The Rock City, a UBI, and Cultural Evolution

The premise behind the Rock City was recapped earlier tonight and it includes a link to a PDF with the articles from the first series which built up the idea of the Rock City and how to construct an enormous underground complex with living space, entertainment, parks, utilities, etc.  Ithaka:  The History of the Rock City by Request (PDF link)

Note:  that's not a link to the PDF but rather the article which describes it and contains a link to it.


There are two fundamentals to the Rock City idea, that there will be far fewer jobs so many do not have work or the expectation of it and there will be a Universal Basic Income.

Note:  the UBI was covered in an earlier article.  Ithaka:  I'm Sorry I Called You a Moronic Slime-Sucking Bitchface


We can pick up whether a UBI is good or bad elsewhere and that's fine but here it's a fundamental because we're interested in what happens if it's true.  We can't predict what percentage of people will not be working since that's just fortune telling.  We can't predict either what that will do to the overall economy although that was covered to some extent in the previous article by those more qualified than I.

Something we can predict is the social consequence and this involves something else which came up in an earlier article, the tribal nature of people.  Ithaka:  The Rock City Won't Be Some Sterile Science Project

When we have a group of unemployed people getting together, it may wind up in a revolution but there's little reason for these ones to do it.  They have an income which adequately meets their needs and they don't feel like they're getting handouts from a parental state.  They can get jobs if they want to train up for this or that but only if they need more stuff because some of us do like getting more stuff.  There's no reason to fight for a right to work when it's already there.

There's usually not going to be social resentment unless any one group feels it's being treated unfairly relative to another.  People on a UBI probably won't expect a budget which supports cocaine and caviar but they will want to eat nicely and go to movies, ball games, ... the things people do.

Note:  no desire to pursue it deeply here but there is expectation drug use will decline substantially in the absence of resentment, hopelessness, etc.  However, on balance there's the destructive force of too much idle time.


Visualize hellacious art colonies.  Artists don't have to suffer anymore and that's good because they know they sure as hell won't ever get rich because there's too fucking much art already.  Art was great when you're Caveman Joe who does cave paintings but your only competition is two hundred miles away and his work isn't portable anyway.  Even now (cough) art comes from every iPhone at the rate of a herd of stampeding bison; in the Future it will inevitably come even faster with more ways to do it.

The same thing will happen with music and writing since there's so damn much of it there's no possible way to read a tiny fraction of it or hear more than a smattering of all the music.  That won't kill either pursuit but it will change some fundamental reasons for doing either one when fame and fortune are even less likely than now.


Likely artists will congregate and they often do it now ostensibly for financial means but many stay even when they can afford to leave because they like the jam with people who think way out on an edge, even when that edge may seem completely insane to others.

This is the nucleus of the kind of tribalism we want.  For one example, Germany takes pride in krautrock and they sure did invent it.  We want that kind of cultural pride in our Rock City and this art colony is one way it would be likely to manifest itself.

What effect the lack of suffering will have on artists is yours to project but we don't want to get too Psychology Today with this.  Or perhaps we can go with basic artist's ennui:  oh dear, do we really need to revisit whether suffering is necessary for art?  (sniff)


In general, there's the potential for that kind of tribalism for any group of like-minded people and the relative ease of getting one place to another in the Rock City should enhance immeasurably the ability of people to engage in multiple forms of tribalism.  Maybe there's one for the Preservation of O-Gauge Model Train Sets and why not.  You will need to get a job if you will hang out with that crowd since that's some extremely expensive kit but you can do that if you want.


We can reasonably predict a large class of people will not be working and we know idle hands are the Devil's workshop ... blah de blah.

Here's an excerpt from the UBI article mentioned previously:

Another example is the UBI pilot project in Namibia. When the country began distributing a basic income to its citizens, there was a drastic change in the behavior of the population.  The UBI led to greater employment rates as people created jobs for themselves, the general poverty levels dropped 18 percent, and the crime rate plummeted 36.5 percent.  There was also a 29 percent increase in general income levels (this increment was exclusive of the basic income distributed).  Just like Alaska, Namibia reported an improvement in general wellbeing of the society with the implementation of the basic income grants.

-  VB:  Universal basic income: If a robot takes your job, it could actually be good for you

Note:  internal links are to Der Spiegel and Huffington Post, respectively.  Both are in English.


It doesn't appear the Devil got too busy with them but that point still stands since the Rock City will remove a whole lot of hassles.  Getting from place to place eats a whole lot of our time and that will be largely eliminated in the Rock City.  Even after they have created jobs there will still be time because of that hassle elimination.

There will also be less reason to go anywhere since a whole lot of your work, regardless of whether it's paid, will be in your home pad.  How much longer can it be before telephones throw holograms in front of you so even customer-facing jobs could be done from home, not that so many will exist with robos front-ending most types of customer-facing jobs.


The fascinating part to me is I don't see any particular clairvoyance in this when there are multiple efforts toward projecting holograms right now.  It's a big step to get telephones to do that but the demand would be huge.

All of these things come so soon it's not even sci fi anymore.

Ed:  what happens after that?

Exactly.  We won't have it with the doom and gloom, everyone's going to die thinking.  We do want to know what happens after these things come so ...

Ed:  the Rock City theme won't stop any time soon?

Not likely.