Brains working towards machine consciousness

 I like helping other people.  I generally don't look for compensation for it, either.  One might think that that should mean that I think the 'Big Society' is at least a good idea, whether I agree with the implementation details or not.

And, to be fair, I am not totally against the idea.  As long as it doesn't drive me in to debt, and leaves me able to try to save for buying a house one day, and enables me to spend time with my Godsons while doing a full time job and a PhD, I have nothing much against 'pitching in'.  Not that I actually believe we need the draconian cuts which will actually force us to have to do this work for free, because they are ideologically driven nonsense which are extremely likely to plunge the country into (at the very least) the second dip of a double-dip recession.  

The problem is, though, that I need to earn enough money to be able to pay for the things the Government insists I pay for - and my rent and food, a way of getting to work, that sort of thing; basics.  I suspect that I will soon, along with a couple of millions of others, be back to those basics, if I am lucky.  It is more likely that I will end up dipping below them, as the sector I work in is under a sustained attack.

I wonder - does the fact that I help with child care (gratis) for a family I am not biologically related to count?  Do I earn brownie points for that?  Do I, I wonder, get any credit for doing my best to help anyone in my social network?  The problem there, of course, is that many of them don't live in the UK, and maybe that is a society a 'bit too big'.  Of course, that looks like I am expecting a reward for helping - I am not.  But if (when) the Government's cuts mean that I no longer have an actual job and so need to claim benefits, will the help I provide others count for me (possibly allowing me to continue to claim benefit...) or against me - as has always been the way during my adult life?

Austerity is probably a good thing.  But if we all stop spending so much, the cherished economy will suffer.  Although the debt-driven economy of the last three decades was obviously insanity (strongly advocated and supported by politicians of all hues), we do need, I believe, to have some internal market to keep the economy alive - we don't export much.  If we aren't spending money on things, either being provided by the public sector or by the commercial market, we don't need to earn so much, and the tax base suffers (because, while we might scream about not getting pay rises, companies won't be able to pay us).  Of course, this is not what the Government want to see happen - they want private contractors to step in.  Because at least some of the people will need to have skills, the chances are it will be the people being laid off from the public sector that run the private companies. 

But the thing is, they won't have much capital.  So they will have to start their businesses using other people's capital.  And there will need to be a lot of small scale businesses, because not many big businesses are in a position to pump the funds in.  And lots of small scale businesses means lots of businesses going bust - not because they are particularly more likely to be bad at what they do (although, if you believe the media, people working in the public sector are rubbish), but because there will have to be lots of them.  Just a matter of scale.  And that level of risk means that they will have to pay high levels of interest in order to be able to borrow the money they need.  And that means they will be quite expensive, and/or pay appallingly badly.  

Now, not only will they not be very stable, but many of their employees probably won't be paying much (if any) tax.  They will also be more stressed, and thus liable to become ill more often.  It is just about possible that there will be a lot of new jobs - but they will be exactly the sorts of jobs that nobody would do unless they were truly desperate.  And they still won't have much free cash to inject back in to the economy.

It won't be a monoculture, of course.  Some businesses will spring up, some will fail, some will eventually be bought out by others, and may even achieve a degree of economy of scale.  Alongside that, some people will do the same jobs out of the kindness of their hearts, which will mean that someone else doesn't get to have a job, of course. And, in turn, that means that they will be on benefits (or, of course, in true Tory style, homeless and starving, and eventually just a small cost for a council funded cremation).

I'd love to think I am wrong.  But Cameron's idol, Thatcher, saw to it that people started to believe greed is good (and, for that matter, might is right), and they don't like doing things unless they get something back for it.  They certainly don't like it if they think they are having to put more effort in than someone else - so they will start to keep an eye on their neighbours.  Very few people believe that other people have certain commitments they have to keep to, and any slacking will start to be emphasised very quickly.  At that point, of course, you will find that people will group together, separated from others by whatever lines they imagine they can see.  

Lots of people out of work, or on low incomes, encouraged by the nature of the system and the belief set which has been engrained since Thatcher took power to fracture along socio-ethnic lines.   I wonder how that might turn out...