The debate between transhumanist socialists and libertarians continues, with Jamais Cascio weighing in on those who take an apolitical or anti-political stance:

You have my express permission to kick the next person — especially someone advocating the embrace of radical forms of technological advancement — who tells you that they wish nothing more than to get rid of, move beyond, or otherwise avoid “politics.” Kick them hard, and repeatedly. They have adopted a profoundly ignorant and self-serving position, one that betrays at best a lack of understanding of human nature and society, and at worst a malicious desire to preemptively shut down any opposition to their goals.

I consistently try, whenever the subject of politics comes up, to move the conversation elsewhere. Moreover, in the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit that I have often pined for a post-political world. Seeing as I don’t think I have a malicious desire to shut down any opposition to my goals, I am left to conclude that the severe kicking I have coming stems from being profoundly ignorant and not understanding society.

Politics is good, Jamais explains:

Politics is part of a healthy society — it’s what happens when you have a group of people with differential goals and a persistent relationship. It’s not about partisanship, it’s about power. And while even small groups have politics (think: supporting or opposing decisions, differing levels of power to achieve goals, deciding how to use limited resources), the more people involved, the more complex the politics. Factions, parties, ideologies and the like are simply ways of organizing politics in a complex social space — they’re symptoms of politics, not causes.

Well, hang on, there. I’m really okay with all of that. What I find imminently avoidable is not that set of relationships or even the various processes we put in place to manage those relationships. It’s the prevalent discourse surrounding those processes. Political discourse tends towards hysteria and mean-spiritedness, neither of which I have any use for.

Moreover, most of it is pointless. As Michael Anissimov puts it:

I have substantial political knowledge, and frequently follow politics, but I speak about my (socially liberal, economically moderate) political views much more frequently offline than online. Why? Because politics is a huge niche occupied by millions of people. Anyone can do it. Pick a side and start shouting slogans.

Right. And once the slogan-shouting begins, you can pretty much forget about any serious discussions on any other topics. Although you could probably get some good religious shouting matches going, too, if you wanted to add some variety.

Contra Jamais, I doubt many of those who eschew “politics” are seeking utter isolation or looking for a world in which the only viewpoint is theirs. Again, it is the increasingly absolutist nature of current political discourse that I personally find offputting. Why must the “persistent relationship” between parties with differential goals be a toxic one? Why must virtually all communication between the different parties be hostile denunciations and condemnation?

Jamais makes a good point that technology and politics are not alternatives to each other. But whereas the former seems to open up endless possibilities, the latter (or rather the prevalent discourse surrounding the latter) works to reduce everything to a binary choice between that which belongs to the Good People and that which is of the Other.

In the comment thread to the post linked above, Jamais writes:

Every politician makes noises about wanting to end politics as usual, and very very few of them ever actually try to do anything about it.

As things are set up now, to try to do so is political suicide. Just as technophiles need a greater appreciation of the value (and inevitability) of politics, politicians need more choices — a better appreciation of technology might open some up for them.

For example, as the current health care debate rages, I keep wondering why little (if any) time is spent discussing disruptive changes that could massively increase the amount of health care available while massively decreasing the costs of care. Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School argues that retail clinics are precisely one such disruptive innovation:

Retail clinics are basic health clinics staffed by nurses and located inside pharmacies and stores such as Wal-Mart, CVS and Walgreens. There are about 1,000 such sites in 37 states, according to a September 2008 article in the journal Health Affairs. Nurses deliver routine medical care for common ailments like a sore throat or ear infection. A typical visit costs one-third less than an urgent care clinic visit and three-quarters less than a visit to an emergency department, according to another article in Health Affairs that analyzed the costs to the insurance carrier.

Ninety percent of retail clinic visits are for 10 common complaints that constitute 18% of all visits to primary care doctors and 12% of visits to emergency rooms.

Retail clinics are a good start, but they’re just a start.

The ailments treated at retail clinics all have a simple and unambiguous treatment strategy. If the answer to a particular medical problem is known and will not vary from doctor to doctor, then the best possible strategy — if we want to maximize both the total amount of care and available and the quality of that care — is to get doctors out of the loop on those problems. This frees doctors to spend time on issues where decisions really need to be made.

I liken the treatment of these defined problems to a solved games such as checkers and tic-tac-toe. Just as a human being can’t beat a computer which has been programmed with complete knowledge of these games, a doctor can’t add value to the treatment of one of these (highly limited and very well defined) problems. The challenge is to greatly increase the number of “solved” medical problems, and the way to do that is through automation. Increasingly sophisticated computer technology can guide technicians (or even patients) through tests to reveal the appropriate course of treatment for increasingly complex problems.

I would guess that fewer than 20% of the problems that doctors routinely encounter account for 80% (or more) of the time they spend with patients, and that many of these would be good candidates for automating. Offloading 80% of the tasks doctors currently perform would be the equivalent of having five times as many doctors on hand to apply their expertise to the treatment and prevention of illness. The total amount of medical care available would increase geometrically. And, since the vast majority of this care would be automated, the total cost of care would plummet.

Essentially, we’re talking about applying Moore’s Law to medical care. Increase the amount of care available by an order of magnitude or two, decrease the cost by the same margins, and what is the right model for providing universal health care?

I don’t know.

The problem is, neither does anybody else. And our leaders, far from considering these possibilities, have entrenched positions that assume scarcity as a permanent feature of the world, rather than a problem that we should only have to deal with for a few more decades. Unfortunately, how long we will have to wait until we reach an era of virtually unlimited medical care is pretty much in their hands. The longer it takes them to see the possibilities, the longer they will continue to waste all of our time with politics as usual.