A theory about Box-cages or The dangers of living in a square sized economy

Disclaimer: This text is a somewhat messy first try to sketch out an image, a metaphor that has begun to be the basis for how I see life as the Anarchist I still am. There are a lot more aspects of it to explore than the strict economical one, so the topic shall return, but as of now this is as clear I can make it outside my own head. Hopefully further texts and references to this particular idea will help to make the concept fully understandable. 

When I fully became an anarchist an image came to me. Life, existence and our human societies are filled with different types of boxes. A box in this sense can be defined as a code of conduct, a rules set or more or less well defined ideals to live up to. These boxes exist for the purpose to define what something is and to be able to exist within one or several of them you are obliged to follow the rules set to the tee. If you don't you are, more or less nicely, asked to remove yourself from the box prompto. Follow the rules or you will get the label "can't be inside - throw out" stamped on your forehead. 

I fully became an anarchist not primarily through ideological understanding but from being in a relationship that should have been perfect based on the chemistry between F and I. We we're best buds, absolutely magical in our friendship and in our courtship of one another but as a relationship we simply didn't work and the core of it was that F had a very distinct idea about how a relationship that included her should look like. She was a conservatively minded person and adding to that quite an ambitious and hard-working one too. She liked her boxes, her faith, her holy books (Paul, you absolute dipshit of a writer..) and she liked her idea of working ethics, her ideas of what a good life entails and what it rightfully can demand of you. She liked the idea of a relationship to be as putting on a pair of blue jeans, a steady piece of clothing that would aid her in her quest to.. well, live life as defined by the boxes she had chosen for herself. 

I didn't. I shared her faith but already back then I struggled with almost every part of it. God was a distant mystery, more evil in my mind's eye than good, and the bible - gosh - the bible was a battle field in more places than I care to admit. I could enjoy to wield my sword on those battle fields from time to time - noticing as I did, that it actually strengthened my faith rather than dismantle it but still - the kind of believers that spoke warmly about the Book made me vary. "How the heck can you be in love with that book?" It perplexed me. It was important, sure. But important in a way that, let's say, eating cough medicine was when being sick as a child. Unpleasant and rough, but good for you in the very end of things.. 

This isn't supposed to be about the Bible or the christian faith in general, I just need to lay the picture of how boxes can work in distinct areas. Point is I had very hard difficulties to follow the codes of conduct constructed for the Christianity of my youth and young adulthood. I just couldn't do it. Add to it that - for reasons - I had quite some issues just to fit in, in society in general. I didn't consider me lazy but so much of the tasks and expectations asked by the Big Brother of society at large just made me halt in my steps. I couldn't do them. I couldn't perform in the way it was asked of me. A teacher once said to me that I had issues with demands and that I should try to fix that issue with myself. I know she meant sort of well, but ah, I rather fix the issue with the demands in the first place. 

F and I didn't make it. I was no pair of blue jeans, I was a red dress. A beautiful item of clothing that one sees in the shop window and simply can't resist - even if the price tag is unreasonable and you so seldom have a reason to wear a red dress in the first place. To F I was magical, fun and oh so exciting - but I wasn't for the future and it wasn't time for her to have fun in an exciting way (get my drift if you will, fellas..) now as it were anyway. So we ended. I got the stamp mentioned above on my forehead and went out of her boxes and of her life, never to be seen again.

*** 

The relationship with F made me see that these kind of boxes are everywhere in our society. It's not too surprising since every group or community of people need some form of conduct - regardless if your group is about playing chess or playing soccer, or if you are a family trying to stay together through the constant crisis of life - whatever the activity may be and whatever the constellation of individuals coming together to form a group - you still need a set of rules and principles for your time spent together and to be able to do whatever it is that you want to be doing, in such a correct and effective way as you may see fit. This isn't strange at all, I couldn't see it be in any other way. Without these boxes, human activities melts down in a chaotic form of anarchy which not even us anarchists are very found of if we are forced to being honest.. 

No, the problem I want to discuss here isn't the boxes in themselves but when the boxes gets so large and rigid that they aren't boxes anymore, but rather they are cages - then we have a problem. When a society gets so used to the over-arching box-cage it has adopted for itself that the real world becomes invisible to it, then we really have a problem. And I would say we are there today and if possible we need to do something radical about it. Preferably yesterday. 

Just a short example of what I mean, in a practical and economical form. I am currently spending time in my congregation, borrowing a room to be able to write unbothered. In return I sometimes do some smaller tasks, especially for my priest J. One time I did a task so notably well for her a thought came to me. I knew that the congregation couldn't employ me, there is no money and employment is expensive, but J herself has presumably a not too shabby salary - why couldn't I be her personal assistent for a few bucks here and there?

"Right", another thought immediately said. It's not gonna happen because that is illegal. You can't work for a legal private person just by a whim like that. J, in this case, needs to form a private firm, register me as an employee and pay all the appropriate fees for that endeavor. All in all, a simple priest salary won't be able to carry the cost of a personal assistent - even if I would work for below minimum wage. Ah, another thing eh - if you don't pay enough you can't have employees even if you do everything else correct and the employees accept the terms willingly! Follow the rules of the fucking Box, you economic peasant or cease doing what you are planning to do! No, don't even think about alternatives, you awful scum! The Box-cage is all there is - all is within it, nothing is outside of it and absolutely nothing can be allowed to be against it. 

Our society has become so rigid that we have outlawed a huge deal of every possible form of employment and most of us don't even reflect on it, ever. We just follow what the Box has taught us since kindergarten and we think that we therefore must live in the most perfect of economic worlds. In fact, the real world doesn't care a jota about our ideas and rules set that we basically worship within our boxes. There isn't really any economic crisis for instance and there is very much not any unemployment crisis. Not outside of the boxes we see economy from. There is an endless amount of tasks and possible jobs out there that we can partake in, create and evolve as we need to and there is almost an identical amount of different currencies to help us reach an agreement via, if dollars or euros for some reason wouldn't cut it. If we want a task done it's by definition always possible to find a way to form it to a job someone will be willing to accept to do, given a suitable compensation is offered. But, we don't see it, because the Box declare that 99% of the solutions available is strictly illegal and if you don't follow the legal path you are an enemy to the society. So I remain unemployed, and J doesn't get an assistent. The world is poorer all in all, but the Box-cage is happy - the rules has been followed. 

This pattern can be seen in almost every societal problem we have today. I will try to stay on the economical side for this particular essay, but I suspect you can find that the forming of Box-cages is the root to almost all of our societal problems as of today if you just look at it properly...

Anyway, let's talk about AI!

***

AI has reached a point where its evolution is mind boggingly fast. The enthusiast is already expecting AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) to show up any minute now and when that is finally stable employment as we know it is dead and done for since AGI will be able to perform any general task a human could be seen doing. The price for work will plummet and when AGI is implemented in functioning humanoid robots no one will even think the thought of employing a human being. 

I've been studying a forum on Reddit (r/singularity) on this subject and since I knew virtually nothing on the subject before the release of Chat-GPT I've been mostly quiet and just been reading to learn from the ground up. Hence I have no clue when they are off the radar in terms of technology and computer science but I know a thing or two about economy and what is to be considered sound politics regardless if the situation happens to be extreme compared to our current days (I would say that to ponder odd human circumstances and possible societies is the main topic when libertarians come together. "How would NAP be applied here and how can it be protected there? "Hmmm" ad nausium....) and I was surprised, not to say a bit shocked, that almost everyone - even self proclaimed libertarians - said they longed for and could only seriously consider socialistic and communistic solutions to the economic upheaval that according to them are next to inevitable in our near future. UBI (Universal Basic Income) is a must and a necessity. AGI will crash Capitalism or at least it will make the mega-corporations even more super- rich while the rest of us will crawl desperately in the dust. We must collectivize, statify AGI as soon as possible. No alternatives is there to be seen. At all. 

Now. Admittedly I'm a bit rusty when it comes to economics but I just know that UBI can't be the dream solution they claim it will be. It's a welfare system as any other and fits in the Box-cage of western neoliberalism just very neatly. If it worked it would be implemented already today but it simply doesn't. It's too expansive and the incentives are too damaging even for our wrecked version of an economical society. I like the idea of UPI in terms of welfare alternatives (down with the bureaucrat! ABAB!!) but it's simply more of the same. And to resort to communism as a solution for economic problems... I thought tech nerds were supposed to be smart and open-minded, but no, way too many of them can seriously entertain and vouch for perhaps the most idiotic societal system of all time and not be ashamed by it. Astonishing and quite eye opening - everyone can be a moron, also the computer guys apparently. 

*

So smarty pant - What is your own solution then? 

Well. My solution is that there isn't actually any problem at all. Not in the real world. AGI promises to be a tremendous tool to humanity. Probably the most powerful we ever have dreamed up and when it is coming to fruition humanity as a whole stands to gain a massive amount of added wealth to our lives. This can't be a problem if you aren't clinically insane. The problem is though that most of us are. The threat of AI is not to our wealth, our livelihood or what have you. The threat is to our boxes and Box-cages. AGI will absolutely result in a revolution in how things are done, in what way and by whom but it's just an axiomatic fact in the real world that there is an endless amount of possible tasks that can be converted to paying jobs and almost an identical amount of currencies to make the jobs attractive enough to reach fulfillment between two parties. When AGI takes care of the majority our current tasks we can explore completely new areas of possible things to do, if we were allowed. We are blind to this possibility because the Box-Cages around the world strictly forbids every attempt to explore the possibilities lying in this direction as the situation is currently. But when AGI comes fully however we simply must! 

There is no other choice. In the same way nearly all farming tasks and jobs went away when the general Machine arrived and as a result humanity invented an incredibly amount of new stuff to do in half a heart beat - we must do the same if not today so very soon indeed. The difference between then and now is that our Box-cages have grown dazzlingly much in scope and rigidity. Most people can't see beyond them and if they would be forced to, they would get severely mad in various ways. AGI is a massive potential to us, humanity. It's an equally big threat to the Box-cages we for some reason chooses to reside in, but the solution is to wreck the cages, not to resort to the worst one imaginable - namely communism.

Please, singularity-folks, this really should be elementary to you. 

**

I can imagine some people reacting at this point - wanting to rebuttal along the lines of:

"Hey now, our economical systems and rules aren't there to be evil or anything like that. They are there to protect us from robber barons or other forms of greedy capitalists. We need the economy to be strictly regulated to avoid people being abused or just overly exploited in general. Your "box-cages" are simply necessary compromises to keep the worst capitalistic tendencies at bay. Look at the horrors of the 19th century, all the child labor, no workers rights, no security nets, nothing. Is it really what you want to come back at full scale?" 

I hope the quote above isn't too much of a straw man and I won't argue against it since this particular essay isn't strictly an economic thesis but rather a basis for a system of thought harboring in my mind. All I want to to say is that these types of arguments is a rather flagrant example of something the Box-cage really likes us to keep doing, namely: Only attack or discuss what is seen, keep forgetting all the things that is not seen. This leftist (The current Box-cage of the west is distinctly skewed to the left as I see it) trope of the mind is why left minded people keep criticizing stuff like sweat shops, child labor in poor regions or times or rich entrepreneurs but seldom go out and actually - through their own work and effort - better the world economically themselves. It's so much easier to follow an easy path inside the box and yell at everything that looks ugly in the world while doing so. Yes, the path to our current wealth was paved with poor people doing poor peoples work with a lousy pay in return, yes, people with sketchy intentions used the economic boom to enrich themselves while others literally starved and yes - today we have rights and safety nets that is unmatched in every other era. So...? Does these facts change anything about what rigid systems are doing to everyone trying to think or act outside of them? Because here is the kicker: You can't ever see all the things the rules and regulations killed off. All the dreams, aspirations or crazy ambitions people in the end didn't even consider because they knew they would be deemed illegal in one way or another. The Box-cages is a prime example of the "survivor bias" phenomenon: We can only see what works today because only the things that work today is allowed to exist in the first place. If we scrapped all public, state financed, safety nets and "rights" nobody can guess what voluntary and free alternatives would rise in their ashes. It's not allowed to be seen! 

This is the reason why I don't really care so much about rebuttals from individuals still inside the box-cages of our current system. Of course they will react instinctively negative towards all thoughts that doesn't care for the rules system of the cage - they need to seriously step outside of it before they are able to hold an opinion on these matters worth considering. Societal boxes are fine indeed, but when they have become cages they are a severe blight to the human mind's ability to think properly. That may be the prime reason why I really can't stand them anymore. They make us non-human and most of us don't ever notice how it is done..

I simply found it ugly. Dangerously ugly.