (whom you're taught to view
as pirates). Or are your fellows the ones you're here to side
with, against the soulless institutional holdovers from a
bygone era, which use divide and conquer strategies to pit
humans against humans, even when we might be living in greater
harmony and building God's Kingdom together?
I believe we live in a time of great sin, as people around the
world are dying at a time when we already have the technologies
to address their suffering realistically. I suggest a moral
imperative is driving us to question all institutional
frameworks which artificially contrive to create conditions
of scarcity where our intellectual labors to date have already
brought us into a realm of abundance.
When I make a copy of your digital asset, I do not thereby
deprive you of its use. This is not "piracy" in the olden
sense, in which I'd deprive you of access to the same good.
If it's thievery, it's a more abstract kind of thievery.
We should not just bleep over the difference, but pause and
ask how intellectual properties might be more rightly
shared as world resources, as part of a growing and shared
heritage, an inventory accessible to all. The institution
of the library has always been a central institution in
democratic societies.
What happens to the library when its inventory fills with
digital assets? When I "borrow" why do I need to "return" --
the original is still there, ready for the next "borrower".
Do we now sacrifice this institution to the literally
soulless ones, because we can't figure out how to effectively
turn abundance (hard won through eons of humans doing their
homework, boning up on the principles behind today's cyber-
electronics) into "business as usual" scarcity?
At what point do we stop questioning our technological
capabilities and start questioning the institutions which
encourage us to misuse them, to make more and more bombs,
designed to rain down on our fellow global university
students, instead of plough shares -- the designs for which
might be freely downloadable over the web?
Certainly in making a copy without paying a licensing fee, I
may be depriving you of a source of income. So the question
for me becomes: how can we have a world wherein making full
use of our best technologies does not constitute a crime or a
depravation of one by another. Why should we organize our
affairs such that technologies must be artificially crippled or
hampered, lest humans get too generous with their wealth, and
stop playing by the rules of "never enough for all, so it's me
against you". Perhaps God has a superior social order in mind?
In sum, to the extent we continue to organize our human affairs
in ways which discourages creative individuals from maximizing
their ability to serve others and end a needless holocaust, to
this extent are we "stealing from God" -- sinfully harnessing
our God-given metaphysical capabilities towards selfish ends,
with little regard for the responsibilities which our human
privileges entail. We should recognize the "technological
imperative" at work here, and think of ways to empower, not
disempower, those who would like to escape a selfish (and more
dangerously, self-righteously selfish) legalistic regime,
driven mindlessly to create scarcity because too ignorant
and lazy to adjust its reflexes (and accompanying dogmas)
to the new realities.
Kirby
Assistant Clerk
Multnomah Monthly Meeting
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