A Tale of Two Transhuman Nations

A TALE OF TWO TRANSHUMAN NATIONS.

(Author’s note: What follows is not a review of Zoltan Istvan’s novel ‘The Transhuman Wager, but rather some thoughts inspired by its plot and the issues it raises. My intended audience are people who have read the book, so I do not intend to give a synopsis of its plot, nor will I shy away from spoilers.)

In the previous installment, we saw how Transhumanist Wager has a lot in common with Atlas Shrugged. I ended with a mention of another story and it, too, can be said to have a broadly similar storyline to Istvan's novel. That story is "Manna", a novella by Marshall Brain. What these stories share in common is that they both depict a dystopian America, and the emergence of a high-tech nation which shows the way toward a transhuman civilization. At the same time, these stories contrast one another by having different causes for the initial dystopia, and also disagreements concerning how a transhumanist nation should be run. So, while in some ways they are broadly similar, in other ways they are quite different.

THE DYSTOPIAS

In the case of Transhumanist Wager, its dystopia and its causes have already been discussed in previous essays. I shall say no more about it, other than to briefly recap my thoughts. I argued that Transhumanist Wager may seem to depict an America sliding into decay because of religious phobias of technology, but the causes of the dystopia are really due to America as depicted in the novel being an Empire in an age of decadence, with players in top positions of authority having vested interests in keeping it that way.

Manna's dystopia is brought about by a scenario mentioned earlier in this series: Robots taking over the workplace. I think that when most people think about such a scenario, they imagine it being manual labourers who are displaced. In their mind's eye they see a future where there are robot burger-flippers, robot shelf-stackers, robot garbage collectors, and so on. But, in Marshall Brain's novella it is not manual workers who are displaced, at least not at first. Rather, it is managers and supervisors. The 'robot' which gives the story its title is not really a robot at all. It is a software program that can take a job and break it down into a sequence of microtasks. Each step in that sequence is so simple, just about anyone can do it. Furthermore, there is no need for anyone to memorise the steps. This is because, as well as the computer it's installed on, the hardware side of Manna consists of a wireless headset that each employee wears. Manna micromanages those employees, telling them what they are required to do at each and every stage in the sequence.

In a way, employees working at a business that uses Manna are turned into automatons. They no longer have to think for themselves. Manna supplies the knowhow, and it uses people's sensory organs, hands, and mobility to get the job done.

As Manna becomes installed in more and more workplaces, and particularly as each Manna becomes integrated into a network, the job market is transformed. Knowledge, and to a large extent skill, no longer give an employee any competitive advantage. Any person can be taken off the streets, set to work with a headset in place and, provided they can obey simple instructions, they can immediately start doing that job. The only skill that does give a competitive advantage is the ability to successfully complete each step quickly. This soon becomes an essential ability because of the following reasons. Manna has a huge pool of unemployed workers to select from. After all, management and supervisory roles no longer exist, so whoever filled such occupations is out of work. Secondly, Manna is charged with reducing waste and raising productivity. It constantly monitors how quickly an employee is completing each step, and can compare that to the time taken by the most proficient workers. If you are too slow, you are fired and a replacement can be found within an hour of your dismissal. But what makes this environment ultra-competitive is that fact that, once one Manna deems you unsuitable for employment, that information is uploaded to the network which means no other workplace managed by Manna will employ you, either.

Faced with zero job security, and the threat of permanent unemployment in a society with very little welfare, employees are under enormous pressure to accept long hours and to work at an exhausting pace throughout the day. Because Manna is driven to increase profits and cut costs, wage levels begin to go down. As Marshall Brain wrote:

"At any moment Manna could replace you with another warm body, and that meant you did what you were told, for minimum wage, or you got fired. Manna, and the corporations that used it, knew that was the equation".

The overall result is to push the rich-poor divide to extremes. On the one hand, Manna is very successful at lowering costs, reducing waste, and raising productivity and efficiency. So profits are skyrocketing and the owners are made very rich indeed. But, on the other hand, employees are treated more or less as disposable robots, made to work until they are worn out, and then they are replaced and forgotten about; just one more person on the scrapheap of the unemployed.

It is within this harsh, ultra-competitive America that it finally happens: Robots as we tend to imagine them emerge in the marketplace. With their sophisticated brains, capable sensory equipment, dextrous hands and agile mobility, these robot labourers soon outcompete their human rivals. This obviously results in a massive displacement of workers with no hope of getting employed elsewhere. Manna deals with this underclass by doing what it does best: Minimise costs and reduce waste. No welfare cheques are issued. Instead, cheap government housing in the form of terrafoam buildings are erected on "trash land well away from urban centres so nobody had to look at them". Each building is designed to pack in as many occupants as possible. That is not to say that the people living in these ghettos are mistreated. Each person gets a five foot by ten foot room with a bed and TV, and there are robots keeping everything clean and tidy and serving meals three times a day. But all these people have are their basic needs met, and a TV to pacify them, nothing more.

Marshall Brain describes America at this point in the following way:

"With the arrival of the robots, tens of millions of people lost their minimum wage jobs and the wealth concentrated so quickly. The rich controlled America's bureaucracy, military, businesses and natural resources, and the unemployed lived in terrafoam, cut off from any opportunity to change their situation...American democracy had morphed into a third world dictatorship ruled by the wealthy elite".

CRITICISMS OF MANNA'S DYSTOPIA

So, in both Transhumanist Wager and Manna, we have dark visions of America transformed into a dystopia. But whereas in Istvan's tale we have religious fears of technology and government interference resulting in economic recessions and depressions, in Manna we have rapid adoption of robot technology within an aggressively capitalist environment resulting in the country becoming a 3rd-world plutocratic dictatorship.

I think one advantage 'Transhumanist Wager' has over 'Manna' is that it understands the weakness of its dystopia. As the story's State-led watchdog committees pass increasingly draconian laws in an attempt to restrict and suppress Transhumania's technological prowess, all this does is result in a black market for those technologies. As the story says, "you don't tell a prosperous, hardworking mother and father whose child is dying of leukemia when a cure exists 3,000 miles off coast. That's when the parents...arrange a private black market charter flight to Transhumania for a week of treatment".

In Istvan's story, the measures the anti-transhuman government put in place ultimately serve only to push the likes of Jethro to find ways of circumventing those restrictions, and it is that determination and dogged problem-solving ability that results in the establishment of Transhumania.

But while, like 'Wager', 'Manna' also depicts a transhuman nation, here the contrasting dystopia and utopia are presented as alternate visions of the future. There is very little discussion about the fragility of Manna's dystopia. It is true, despite what anarcho-capitalists may think, that we do not live in a Newtonian universe with mechanistic economic laws that tend toward fairness if only the State would stop interfering. Rather, an economy is better compared to an ecology. Entrepreneur Nick Hanauer said, "capitalism, because of the fundamental multiplicative dynamics of complex systems, tends towards inequality, concentration and collapse".

In Manna there is clearly rising inequality and concentration of wealth. The story also pretty accurately depicts what results from this relentless concentration of wealth. As wealth, power and income continue to concentrate at the very top, societies are changed from democracies to neo-feudalist rentier societies like 18th century France.

But what Manna does not really touch upon is the inevitable collapse of such deeply unequal societies. Wherever you find such societies, you can guarantee that there will either be an uprising of the downtrodden majority, or there will be a police state. Manna's dystopia does have something of a police state. The 'have-nots' are packed into terra-foam housing, out of sight and out of mind of the wealthy elite in their own gated communities. Robots patrol the ghettos and prevent anyone from wandering too far from the poor area.

Where it goes wrong is thinking that a police state put in place to perpetuate extreme inequality can be permanent. But it really can't. The reason why not is because rising inequality is ultimately self-defeating; it is terrible for business. Contrary to what neo-classical economists thought, capitalism's strength does not lie in efficiently allocating resources. Instead, its strength lies in efficiently creating solutions to problems. Economic growth is best determined not in terms of how much wealth there is but rather as the rate at which problems are solved.

The rate at which problems are solved depends upon how many active participants an economy has, both as entrepreneurs who can offer solutions and as customers who vote for those solutions with their money. Maximising participation requires investment in the kind of infrastructures that nurtures a middle class, because the middle classes are the source of growth and prosperity.

REFERENCES

“The Transhumanist Wager” by Zoltan Istvan “Manna” by Marshall Brain “Beware Plutocrats, The Pitchforks Are Coming” by Nick Hanauer