P2P Foundation on Fully Automated Green Communism. Aaron Bastani has written a fantastic, concise analysis of the current political economy vis a vis environmental realities. While I agree that we need attractive visions of the future (see our recent Commons Transition Primer for ours) and that, yes, States and unions are key components for any realist, short-term change, I found the article’s undertones to be too growth-oriented and vanguardist – the Commons or community-led change are sadly absent. Furthermore, populism assumes a dumbed down electorate, rather than an enabled, politicised one. (more)

Almost all markets in history have been based on rules for allocating scarce resources (e.g. food, land, energy). (more)

Iain Banks SciFi series http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culture_series

aka UBI, see Basic Income, Guaranteed Annual Income

Robin Sloan character - novella funded via KickStarter in 2009 (more)

It's tempting to think you can take the SmallWorld approach to Route Around BigWorld. But reality tends to intrude upon your TAZ. Peruchi was never arrested. He was never even charged. But his money was gone, under the absurd premise that property can be guilty of a crime, even if its owner isn't. The police department deposited Peruchi's money into its own operations budget, as it was permitted to do under Arkansas' drug forfeiture laws. Peruchi was told that if he tried to fight the county, his case would be turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration. "Try fighting the feds," he was told. Even if Peruchi had won in court, his legal costs would likely have amounted to more than the $19,000 he was fighting for, and it's improbable that he would have been reimbursed for his legal fees. Peruchi is but one of many similarly outrageous stories told the new book Mugged By The State, by Randall Fitzgerald... Fitzgerald's ax grinds against power in general. It isn't partisan. His examples come from programs and policies embraced by both Republicans and Democrats. He documents outrageous abuses carried out in the name of the War On Drugs, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the EEOC, the EPA, and cases were city and state governments have seized land from ordinary people under Eminent Domain, only to hand it over to politically potent corporations and influential businessmen.

Genius (formerly Rap Genius) is an online knowledge base. The site allows users to provide annotations and interpretation of song lyrics, news stories, primary source documents, poetry, and other forms of text. Launching in 2009 with a focus on Rap Music, the site expanded in 2014 to cover other forms of media and a platform for embedding annotations into other websites, such as Pop, Literature and R&B. That same year, an iPhone app was released. To reflect these new goals, the site re-launched as simply Genius in July 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genius_(website) (more)

Luke Coughlan: Could fully automated luxury communism ever work? Do we continue to allow technological innovation to be directed towards profit and social control? Or do we instead re-route towards emancipation? (more)

Toby Shorin: The Desire for Full Automation. These two words usually come attached to another pair: “luxury communism.” Originally proposed by Aaron Bastani, the phrase’s popularity was compounded by the release of Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams’ 2015 book Inventing the Future. Intentionally or not, “fully automated luxury communism” has become the calling card of left accelerationism, the basic political stances of which I will now briefly rehearse. (more)

Brian Merchant on Fully automated luxury communism. Bastani and fellow luxury communists believe that this era of rapid change is an opportunity to realise a post-work society, where machines do the heavy lifting not for profit but for the people. (more)

Robin Sloan: Serialized mystery: The Strange Case of the New Golden Gate, Chapter 1. On a sunny Tuesday in June, Stella Pajunas missed her burrito. This wouldn’t have been a problem except that multiple pedestrian onlookers watched her step onto the sidewalk, reach upward and vanish. Burrito, splat. (more)

The Threat Of Automation Is A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy. The production difficulties for the Tesla Model 3 are well-known, and form part of Elon Musk’s reputation as a visionary who sets overly ambitious goals that nonetheless inch us into the future. Beyond the insanity of the targets themselves, however, came poor management decisions that stemmed from Musk’s overestimation of automation (more)

Do We Need Fully Automated Luxury Communism? What happens after artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics displace huge swathes of routine labor? According to Aaron Bastani, a London-based researcher, the answer would appear to be “Fully Automated Luxury Communism”. Strange as it may seem, Bastani believes that automation is driving capitalist societies headlong into a post-capitalist utopia: Think Star Trek or Ian Banks’ Culture Series. (more)

Give Us Fully Automated Luxury Communism. Imagine a life in which all your basic needs were met (more)

Artificial Intelligence, & Fully Automated Luxury Capitalism. People who airily dismiss fears about medium-term technological unemployment are committing the Reverse Luddite Fallacy. (more)

Kristian Niemietz: Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Review. ...Karl Marx’s ambivalent attitude towards capitalism. Disgusted as he most famously was by capitalism’s excesses, he was clearly also impressed by its immense productive potential. He reconciled these conflicting impulses by dreaming up a theory of history in which capitalism represented a necessary but transient stage in the story of human progress. (more)

Taoism (/ˈtaʊ-/), or Daoism (/ˈdaʊɪzəm/, /ˈdaʊ-/), is a philosophical tradition of Chinese origin which emphasises living in harmony with the Tao (Chinese: 道; pinyin: Dào; lit.: 'the Way', also romanised as Dao). The Tao is a fundamental idea in most Chinese philosophical schools; in Taoism, however, it denotes the principle that is the source, pattern and substance of everything that exists.[2][3] Taoism differs from Confucianism by not emphasising rigid rituals and social order, but is similar in the sense that it is a teaching about the various disciplines for achieving "perfection" by becoming one with the unplanned rhythms of the universe called "the way" or "tao".[2][4] Taoist ethics vary depending on the particular school, but in general tend to emphasise wu wei (action without intention), "naturalness", simplicity, spontaneity, and the Three Treasures: 慈 "compassion", 儉 "frugality", and 不敢為天下先 "humility". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taoism

see Taoism

Sun Tzu (/suːn ˈdzuː, suːn ˈsuː/ soon DZOO, soon SOO;[1][2] Chinese: 孫子; pinyin: Sūnzǐ) was a Chinese general, military strategist, writer and philosopher who lived in the Eastern Zhou period of ancient China. Sun Tzu is traditionally credited as the author of The Art of War, an influential work of military strategy that has affected both Western and East Asian philosophy and military thinking. His works focus much more on alternatives to battle, such as stratagem, delay, the use of spies and alternatives to war itself, the making and keeping of alliances, the uses of deceit and a willingness to submit, at least temporarily, to more powerful foes... Sun Tzu's The Art of War uses language that may be unusual in a Western text on warfare and strategy.[29] For example, the eleventh chapter states that a leader must be "serene and inscrutable" and capable of comprehending "unfathomable plans". The text contains many similar remarks that have long confused Western readers lacking an awareness of the East Asian context. The meanings of such statements are clearer when interpreted in the context of Taoist thought and practice. Sun Tzu viewed the ideal general as an enlightened Taoist master, which has led to The Art of War being considered a prime example of Taoist strategy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Tzu (more)

military strategiest (more)