Mutually Assured Production

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Project maintained by Nathan Cravens

Description

Michel Bauwens:

A proposal for a collaboratively written series of essays that describe both top down and bottom up methods of physical production in phases. The desire for better living conditions forms the basis of Mutually Assured Production. Before paving such ground, observed is the worsening of living conditions caused by declined incomes for majorities in contemporary industrial societies.

To make way for MAP, A Basic Income is a suggested top-down approach that can increase living conditions by filling the gap left behind by devalued wages and outsourced jobs in the final labor market frontiers of the service and information economies. A Basic Income will ease pressures for involuntary workforce involvement. Labor markets are likely to increase in value for a time, stimulating the automation of productive mechanisms and supply chains more actively than before. The competing forces of voluntary labor, peer-to-peer production, and competition from both the free and profit motive will encourage the adoption of more localized productive organizational methods that resemble the briefly outlined three phase plan below.

Phase 1

Regional Production. At this phase most items will be produced at a regional level based on retail models of regional distribution located every few hundred miles from outlets. Phase 1 will happen to maintain competitive advantage in the marketplace. Proprietary agencies will have the resources to pursue this phase and will likely dominate this area with little competition from open agencies.

Phase 2

Outlet Production. This phase will create a majority of items at the outlet. This is where proprietary agents will become challenged by open production methods. Financial cost for items are minimal. It will be very difficult to compete against free items produced by open agencies at this phase.

Phase 3

Personal Production. Living environments will produce a majority of what a human might want without proprietary agencies. Productive devices will eventually become condensed into a portable device or smaller to manufacture or provide what in need on demand. Open agencies will dominate with little proprietary influence until artificial intelligence known as Strong AI or Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) outpaces human intelligence. Human-AGI symbiosis will either develop or replace open agencies with other open agencies better suited for more specialized and rapidly changing subjects and environments.

Socioeconomic Highlights

Automation of the service and information economy will devalue labor until workforces become unnecessary. A Basic Income, a living wage, will allocate resources for individuals that use proprietary agencies. A new generation will be born into an era where personal relationships are pursued with an interest in collaboration more than ever before. Increased voluntary and open activity will help develop social ties, enlightening creativity outside the proprietary sphere, and help achieve each phase until arrived at personal production that produces nearly everything at zero financial cost.

Related Pages on This Wiki

More Information

Mutually Assured Production for Universal Well Being: A Brief Introductory Discussion
Open Systems Design for Universal Peer Production