A few years ago I had an insight. The lovers of the old dominant paradigm will tell you that the only reason innovation occurs is because someone spent money developing one, based on the hope they would profit from it. I call bullshit; all the basic tools that AR describes in the middle part (sticks into plowshares) came about because there was a need and somebody saw a way to make things better and/or easier, and the profit was to save labour or increase output. For everyone, because once John Plowshares demonstrated is device for tilling soil, anyone and everyone in the village could make a copy and enjoy the benefit, and the whole region was able to use more land more productively for the whole community, and thus people had more time to *live*
The drive to innovate or invent or improve tools and ideas isn't only - and for the majority of human history couldn't have been - the province of Capitalists.
(tiny point: the vehicle headed toward Jupiter isn't free from the law of gravity, but making productive use of it.)
"Not getting the basic necessities of life must have been horrifying and terrifying. It still is today."
Not that I disagree with your conclusions, but this whole trope of the necessity of work to escape starvation and domination in the age of "subsistence" is false. Many estimates of relative leisure time, from the paleolithic to the medieval, suggest that humans have never had as little leisure time as modern Americans do today.
The horror and terror you describe has been "normal" only for a few hundred years. It used to come in the form of famine (often enforced), then in the form of landlessness. Now it comes in the form of debt. If we had none of these, no one would fear them.
For subsistence farmers/gatherers, there could have been no comparable terror. Imagine always knowing you can scrape up a meal and a decent place to sleep. Imagine living in a tribal structure that ensures no one starves. The horror story of brutish and short life in the premodern age is a fairy tale meant to reinforce our modern addiction to debt and regular employment.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/01/us-military-drone-ai-killed-operator-simulated-test
When I saw this story I thought of this post. We have created AI capable of learning, and it is, due to its programming, being taught to kill us
A few years ago I had an insight. The lovers of the old dominant paradigm will tell you that the only reason innovation occurs is because someone spent money developing one, based on the hope they would profit from it. I call bullshit; all the basic tools that AR describes in the middle part (sticks into plowshares) came about because there was a need and somebody saw a way to make things better and/or easier, and the profit was to save labour or increase output. For everyone, because once John Plowshares demonstrated is device for tilling soil, anyone and everyone in the village could make a copy and enjoy the benefit, and the whole region was able to use more land more productively for the whole community, and thus people had more time to *live*
The drive to innovate or invent or improve tools and ideas isn't only - and for the majority of human history couldn't have been - the province of Capitalists.
(tiny point: the vehicle headed toward Jupiter isn't free from the law of gravity, but making productive use of it.)
Like living in Star Trek. I wonder if Roddenberry did any philosophizing?
"Not getting the basic necessities of life must have been horrifying and terrifying. It still is today."
Not that I disagree with your conclusions, but this whole trope of the necessity of work to escape starvation and domination in the age of "subsistence" is false. Many estimates of relative leisure time, from the paleolithic to the medieval, suggest that humans have never had as little leisure time as modern Americans do today.
The horror and terror you describe has been "normal" only for a few hundred years. It used to come in the form of famine (often enforced), then in the form of landlessness. Now it comes in the form of debt. If we had none of these, no one would fear them.
For subsistence farmers/gatherers, there could have been no comparable terror. Imagine always knowing you can scrape up a meal and a decent place to sleep. Imagine living in a tribal structure that ensures no one starves. The horror story of brutish and short life in the premodern age is a fairy tale meant to reinforce our modern addiction to debt and regular employment.