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[PTTG??]

Actually, the product-monitoring feature might work pretty well. You pick products and use them, and by discussing them, suggesting improvements, and generally reviewing them, you earn credits to get other things.

It's basically a parody of consumerism, (as in Little Inferno had that idea as its main premise), but it is kind of a cycle that drives product development and allows people to thrive. It essentially removes the labor portion from capitalism and makes it purely about providing the service of crowdsourced value-calculating.

[hops]

I mean, it need not be that immediately. I like the idea of automated farms providing the necessities for everyone so that nobody has to starve.

...But then I remember that shit can already be solved by having decent welfare.

[Starver]

...But then I remember that shit can already be solved by having decent welfare.

(IRTA "warfare"...)

[Criptfeind]

I think the issue for that sorta bizarre consume based economy (where the product you sell is yourself to buy more products to sell yourself to) is you'd need a level of organization and agreement on how to run things that you might as well just make a utopia. It's not like Joe average consumer is going to have better insights into what he and his friends wants then super AI 5000. So even that job would be automated away if big companies let themselves.

[Max™]

The only things which will have value will end up being handmade/customized/repaired x where you're getting something because you like it, and like that it was made by someone like you. It is unlikely that it will be more than an--at best--equivalent to something printed out by an automated design program, but the "human touch" will be a tricky problem to automate, for various reasons.

Look at the comb, this is an ancient bit of technology, I mean, we've got combs that evolved on various creatures for fuck's sake, being able to smooth and remove debris from a layer of fibers is a problem that comes up a lot.

I've been having fun customizing beard combs recently, just from taking things which annoy me about this comb or that comb, plus things which I like from them, and hacking away at one or both until the problems are gone. No more pointy bits that snag my cheekbone or nostril, no more teeth that extend juuuust far enough to catch a mole or scrape me. Then I like to tinker a bit more and clean up how it looks. So far I can't understand why combs default to something like:
____ (<- big stupid stiffer end teeth)
____ (pretend there are more same-length teeth in here)
____ (pretend there are more same-length teeth in here)
____ (all same height middle teeth as end teeth)
____ (pretend there are more same-length teeth in here)
____ (pretend there are more same-length teeth in here)
____ (<- big stupid stiffer end teeth)
...when it seems this:
__ (<- no stupid stiff end teeth)
___ (shorter to longer teeth in here)
____ (last few shortened teeth in here)
____ (flat belly of the curve from the ends up to the middle teeth)
____ (last few shortened teeth in here)
___ (shorter to longer teeth in here)
__ (<- no stupid stiff end teeth)
Is so much more suited for a chunk of hard material being dragged across your face.

The missus watched my insane tinkering and nipping and sanding and lining things up and repeating and suggested that I should get some tools and some wood and try with that.

I was like "well damn I are dumb" because that is a great idea, and I could probably find people that would be willing to buy some neat customized handmade wooden combs (she even suggested stuff like a head comb with argon oil infused in the wood for her hair) on etsy or whatever.

While that sort of stuff could have a program written which could have a machine built which could take "I want an object for this purpose or goal" as inputs and output the resulting object to given specifications, we aren't quite there yet.

We're still a hell of a lot closer to that than we are to something which can make it meet the desired goal with interesting tweaks or flaws that turn into a better outcome (I clipped one of the stiff end pieces on a comb off because they're so fucking stupid argh, and nipped one of the end teeth by accident so rather than leave it rough where it would snag I smoothed it down and lined up the one beside it, etc, until I hit on the rounded shape as the right one) than was initially expected, and that's still not quite the same sort of "I desire this object" effect as something which someone spent time working on.

Once you can solve that problem, I'm pretty sure you'll be looking at a fully self-aware android whittling a piece of wood for you because it enjoys doing it.

[Tack]

I do sometimes wonder why people make things in such inefficient ways. Maybe beard combs are designed to be as hipster and look as oldschool as possible, at the expense of actually doing the job.
Or it could just be a breakage prevention thing.

...But then I remember that shit can already be solved by having decent welfare.

It's only after playing Democracy 3 that I realized that decent welfare is basically a myth.
In order to provide state services and welfare, the government has to make income, and seeing as there currently isn't any state-run businesses, that income is just made from taxing corporations and people who work.
Corporations which are pretty happy to just move their offices somewhere else so they don't have to deal with your shitty taxes.
I have no idea if the automation revolution is going to make this situation better or worse, as bigger corporations have more power whilst relying on less people.

Could be cute if big pharma or something ends up being the ones designing the first synth or domestic ai, and then when the government tries to seize the method of production, there's a grand robot exodus as the whole company goes 'Nope, we're moving to X', and suddenly the country has backslid.
Could be the only path we'll have to socialism is with a corporate republic, and it'll end up being very cyberpunk and quite shit.

[alway]

Which is why capitalism breaks down with automation. If you can make enough for 100% of the population with 5% of the population working, there are no jobs for the other 95%, and so far as capitalism is concerned, they can most efficiently be put to use if they go die in a hole, and the system will quite successfully work towards that end. Capitalism is all about physical capital, not people or society; that system, its corporations, its concentrated wealth where capital creates capital for the sole benefit of those who have capital... all need to go if human values are to be held as higher than capitalism's values. That's what makes it Fully Automated Luxury Communism, rather than Fully Automated Luxury Capitalism For The Benefit Of The Rich Survivors.

As for the Luxury bit, that comes down to what happens next. Supply everyone's needs, and ensure they will continue to be supplied, and you will end up with a lot of things happening. Suddenly you've got an entire class of people freed from jobs they hate which were useless to society anyway who can pursue their interests. Art, philosophy, posting videos of their cat with a box on its head; all those things that will not be fully automated precisely because they have no value to Capitalism (okay, so the cat one might be automated). "Tax the rich" is very much a misconception, as it's as similarly revolutionary a shift in how society functions as the transition from subsistence farming to cities founded on excess harvests. Not a policy change, but rather a fundamental change to how society operates based on that fact that all these people are no longer necessary for survival and are worthless to traditional economics, and society can choose to either value people for existing or discard them. The themes of cyberpunk, essentially.


Edit, further musings. As for a barometer of how close to this we are? I'm not entirely sure. From what I recall (and have unfortunately lost the source, so it may be entirely inaccurate), 2/3 of dollars 'earned' are currently compensation for labor (from fry cooks to CEOs making tens of millions). 1/3 of dollars 'earned' come from interest from owning a thing; with something like 1/2 or 1/3 of that going to the very top 1% (or maybe 0.1%? can't quite recall). So that would be 1/3 of income you can redistribute without touching labor revenue, and involves things like stocks. Me personally, over the past 1.5 years, the value I've extracted from society in such a manner is approximately equal to working a full time minimum wage job, for absolutely nothing other than owning stuff! The great irony being, the only reason to hoard wealth like this is because of a lack of stable socialist systems that would guarantee a decent retirement or secure income in the case of illness. Which is really the *entire* reason the middle and upper middle class own financial assets. So maybe that's an indication of how silly things are already.

Editedit: to clarify, US centric figures; some countries have moved in the direction of nationalized wealth funds, most notably Norway's fund originating from a nationalized oil industry https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway

[Max™]

I do sometimes wonder why people make things in such inefficient ways. Maybe beard combs are designed to be as hipster and look as oldschool as possible, at the expense of actually doing the job.
Or it could just be a breakage prevention thing.

I hope hipsters decide beards are lame soon, sick of the fuckers already, but I originally thought the breakage prevention thing was the reason too.

Then I started whittling and hacking away at these fuckers, no way in hell it has anything to do with breakage, if for some reason you break one of these it's because you got shot with it in your pocket, or fell and embedded it in your face, chipping it on your skull, or were in a nuclear blast.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I just finished smoothing down the end things on the pink one for the missus, and then smoothed all the edges off the teeth and whatnot, fuckers were sharp! Women just kinda accept this!

As for the Luxury bit, that comes down to what happens next. Supply everyone's needs, and ensure they will continue to be supplied, and you will end up with a lot of things happening. Suddenly you've got an entire class of people freed from jobs they hate which were useless to society anyway who can pursue their interests. Art, philosophy, posting videos of their cat with a box on its head; all those things that will not be fully automated precisely because they have no value to Capitalism (okay, so the cat one might be automated). "Tax the rich" is very much a misconception, as it's as similarly revolutionary a shift in how society functions as the transition from subsistence farming to cities founded on excess harvests. Not a policy change, but rather a fundamental change to how society operates based on that fact that all these people are no longer necessary for survival and are worthless to traditional economics, and society can choose to either value people for existing or discard them. The themes of cyberpunk, essentially.

It's not a theme of the stories, but The Culture is the best example, I think, of a truly communist utopia, but yeah, making things because you like them, like doing it, jobs involving performance as part of the task itself like slapping pizza dough with big dramatic spins and tosses for the hell of it, that's fun, worth doing for some sort of payment.

Pushing artificially over-valued objects around for artificial increases in that value so you can have a little portion of it chipped off so you can use it to purchase other over-valued objects including ones you require to live?

Nah, fuck capitalism in the ass, fuck supply and demand "invisible hand" bullshit.

The great irony being, the only reason to hoard wealth like this is because of a lack of stable socialist systems that would guarantee a decent retirement or secure income in the case of illness. Which is really the *entire* reason the middle and upper middle class own financial assets. So maybe that's an indication of how silly things are already.

You can probably hear my eye twitching from there, had I a monocle it would have shattered when it hit the wall.

[wierd]

Thoughts on modern comb design:

Utility over aesthetics.

The curved toothline of a modern come is there because the main place you use a comb is on the head, not the beard.  The head is curvaceous, and a curved comb will have all the teeth touching the scalp.

The thick and fine teeth on the same comb is for utility. For the price of 1 comb, you can get 2 combs worth of utiity. A detangling comb (big wide teeth) and a straightening comb (finely spaced small teeth). Just flip the comb around for the job you are doing.

For special uses, combs are still specialty items. Picks for instance, or combs for very curly hair, or for holding hair in place rather than grooming it.

Rather than wood though, I would suggest ABS plastic and a good 3D printer. With vapor smoothing, you can get a very nice finish on the resulting comb. Sufficiently smooth that you can make an injection cast mold from it, and reproduce it with other materials.

[Tack]

Pushing artificially over-valued objects around for artificial increases in that value so you can have a little portion of it chipped off so you can use it to purchase other over-valued objects including ones you require to live?
Nah, fuck capitalism in the ass, fuck supply and demand "invisible hand" bullshit.

Sad thing is, you have to realize that the people who will be pushing the boundaries of artificial intelligence are the same people who stand to profit off it.
State-Sponsored science is pretty inadequate in most cases.
So yeah, we could try for the socialism thing, but considering that the capitalists will be the ones with the high walls and killer robots, good job getting there.

[Max™]

Thoughts on modern comb design:

Utility over aesthetics.

The curved toothline of a modern come is there because the main place you use a comb is on the head, not the beard.  The head is curvaceous, and a curved comb will have all the teeth touching the scalp.

The thick and fine teeth on the same comb is for utility. For the price of 1 comb, you can get 2 combs worth of utiity. A detangling comb (big wide teeth) and a straightening comb (finely spaced small teeth). Just flip the comb around for the job you are doing.

For special uses, combs are still specialty items. Picks for instance, or combs for very curly hair, or for holding hair in place rather than grooming it.

Rather than wood though, I would suggest ABS plastic and a good 3D printer. With vapor smoothing, you can get a very nice finish on the resulting comb. Sufficiently smooth that you can make an injection cast mold from it, and reproduce it with other materials.

I like working with wood though, this isn't about doing it optimally, it's about making something that I enjoy having made. The combs in the post above yours both had teeth the same length and annoying ass end bars, now the one on the left has the shape I found useful for beard stuff, the one on the right has smoothed down and rounded off end bars and unsharpened teeth now. I could probably find similar designs, but it's satisfying making the ones we had into something I like more.

[Tack]

Not sure if wood will be a good material for it. My mind is sent to a certain podcaster talking about his wooden toothbrush exploding in his mouth.
Old combs were made out of bone or horn or something, yeah? Depending on your level of carnivorism. Also pretty sure Ivory might be slightly illegal/immoral nowadays.

[wierd]

Wooden combs were common. It needs to be a hardwood, and needs to be either polished or sealed with a varnish/finish of some kind. Boiling in hide glue and then polishing is a good method I understand.

Some wood types are better than others. Cedar hard wood was frequently used I understand.

Traditional japanese combs for women were typically made of wood.

[Max™]

Yeah, I wouldn't go with wood if I hadn't already spent years messing around with it enough to know which types behave in what ways and are good for what purposes.

They are a neat bit of tech in that weird position where it's so old that people forget about it being such, and I can't actually find any convex toothline combs outside of like, shearing tools and french twist combs, which is damn weird.

I am looking forward to 3d printers getting ever cheaper though.

[Tack]

And then the day when we culture and print wood cells.