Conquer, Model, Distribute, and Personally Self-Replicate

This essay is written for the Robotic Age, making the extravagancies of the supremist corporation possible, and perhaps, inevitable.    

Google is a leading suspect, rivalled by the online retailer, Amazon. We will all be as wealthy someday, having the products and services as the richest, so this manifesto is intended to accelerate that process by providing a vision for consolidation of resources for public good, and where appropriate, of the automation of mass production and the distribution of the production process into local factories, and for basic necessities, made easily produced within the residence itself. All products, essentially, are for free.

·         Merge Google, Amazon, UPS, Wal-Mart, and others to form a supreme corporation

·         Determine products used for basic needs like material sources, food, water, shelter, transportation, and communication and buy-out or create such businesses

·         Enable the corporation to open its membership to anyone followed by issuing a basic income above the poverty line in the form of credits to purchase products the corporation produces.

So why should the above listed companies merge? Both Amazon and Google are interested in using autonomous vehicles: Google to produce more detailed maps of the world and Amazon to deliver packages to individuals. Products sold by Amazon and Wal-Mart can be assessed and manufactured by the corporation itself rather than depending on other companies to make products for them. UPS and Wal-Mart already have a robust logistical network to store and deliver products to place onto shelves or deliver to individuals.

It may well be that Amazon and Google decide to become supreme corporations without merging. Customers would then have two different credit schemes, and granted both corporations are interested in making and selling almost everything imagined, our corporate citizens would have twice the spending power and twice the wealth. This would mean the more supreme corporations compete, the more credits individuals have, and the greater variety of products available.    

Once supreme corporations are recognized there will be pressure to reform and redistribute the power of these agencies. If this manifesto is ignored, supreme court orders may well have to demand corporations become as transparent as possible to the degree the corporation must make it as easy as possible for a product to be made by the customers themselves, while leaving products not easy to personally make, like large vehicles or microprocessors, to a fleet of robotic handlers and assemblers.

Mass production facilities will one day operate autonomously and be viewed much like we view museums today, but with more interaction, so that as customer demands change, production methods can be observed and reformed first hand onsite or from an internet connected mobile device. Supreme courts may also force supreme corporations to adopt the credit scheme this manifesto suggests, but it is more likely a national currency would be issued beforehand. Legislation, no doubt, will need to reflect such judgements.

By looking at Japan we have a better idea of what to expect in the future. The Japanese not only embrace technology, but will dearly depend on it into the 2020s as elderly will outnumber able bodies to care for them.  The University of Tokyo is working with major corporations to provide a complete care package for the elderly, effectively automating the entire economy, with a network of robots making and delivering products while robots within the home ensure caretaking and the completion of household chores.

Small business will be at risk, unable to compete.  A national credit scheme might help keep small businesses going as customers would not be coerced into depending on the supremist corporation’s free credit scheme.  If the state remains passive amidst corporate takeover, small business may become a luxury for the few.

Humanoid robotics will be built to learn craft skills and easily teach people how to do the same. When such ability arises, the supremist corporation must work to become public domain to provide materials channels for local production. Working in teams, these craft robots will provide for a local area. The first craft robotics teams will be slow, but in a few years of collective trail-and-error, they will work flexibly at the speed near enough to that of the mass production robots before them.

Locally made goods will enable smaller vehicles to deliver directly to individuals. Mass produced goods may well continue to depend on mass transit, yet with vehicles being autonomously driven, they could drive day and night to a destination thousands of miles away, beating mass transit times of the present, used for the local supply chain, until delivery items are needed from the region to travel back to the mass production factory. Such method would lessen the need for distribution centers to be converted to factories to more locally produce goods.

Landfill will be the primary source for materials. Western births are in decline, and granted infrastructure of small and distributed production and servicing spreads globally, populations will stabilize to continually recycle materials without extracting virgin materials, preserving wild ecologies. Robotic excavators, equipped with various sensors, will plough into rubbish, separating and storing materials nearby. Recycled materials will then be delivered by robotic vehicles belonging to factories turning raw material into product.

Many will continue to flock to cities, particularly as self-replicating infrastructures come to Africa and the Middle East, but a new counterculture generation will go into the country with their robotic companions to pioneer villages and family or community farms and factories. Policy similar to the Homestead Act in the United States could give those living in cramped government housing the ability to form a smallhold near a newly formed village that ensured the best of the country and city remain within walking distance.

The ultimate corporation would buy land as a developer and invite customers to design structures like roads, bridges, apartments, factories and the like as a socialist approach to a heavy handed capitalism. Robotic builders will be able to revive the country homes of Edwardian times to bring about a politic of neo-aristocratic egalitarianism whereby everyone has a right to a country house, including the lifestyle without exploiting people.

At some point both corporations and the state will seem restraining. Tech will be crafted to educate better without educators, and such education will make for more independent thought and action, giving rise to methods, places, and institutions that support such process.

·         Solve difficult problems by organizing groups to solve them, like a hackathon, rewarding problem solvers with recognition.

·         Each product will have shares attached to it; so for each contribution, shares are generated for the product. Those that make the most contributions have the most shares and earn the most credits.

·         Rights to land will require a program for negotiation in a world where money is obsolete.

·         The supreme corporation stage of history will come before and nurture the age of self-reliance.

·         Google campuses equipped with robotics and fabrication tools will spread to local areas and branch out into various specialties (like apparel or automotive) ensuring personal autonomy amid the irony of global corporate dominance.