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NANOCON PROCEEDINGS page 12

VII. APPENDICES

Appendix C: The Cosmic Pie by Tracy Harms

Although Mr. Harms was unable to attend NanoCon, he has submitted the following discussion of the "Inheritance Day" concept proposed by Eric Drexler.

Dividing the Cosmic Pie:
The Political Economics of K. Eric Drexler
by Tracy Harms

In the words of Marvin Minsky, "K. Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation is an enormously original book about the consequences of new technologies. It is ambitious and imaginative and, best of all, the thinking is technically sound." Even granting that this opens the foreword of that very book and is thus something of an advertisement, this statement is true enough. Engines of Creation is certainly one of the most interesting books on projection of future advances in technology ever published, and it deserves widespread attention. But even if "the thinking is technically sound", it is severely flawed in its attempts to address political aspects of technological advances. This paper will address only these errors, but there is much more to the book than the points to be discussed here. The reader is encouraged to investigate Engines of Creation for themselves. The heart of that book, discussion of molecular assembler technology, is essentially correct and highly important. It is precisely because this is a book so worth reading that the political stance taken in it must not go uncountered.

Both K. Eric Drexler and I fall under the label "libertarian," in a general sense of the word. The term is so broadly encompassing, however, that standing under the same political umbrella is not much assurance of similarity. Drexler may be characterized a libertarian democrat, for he values and relies upon democratic institutions and traditions. My position, in contrast, is egoistic, and clearly a more radical departure from the mainstream of modern politics.

This paper details my criticism of the policies advocated in Engines of Creation, and of the assumptions which underlie them. My first concern is with Drexler's proposed division of wealth; the arguments against it are straightforward applications of Austrian economic theory. Next, I rehabilitate a modified version of Locke's criteria for property, which Drexler dismissed in the process of formulating his property division plan. I then focus on the fact that conquest, not philosophical standards, have historically been the support for property rights as prevail today. In holding a democratic value system, Drexler is not only unaware of the political oppression which underlies the institution of property title, he further trusts governmental power to oversee nanotechnology research and development. I explore how this trust is unrealistic, as is most clearly shown by his predictions regarding nanotechnology and taxation. I also note that while advancement of such technology promises overall increase in wealth, it will not necessarily produce greater equality of wealth.

Eric Drexler soft-pedals his libertarian bias, never making it overt over the course of this book. Evidence that his views differ from the mainstream is his certainty that the property system of today will not serve with justice the extension of humanity into space habitation beyond Earth. Eric Drexler is an advocate of social reform, and his concern for justice finds expression in a plan to provide equal opportunity. Concerned with the problem of finite resources, he makes a proposal for division of wealth. But the pie-in-the-sky idea he serves us is half-baked.

Tucked in the notes at the back of the book is a discussion of how the real finitude of existence should be dealt with as a socio-economic problem. Here is Drexler's analysis:

But the limits to exponential growth ensure that universal, unconditional abundance cannot last indefinitely. This raises questions regarding the distribution and ownership of space resources. Three basic approaches might be considered:

One is a first-come, first-served approach, like the claiming of homesteads or mining sites through use. This has roots in the Lockean principle that ownership may be established by mixing one's labor with a previously unowned resource. But this might allow a person with a suitable replicator to turn it loose in space to rework--and thus claim--every unclaimed object in the universe, as fast as it could be reached. This winner-take-all approach has little moral justification, and would have unpleasant consequences.

A second extreme would be to distribute ownership of space resources equally among all people, and to keep redistributing them to maintain equality. This, too, would have unpleasant consequences. In the absence of universal, stringent, compulsory limitations on childbearing, some groups would continue to grow exponentially; evolutionary principles virtually guarantee this. In a surprisingly short time, the result of endless redistribution would be to drag the standard of living of every human being down to the minimum level that allows any group to reproduce. This would mean hunger and poverty more extreme and universal than that of any Third World country. If 99 percent of the human race voluntarily limited its birth rate, this would merely allow the remaining one percent to expand until it absorbed almost all the resources.

A third basic approach (which has many variations) takes a middle path: it involves distributing ownership of the resources of space (genuine, permanent, transferable ownership) equally among all people--but doing so only once, then letting people provide for their progeny (or others') from their own vast share of the wealth of space. This will allow different groups to pursue different futures, and it will reward the frugal rather than the profligate. It can provide the foundation for a future of unlimited diversity for the indefinite future, if active shields are used to protect people from aggression and theft. No one has yet voiced a plausible alternative.