Microstory 1357: Elevated

< > Table of Contents

High School Student: It’s very nice to meet you. My name is High School Student.

Elevator Supervisor: Nice to meet you too. I’m Elevator Supervisor. I wouldn’t normally entertain an interview from a high school student, but your brother speaks very highly of you, and thinks I should give you a chance. Just so you understand, there is a very slim chance that I’ll be able to hire you for this position, or any position. All of our work is full-time, and you’re still attending classes in high school, correct?

High School Student: I am, yes, but I’m very interested in working with you once I graduate. I only have one more year left, and then I’ll be able to commit more hours.

Elevator Supervisor: Why don’t you just focus on your studies, and wait until they’re over.

High School Student: I’m a very good student, I don’t have to try very hard, and I still get good grades. I don’t have to focus in order to pass my classes, and if this is what I want to do with my life, then I don’t see a problem with that.

Elevator Supervisor: If you’re such a good student, why don’t you go to college?

High School Student: My family can’t afford it.

Elevator Supervisor: I don’t claim to understand your family’s financial situation, but they do have loans, grants, scholarships. I went to college myself, and didn’t pay a dime until I was finished.

High School Student: I should rephrase that. My family can’t afford for me to remain outside of the workforce for the next five years. I need to get into it now.

Elevator Supervisor: Well, there are plenty of part-time jobs around here. You could work concessions at a movie theatre, or lifeguard in an indoor pool.

High School Student: That’s still a money thing. I don’t expect to be paid as much as an experienced elevator installer, but I can’t imagine starting salary is less than minimum wage.

Elevator Supervisor: Well, it’s not, but there’s a reason why there’s a difference between minimum wage part-time jobs, and full-time jobs, like this one. Those jobs require no experience, and hardly any skills. They let you make money for situations just like this, when the worker is still in school. I understand that it may not be enough, but that doesn’t mean you’re entitled to more. If everyone who needed money was always just given that money, then would money even hold meaning?

High School Student: Actually, it would, yeah. Money is only as valuable as the economy determines. Traditionally, we’ve based that value on the labor that went into generating it, but that is not the only method. Universal Basic Income studies have proved that people still contribute to society, even when they’re handed money they didn’t do anything to earn. In fact, some data even suggests people in those studies are even more willing to be productive, because they’re not so stressed out about finances.

Elevator Supervisor: Well. This isn’t a universal basic income study. We would expect you to be at work every day, complete the jobs as requested, and earn your paycheck. Like I said, we currently have no part-time positions available. I would have to make an exception, and I’m not sure that’s fair to the rest of my workers.

High School Student: Why would it not be fair? I don’t wanna be rude, but I don’t understand the logic there. The people who work full-time for you, I imagine are not wishing they could work fewer hours if it meant they would make less money. Who among them would look at me and my exception as a goal they envy? Give me less than you do them per hour, and give me fewer hours. No one is going to covet my circumstances.

Elevator Supervisor: That is a good point. I just don’t want to set a precedent, and start encouraging other people to beg us for work. A part-time elevator installer can install fewer elevators per day, which means the rest of your team will have to pick up the slack once you leave, or before you get there, depending.

High School Student: That is a valid concern, and I have no argument against it. I certainly don’t want to make it harder for others.

Elevator Supervisor: [...]

High School Student: [...]

Elevator Supervisor: Here. I’ll give you the number for my parts supplier. They’re local, so you wouldn’t have to drive far. They don’t rely on a team structure either, so your logic behind an exception could work on them. They may even have part-time positions, I don’t really know. Don’t tell them this, but if you work for them for a year, and don’t cause any problems, I’ll consider adding you to my own roster once you’re completely available for it.

High School Student: Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. You didn’t have to be so kind.

Microstory 1237: Rebecca Halcyon

< > Table of Contents

Much like Camden Voss, Rebecca Halcyon worked in the past. For him it was a hundred years ago, but for her, thirty-eight. She never quite understood the significance of the time difference, but then again, she never understood why she was chosen in the first place. Back at home, before all this time travel business began, Rebecca was a real estate agent in 2049. So it wasn’t the most noble profession, but at least she wasn’t a car salesman. Though to be fair, car salesmen were a dying breed—since people weren’t buying cars in person anymore, if at all—so she might have done that had she been born earlier. Though perhaps, not even that was true, because when she found herself stuck in 2011, the first thing she did was start helping people. No one told her what to do, but people around her were suffering from having lost their homes to a mudslide, and she seemed to be in a position to help. Rebecca “volunteered” there for a couple hours before she even realized that she had somehow traveled into the past, and not just to the other side of the world. She didn’t know how it happened, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t the last time. The work started off pretty irregular at first; two days on, three days off, one day on, four days off. But then the pattern leveled out, and pretty soon, she was spending all her work hours in the past, and all her evenings and weekends at home with her live-in girlfriend. Hers was a rough working schedule for someone who was supposed to be living in the mid-21st century. By then, the standard workweek was closer to thirty hours, with some people choosing to not work at all, and live solely by the universal basic income they received from automated corporations, via the government. Still, even though it wasn’t the easiest job in the world, Rebecca came to love her new life. She might have felt differently had she been stuck in the past forever, with no way to go home, but she was allowed to stay with Judy when she wasn’t busy, just like most working professionals. Other time travelers weren’t so lucky. She would later meet other people like her, who were sent off to different points in time and space, sometimes never to return to where and when they came from. So this was her life. She lived and worked at two different time periods, neither of which ever lined up with each other. She did eventually catch up with her life’s timeline, and even encountered her younger self, but she never reached the day it was when she first disappeared. In fact, she was allowed to retire the day before, effectively closing her loop.

Microstory 986: UBI Trials

< > Table of Contents

In the early days, everyone was responsible for themselves, and their family. But our ancestors quickly realized how much safer life was when groups of families stuck together. Many traits humans carry today were formed thousands of years ago to promote survival. We use it for slapstick comedy now, but there’s a very good reason why seeing someone throw up makes you throw up. Involuntary vomiting is a result of bad food, so when it happened to one tribe member, those whose gag reflexes were triggered had a better chance of surviving, thereby passing on their genes. The ones who weren’t triggered to vomit as well, may have died of whatever poison was in the food, and never had children. Even yawning is believed to be have some sort of tribal evolutionary component, which would explain why it’s so fascinatingly contagious. So believe me when I tell you I understand why our predecessors chose capitalism. Their best means of survival was to distribute skill across the population. It was impractical for every single person to know how to make pelts, and cook, and hunt, and gather, and so on. Giving everyone a responsibility to focus on allowed our species to develop at a phenomenal rate. This has served us well, on the whole, for all this time. The best thing it’s done for us was to get us to a point of technological achievement so great, that we will soon no longer need to work at all. We have been unfortunately indoctrinated by society to believe we must work forty hours a week to be fulfilled. As an autistic person, I find it incredibly grating when I hear someone in the elevator talk about how it’s not yet Friday, or if it is Friday, how great it is that it’s Friday. As the song goes, everybody’s working for the weekend. So I know you don’t actually like your work, which is why it’s so baffling how fundamentally invested you are in it. I do my job so I can make money. I don’t personally care whether my clients get their pieces of mail. Why would I? It has nothing to do with me. If they stopped paying me, I would stop doing it.

A bunch of smart people out there have come up with brilliant alternatives to work, and these new plans are being tested in trials all over the world, as we speak. Money has no real value, which is why we call it a fiat. In our country, it used to be backed by gold, but even gold doesn’t have as much value as we think. The market is based on whatever arbitrary value we place on things, and it changes all the time. Gold has many uses. It’s probably in your phone. But it’s also in your jewelry, and jewelry doesn’t do anything. The only true commodity on the entire planet is labor. Everything comes down to labor, so what do we have if we get rid of that? You may think nothing, but in reality, it’s everything. A lack of work would allow us to explore hobbies. I would probably take up painting, even though I’ve never really tried it. I would go backpacking, and skiing, and I would write more. What would you do with your time if you didn’t spend twenty-six minutes commuting to work, eight hours working, an hour at lunch somewhere necessarily close to work, and twenty-six more minutes going home? Automation will allow us to receive the same benefits that human labor does today; more even. This automated labor will generate revenue for large corporations, and since those corporations don’t have to pay their workers, they’ll be expected to contribute to a government fund. The wealth from that fund will be redistributed to all citizens; possibly with variable conditions, like age or lawfulness. We can do this, but we’re going to need a dramatic shift in the general psyche. The 40-hour work week did not become standard in this country until 1938, and there is no reason to not lower it again. Studies have suggested shorter working hours would help stave off climate change, actually increase gross domestic product, and lower suicide rates. I know you’re all real big on fixing mental illness, since that’s the only reason for gun violence. I would like to say thank you to everyone who has created, or participated in, a universal basic income trial. Even when it doesn’t work, we learn valuable data, so we can institute something ubiquitous. I fear that, if we don’t ever do this, then we will all perish, and leave this world to talking sea otters.

Microstory 981: Upcoming Equality

< > Table of Contents

In my research for a topic I originally called Growing Equality, I learned that inequality is actually on the rise, much like violent crime, both of which I found surprising. While I can’t actually give you the statistics proving my supposition that things are getting better, I can promise that trends do not necessarily predict the outcome. When you’re watching a sports competition, and things start looking bad for your team, you don’t immediately turn it off and assume you’re going to lose, do you? Well, maybe you do, as I’ve heard fans nauseatingly recount to other fans what they missed when they did this. But you shouldn’t, because there is always hope for a shift. While recent data demonstrates that inequality has increased in every single region of the world, that doesn’t mean we won’t win in the end. The rich are getting richer, the poorer poorer, and hostilities are adding up, but we are working on ways to fix these problems. I keep bringing up automated labor, and universal basic income, because tests have proven that they work, when implemented properly. I believe strongly that they are the future of our global economy, and I won’t believe otherwise unless I find myself on my deathbed, having lost out on the opportunity to use other technologies to become immortal. Basically, if we don’t progress enough to conquer death by the time I’m old enough to die of age-related medical issues, I can’t be sure it will ever happen, because we are on course to solving that problem. It won’t matter how much richer the rich are when we decide money is worth nothing anyway, and the first step towards that is increasing the value of material objects that really matter—like computers, 3D printers, and nanotechnology—decreasing the value of pointless trinkets and wasteful machines, and decreasing human labor. The reason there is still so much inequality is not because that’s what the people want, but because most of our governing systems were built on a foundation of injustice. The majority are, at the very least, tolerant of people who are unlike them. Many accept our differences, and some even love diversity. It is the system that’s working against us, but systems can be changed within the span of a political campaign. If a bad candidate can suddenly wrest control over a state from its people, than certainly a good candidate can do the same thing next time. No, equality may not growing, but it doesn’t have to, because the strongest opposing actors are operating under borrowed time. They will die soon, and we will prevail, but only if we keep preaching our love, and not giving into discrimination. Love trumps hate.

Microstory 934: 3D Printing

< > Table of Contents

3D printing, also known as additive manufacturing, sounded absurd to me when I first heard whispers of it years ago. Objects are made of so many different kinds of materials, so it seemed impractical to keep each one on hand in raw form at all times. As that one guy in The Graduate says, in one of only two scenes I’ve watched, “plastics.” Plastic is manufactured from a myriad of chemical compounds, and formed in a multitude of ways. It is widely available, cheap to make, and capable of assuming any form. It also lasts for thousands of years, which is why it’s so bad for the environment when wasted. Despite its issues, plastic may be our best hope to combat scarcity and inequality. One day, I believe everyone will own two 3D printers; one for synthesizing food, and another for clothing and household items. Certain places will use other types. Every hospital will be equipped with artificial tissue synthesizers, in order to replace bodily organs. Construction companies will utilize specialized mega-printers to build skyscrapers in a matter of days. The average consumer will never have to leave their housing unit to shop. Goods will be selected online—or rather, the technical specifications for them—and printed in minutes, maybe hours. Entire companies will be shuttered, and replaced by those in the business of processing raw plastic cartridges, and delivering to end users via automated drones. This, combined with other societal advances, such as universal basic income, will render jobs virtually irrelevant and unnecessary. I won’t speak more on that, though, because if you’ve been following, you know how excited I am for this future. As of now, most people have no use for a 3D printer of any kind, but in fewer than thirty years, they will be as ubiquitous as microwave ovens. It may sound crazy now, but in the same span of time, the idea of owning a tiny computer the size of a calculator, with access to the whole world, was the stuff of science fiction.

Microstory 903: Strategy Challenges

< > Table of Contents

A few years ago, my family and some family friends participated in one of those escape rooms. It was profoundly frustrating, and I feel like I should have done better, but it was also a lot of fun. If you even so much as met me once, you likely know that I have a strong aversion to recreational drugs, which includes alcohol. Aside from all the medical issues it can cause—and its skill of driving people to manslaughter—my take is that if you can’t have fun without altering your brain chemistry, you may be experiencing some underlying deficiency. These problems should be addressed using what I feel to be healthier solutions, like therapy, self-improvement, ferris wheel rides, or sex. Escape rooms, scavenger hunts, and the like are good wholesome fun, that can, and should, be enjoyed sober. You see, the point of life is to cultivate fond memories. Drugs like alcohol are designed, however, to inhibit neural connections. That’s not just a side effect either; it is the purpose of the exercise. The next time you wake up hungover, and have the instinct to proclaim that you must have had fun last night, the truth is that you didn’t. To paraphrase Manchester Orchestra, there is nothing you have when you die that you keep. I would add, except maybe memories. I see the rise of strategy challenges—exemplified by higher stakes reality competitions, like Survivor and Flipsides—as an unintended argument against recreational drug use. We should do more with that. We should construct escape buildings, which can take days to complete, rather than hours. We should foster a society that values sober recreation over pointless busywork for an arbitrary forty hours a week. Hell, as little interest as I personally have in it, we should make more of those adult summer camps. The real reason—again, as I see it—people do drugs, is because their lives suck. It’s not all their fault. We’re expected to have these jobs, many of which don’t actually contribute positively to the world. We spend so much time trying to make as much money as possible that we don’t have any time to spend it. And even when we do, we’re taught to revere material possessions, rather than experiences. So everybody has all this shit, and nobody’s done much of what they love. As I’ve said before, things like universal basic income, material synthesis, and general automation are all things that can help us realize a world where fun is the name of the game. But we’ll never reach it, even once we’re capable of it, if we keep teaching our kids to not want it, and damning millennials for disregarding work for work’s sake. So keep playing GISH, and keep locking yourselves in rooms, just so you can break out of them. And be sure to check out Flipsides season one, coming summer of 2030.