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			SOCIAL VIEWS

	A book on technology that advocates its use for human welfare
must be based on views, however fragmentary, as to what constitutes
welfare.  In this chapter, I will state my views.  They are rather
definite and are based on considerable thought, but I cannot give for
them the same kind of fairly conclusive arguments that I can give for
my technological views.

	Thus, on technological issues, I hope to be convincing, and
if I am not, I will try to put it better, or if I have made a
mistake, to change my views.  In most technological issues,it is
usually possible to reach an agreed position with technologically
trained and capable people.

	In the case of social views, I am not so hopeful.  I hope
that my views will appeal to others; at least they will tell them
where I stand.  If you disagree, I may only be able to shrug my
shoulders.  This is not because social matters are intrinsically
incapable of objective and convincing scientific treatment.  It is
merely that the social science problem is very difficult, the
difficulties are compounded by emotion and commitment to the views of
one's social peers, and so not much progress has been made.  I should
further confess poor acquaintance with the work that has been done.

	I recognize that the statement in the last paragraph that
social science and engineering are possible is controversial.  I have
have rejected the idea of saying nothing about my social views,
because I wish to advance them in spite of their incompleteness, and
also I fear having attributed to me views that I don't hold.

	Of course, a reader with different social views might still
agree with some of the book's recommendations for reasons of his own.

	In the main, I shall identify human welfare with the
satisfaction of human desires.  This has certain problems.  First,
people don't always desire what "enlightened" people think they ought
to, and this failure to want the good is often attributed to improper
influence.  In my opinion, improper influence exists, but affects
desires only slightly, e.g. they really want those big cars.  Second,
happiness does not necessarily come from getting what one wants.

	Two centuries ago, the authors of the U.S. got around this
problem by proposing a right to the pursuit of happiness rather than
a right to happiness itself.  Two centuries later, this still seems
to be the best we can do.

	As a corollary of this, we shall consider societies and roles
that people migrate towards as better than those they migrate away
from.  More precisely, when a person migrates from role A in society
society B to role C in society D, we shall assume that he knows what
he is doing unless there is explicit evidence to the contrary.

	Both capitalism as practiced in the United States, Western
Western Europe and Japan, and socialism as practiced in the Soviet
Union, Eastern Europe, and China work more or less, and neither is
likely to collapse for internal reasons.  They will be changed only
when the people of the countries concerned through the political or
revolutionary mechanism decide to change them.  At present, I think
that capitalism works better, but there is no guarantee that this
will always be the case.  I am inclined to the view that some form of
of socialism will be found to work better once social science is
understood well enough so that the bugs in present socialist
mechanisms can be fixed, but I don't think this is likely to happen
soon.  The evidence that capitalism works better now is that
socialist countries require emigration restrictions, and capitalist
countries do not.


	Equality is desirable, but there are two limiting
considerations.  First, a society that had equality as its primary
social goal and sacrificed other considerations to achieve it might
end up inferior to one that adopted other goals in that the uniform
standard of life of the equalitarian society might end up at a low
percentile of another society.  Second, at some point of equalization,
some members of the society might consider it to their advantage to
secede and form their own society without the people they regard as
less productive.  Whether people should be allowed to secede with
their property may be questioned, but I regard the right to secede
with the clothes on one's back and one's immediate dependents as a
fundamental human right.  Therefore, a society should not be so
equalitarian as to be unstable with respect to secession.  The most
important reason for developing manned space travel in the near
future is to make this right effectively available.

	Many of the developments proposed in this book will first be
available to the more well-off members of the society.  In the main,
I regard this as OK and subject only to slight modification by social
policy.  I think that measures for equalizing society should
concentrate on equalizing incomes and that people should spend their
money as they please.  Free goods are desirable only when demand is
not much affected by price and there is a substantial saving in not
accounting for the item.  Some of the systems proposed, however,
require universality for effectiveness, and achieving the universality
may require a subsidy, and giving the subsidy may be in the interest
of those taxed to give it.  

	If a way of achieving a benefit requires a social decision and
uniform adoption of new practices, I regard this as a blemish.  Such a
way of achieving the benefit is to be regarded as inferior, other
things being equal, to one that requires only the marketing of a
product with the benefit given to the people who buy the product.  The
product has the advantage over the system that each person makes his
own decision on whether this benefit is worth more than another.  Of
course, many benefits can only be achieved by systems, but in
important areas there are choices.

	The reader of the book will note that many of the proposals are
intended to solve problems that are presently regarded as moral.  I am
not against improved ethics in dividing pies, but my talents run more
to thinking of ways of giving everyone all the pie he wants.

	The social benefits obtainable from the products and systems
advocated here include increased prosperity, comfort, and safety.
However, the goal that is closest to my heart is increased
individuality---to increase what can be accomplished by a single
individual or a small group.
	
	It is often said that the advance of technology is at the
expense of people's individuality.  Certainly most of the
opportunities provided by technology for making things with less labor
have involved the division of labor and replacing the labor of
craftsmen with the unskilled labor of machine operators doing small
operations.  Thus technology provides societies and individuals with
the opportunities to make certain tradeoffs, and societies and
individuals have often chosen cheapness over craftsmanship.  In my
opinion, most of these decisions have been correct from the point of
view of most of those directly affected.  This is shown by the
migration of people into areas where the changes have taken place
from areas with the more primitive economies. 

	However, society is much richer now than it was when the
industrial revolution started, and it is time to look at opportunities
that may be provided by technology for increasing the power and
opportunities of individuals.  In this, we shall include individuality
in work, in self-expression, in culture, in recreation, and in all
other areas of life. 

	In the first place, many such opportunities have already been
taken. 

	The most important of these opportunities was provided by the
automobile.  In my opinion, this is the correct way to interpret the
abandonment of public transportation by all who could afford cars in
spite of the greater physical efficiency of public transportation.
People highly value being able to go when they want to go, change
their minds when halfway there, and carry hundreds of pounds of goods
and children.  They also value the comfort of the car and its privacy.
(Some social thinkers believe they should value the companionship of
mass transportation, but they don't).  This is not a complete list of
the reasons why people prefer cars to mass transit nor does it
attempt to evaluate the strength of the reasons.  Anyone who proposes
to change this preference should understand them better and should
include an analysis in the environmental impact statement. 

	[Don't forget individual objects like cars made to order.]
	[But put that somewhere else.]
NEW GOALS FOR TECHNOLOGY


	This book puts forth a number of propositions about technology
and present society, supports them to some extent, and draws some
conclusions about policy changes that will make technology a greater
benefit to society.  A final polemical section attempts to refute some
rival views.

	We start by giving some propositions:

	1. Technology has been a great benefit to society, and it will
continue to benefit society even if the proposals made here are not
adopted.

	2. The development of technology is uneven; in some branches,
technology follows closely behind the scientific developments that make
new technology possible.  In other branches, there are great lags.
These lags are partly due to the tradition of the branch of technology,
partly due to defects in the organization of society.

	3. In the near future, the most important technology is
computer and automation technology.

	4.  It would be desirable for everyone to have an income
sufficient for necessities even without working.  America is still too
poor for this, but doubling the GNP would probably make it possible.

	5.  Provided the world population can be kept from increasing by
more than a factor of five, the whole world can attain double the
American per capita GNP and maintain it indefinitely.  We don't say how
long it will take, but 100 years is my guess and 50 years would be
possible if the policies proposed in this paper were adopted.

	6.  The Chinese cultural revolution complaint that scientists
and technologists aren't sufficiently motivated to serve the people is
warranted in all countries.  Their solution to the problem, however,
would not be a solution in more developed countries.  [It turned out
not to be a solution in China, because the Maoists were even less
interested in serving the people].

	7.  A system in  which  the fear  of mass  unemployment  is
banished is possible and necessary for progress.  [Not a correct
formulation].

	8.  People whose interests are adversely affected by progress
should be bought out even if they don't have a property interest in the
present legal sense.  This includes tenants, workers who will lose jobs,
even union officials whose unions will disappear, legislators whose jobs
are to be streamlined away by merging governmental bodies.  This will be
expensive, but bribery is cheaper than tolerating endless delays.