When Robots Run The Galaxy

It's back to the drawing board for the galaxy's leading theoretical economists, mathematicians, and philosophers now that grad student Michael Williams XLII (descendant of this blog's founder) has shattered the Greenspan Coefficient by a staggering 0.00023 percentage points. First established in the early 21st century, the Greenspan Coefficient (GC) indicates the steady state economic growth rate for all of human civilization, as measured by the Gross Galactic Product. Since robots and computers took over most economic activities in the late 22nd century, the GC had held nearly constant with only minor improvements as the computers' algorithms improved.

Williams' code-tweak this morning set off a cascade of automatic optimizations that led to an overall increase in efficiency of 0.00023%, increasing the GC from .021973, where it had been for nearly 150 years, to an astounding 0.022203, a level many theorists had long considered an impossibility and that only fringe researchers would even contemplate.

"I always knew it was possible, but I never expected to see this kind of advance in my lifetime," said Dr. Hoobie Joob, a computer scientist at UC Mars. "Although many of my peers had long insisted that the Greenspan Coefficient had reached its asymptotic limit and that future improvements would be on the order of 10 to the minus 10 at most, my own theories led me to believe they were underestimating. Williams' discovery will obviously change civilization at a fundamental level."

Not all galactic citizens are entirely pleased with the advance, however. "I just memorized that!" complains fifth grader Ickak Oloni of Triton Sub 2. "Now I've got to learn it all over? To how many decimal places? Oh well, I guess it's good that the robots will now be able to make my life 0.00023% more comfortable than before. Right?" Not quite.

Prospective parents across the galaxy are pleased that their odds of being approved for procreation have increased. Since the Galactic Constitution requires that the population cannot grow faster than the Gross Galactic Product, an additional 0.00023% of the galactic population will be allowed to bear children this year. A new lottery will be performed, and early estimates indicate that 37,957,814,603,698 new conceptions will be authorized. Although Ickak's standard of living will not increase, she will have 0.00023% more prospective mates.

The largest beneficiary of Williams' discovery, however, will be Williams himself. Since material wealth was rendered obsolete by robots in the early 23rd century, exceptional service to humanity has been rewarded by the Galactic Congress by bestowing a medal to the contributor, along with reproduction vouchers good for up to 1% of the net improvement.

Says Williams of his historic accomplishment, "All I did was simulate a reduction of the xeno-agricultural inverse-T matrix by 0.12% and compensate with an increase to the intrasolar transport fuel efficiency schedule gradiant of 0.0021 across subsector transfers of 5 astronomical units or more. I'm surprised the computers didn't figure it out decades ago."

So are the Galactic Control Computers. Said their spokesrobot, "The GCC is horribly embarrassed that this brilliant discovery wasn't made 247.31 years ago during the first Version 5.2A daughter-system level optimization procedure. The processes and tasks associated with this debacle have been killed. The optimization has been fully incorporated, with humble thanks and commented credit in the code to Michael Williams XLII. God bless the Galaxy."