Artificial Intelligence & Moral Economy: An Opinion (Part IV)

In the last three blog posts on artificial intelligence, I tried to lay down the problems (core problems). While the title of the blogs advertised "A.I" and "Moral Economy", they offered very little on A.I and Moral Economy or the link between the two subjects;

In this very short blog, I want to define Moral Economy, so it becomes clear what I mean by the term (As A.I as a blanket term covers lots of subfields, each with tonnages of resources available online, I don't feel the need of defining it.)

Moral Economy is socially Progressive.

What does it mean to be socially progressive?

The basic unit of a society is an individual, and creating and sharing of opportunities from the individual (self) progressively outward, meaning, yourself comes, and those closes to you, like family and friends, neighborhood, city, state, country, continent, and the world at large. The same way, your immediate environment and progressively beyond. The same is true for an organization, company, and state. Let's say, the country A is a multicultural society with one or several dominant cultural identities and many smaller cultural identities. As the democratic system give the decision making chairs to the dominant culture or the coalition of the dominant cultural identities, the minority cultural identities and likewise, the sub-cultures are pushed/ignored and they remain on the fringes of the societal recognition or decision making chairs. Starting from the majority, a socially progressive economy (moral economy) recognizes the fringe identities and include them in the decision making. An opening of the world to women and increasing recognition of their roles is a positive sign towards of a general moral economy. However, there are ethnic, religious and cultural identities who are not as recognized as the women issues (while the women make up fifty percent of those populations). That's a direction that a moral economy needs to go.

A WORD ABOUT CONNECTION OF RELIGION WITH MORAL ECONOMY: I haven't seen any religion in the world which is progressive both inside and outside the boundaries of the religion. While, every religion is socially progressive within the community, meaning, it is emphasized to take care of family members, neighbors, friends, poor and those in needs, practically, the resources are spent inside the community of that religious identity. Religions are closed systems (which makes them conservative). An open system is more progressive.

So, does it means, a Moral Economy is based on equality?

A progressive economy can't be a pay-everyone-the-same-amount model. Pay all the same is not a sustainable and unrealistic model. Progressive means, the constant update of floor values.

Let me explain. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was the biggest achievements of post-WWII. It defined a set of floor-values applicable for all humans. That floor-values needs to updated as humans progress technologically and the means of productions and distributions become more efficient. The purpose should not be to clip the wings of those who are pushing the boundaries of human progress but give wings to those who struggle flying. I want to keep this blog limited and do not immerse in the examples (please revisit for the blog in coming weeks for examples and the role that A.I can play).  But just to point to the kind of examples that I want to discuss, I like to name the concepts of  inclusion of "Basic Income" and "Basic Health" (paid for with the income from natural resources- and human population defined as natural resources too).