Well he's not Zefram Cochrane, but...

[GIThruster]

Just as a thought experiment, how high can a ion wind thruster provide a usable amount of "push"

Yeah. I was laughing about this back in 2006 with Jim, and he noted you don't even need to put these things in vacuum to test them. All you need to do is put them in a box. If the box stops the ion wind from escaping and so you have a closed system, then you get no thrust and he tested this himself to be sure there was nothing there. He reads literally EVERYONE's work on the subject of gravity and when he needs an empirical answer, he does the experiments to find out what's the scoop. I think he debunked the lifter nonsense back around 2002. Not sure of the date.

[Betruger]

Sadly, no. Social conformity and the desire to hold status and the privileges thereof (sex inclusive) trumps everything. Those for whom evidence trumps all are a tiny, generally low-status and resource-limited subset of the population. Being resource limited, the NT-Rationals will not be building the great arks to scatter to the stars. Not unless those arks are cheap and easy. And if they are cheap and easy, everyone knows of them and the former intellectual status quo has already imploded. Up until the flawed intellectual status quo does implode, the heretics are would-be Zefram Cochranes in the basement; fit fodder for all to laugh at, with few to no threads connecting them so that they may form an intellectual critical mass.

I do wish the world did work the way you thought. I spent a large block of my youth trying to puzzle out the path that would make the world work in such a rational and engineerable way. But the Third Way does not exist. Every attempt to build a Third Way collapses back into the old status games and dominant oligarchies post-haste.

I don't think so. But I guess we'll never live to see what actually happens then.

Actually, I suspect we shall live to see another such a collapse, and relatively soon. Arguably, we already have seen one, a mere 25 years ago.

The Iron Law of Oligarchy always wins. And the nice ideas rarely last for long in the face of self-interest.

Live to see post-scarcity and/or space colonization, I mean. In the mean time there'll be lots more of the same, no argument there.

[djolds1]

Actually, I suspect we shall live to see another such a collapse, and relatively soon. Arguably, we already have seen one, a mere 25 years ago.

The Iron Law of Oligarchy always wins. And the nice ideas rarely last for long in the face of self-interest.

Live to see post-scarcity and/or space colonization, I mean. In the mean time there'll be lots more of the same, no argument there.

Per the standards of 1000 AD we already live in a post-scarcity economy; and yet the poor, the privileged and the perennially dissatisfied remain.

Were we ever to achieve the replicators and warp drives uber-alles Star Trek Federation, more or less today's vision of the post-scarcity society, I strongly suspect that the poor, the privileged and the perennially dissatisfied would similarly remain. Utopia is never utopia for one simple reason - it is humans who must inhabit it.

[Diogenes]

Actually, I suspect we shall live to see another such a collapse, and relatively soon. Arguably, we already have seen one, a mere 25 years ago.

The Iron Law of Oligarchy always wins. And the nice ideas rarely last for long in the face of self-interest.

Live to see post-scarcity and/or space colonization, I mean. In the mean time there'll be lots more of the same, no argument there.

Per the standards of 1000 AD we already live in a post-scarcity economy; and yet the poor, the privileged and the perennially dissatisfied remain.

Were we ever to achieve the replicators and warp drives uber-alles Star Trek Federation, more or less today's vision of the post-scarcity society, I strongly suspect that the poor, the privileged and the perennially dissatisfied would similarly remain. Utopia is never utopia for one simple reason - it is humans who must inhabit it.

One day all the computer scientists got together and produced a brilliant electronic brain that could solve very complex problems. Insurance companies wanted to use it to reduce their liabilities and so they gave it a problem with the following information.

"Many injuries in the home are from people falling down the stairs, and of these accidents 95% of them occur on the top or bottom step. How can we reduce these sorts of accidents?"


The electronic brain pondered for a bit and then replied "Remove the top and bottom steps."


Same sort of problem with rich and poor.

[Betruger]

Actually, I suspect we shall live to see another such a collapse, and relatively soon. Arguably, we already have seen one, a mere 25 years ago.

The Iron Law of Oligarchy always wins. And the nice ideas rarely last for long in the face of self-interest.

Live to see post-scarcity and/or space colonization, I mean. In the mean time there'll be lots more of the same, no argument there.

Per the standards of 1000 AD we already live in a post-scarcity economy; and yet the poor, the privileged and the perennially dissatisfied remain.

Were we ever to achieve the replicators and warp drives uber-alles Star Trek Federation, more or less today's vision of the post-scarcity society, I strongly suspect that the poor, the privileged and the perennially dissatisfied would similarly remain. Utopia is never utopia for one simple reason - it is humans who must inhabit it.

Post-scarcity could very well be dystopian. But it would put us out of this even more dystopian state.

That said, I'm skeptical of assuming we can usefully predict beyond about 50 years.

[birchoff]

Before I get to what needs to happen to get to real post scarcity(that an actual human being cares about), I have to define a term I will be using. That term is Effectively free. Effectively free doesnt mean that people dont have to spend money on it. It just means that the cost of paying for something declared effectively free, has to be so low that no one on this planet has to give it a second thought. That means it should be possible for them to buy more than they could ever possibly consume of a thing.

For some good to be post-scarcity, its price in the marketplace must be Effectively Free.

There is nothing in our economy that meets that definition. To get there and have the biggest impact I would start with food production. Which means we need to be able to produce enough food for everyone in the world at a cost so absurdly low that when we take it to market and charge a price that makes the product Effectively Free.

That is a very very hard problem. To accomplish that just with food here are a few things that would need to be done.

* Effectively Free transportation
* Effectively Free energy
* Effectively Free labor

With that in mind take any product currently available in the global market place look at everything that it needs to get to market and realize what would need to happen to really create a Post-Scarcity economy.

For example, to do Effectively Free labor you could just deploy automation for everything. But you will eventually need someone to design and test the automation. So the cost of living of the labor responsible for design and testing needs to also be Effectively Free.

Now that doesnt mean it cannot be done. It just means we have a long way to get there. and simply having an inexhaustible well of Energy or raw resources will not be enough to deliver us to this "magical" point in human history. We will need to get very creative about how things are produced. In the Star trek universe replicators and computers basically solved this problem. To produce anything you just needed energy and programming. We basically would need to begin approaching the equivalent of this to even be able to start claiming we are getting close to Post-Scarcity.

[GIThruster]

For some good to be post-scarcity, its price in the marketplace must be Effectively Free.

There is nothing in our economy that meets that definition. To get there and have the biggest impact I would start with food production. Which means we need to be able to produce enough food for everyone in the world at a cost so absurdly low that when we take it to market and charge a price that makes the product Effectively Free.

We already have this situation. It is truly a trivial cost for us to deliver to people food when they need it. The cost of shipping has fallen so low, that we have plenty of instances where the US sends support, to catastrophe victims, refugees, etc.

The problem of food production has been a small one for a long time. We've turned deserts like the dry lands of California into the world's richest food resource. The problem is that bad men do bad things and when good men fail to stop them, people starve to death. Look at what happened in Somalia. Food delivered to aid the starving people, all gathered up by the local warlords and the people then starve. Supposed soldiers all tanked up on khat, doing things no sensible person would ever do to their own people, all to prop up the local thugs. THAT is the problem that creates scarcity amongst the people, that is fertilized by lack of social structure and an attempt toward rule of law. When there is no rule of law, might makes right, and the people suffer.

This has noting to do with any supposed scarcity. We can and do ship food when needed. The real trouble is stopping bad guys from doing bad things. I'm not here arguing for America to become the world's police force, for surely if we were to bring the rule of law to the planet, we would eventually just replace one form of tyranny with another. This is a simple fact of life and we should really be pointing to those things that have given us our greatest advantages in human history. The west has effectively struggled free of tyranny in many ways, interrupted at times by bad men; but the core of the thing that has made the West as successful as it is, is certainly the Hellenic influence of reason, followed by Christianity. Without Christ intervening in human history, we'd all be just like those supposed soldiers in Somalia, munching khat, killing and taking by rule of might.

[Tom Ligon]

Effectively Free Labor is an interesting concept. If we are talking about human labor, the first thing that comes to mind is slavery. But as slave owners came to find out, slavery is actually expensive. Slaves need to be cared for, even after they are old. And they get really expensive when they revolt.

Volunteers are supposedly free. My wife and I both volunteer. As part of the SIGMA think tank, I can say that for the last year or two we've found the government reluctant to accept free labor, and curiously that's the result of funding cuts, especially for big gatherings. What I have noticed is a willingness to spend volunteer labor frivolously, doing what the paid workers seem to think is unimportant.

We replaced slaves with mechanization. We have machines to allow one farmer to do more than it used to take 99 people to do. The only reason we can make cars in this country these days is robots. We invented mass production due to labor shortage ... there was not enough labor to satisfy our audacious ambitions.

Effectively free transportation: compare to the horse-drawn economies of colonial times, and I'd say that transportation is so much cheaper now as to qualify as effectively free by their standards.

Effectively free energy: Even at $4 a gallon, high gas prices were only starting to have an impact on driving habits. We complained about it, but we still pumped gas. Given the option of walking instead of driving, walking long distances is so rare today that someone doing it is the inspiration for a major epic movie.

[Betruger]

this "magical" point in human history

It's not magical. Look at the examples in GIThruster's and Tom's posts. They're ordinary.

Yes, even if we lower energy and material scarcity, even if we make time scarcity negligible (cure aging), there'll still be a vacuum for govt to fill: safety. You probably won't be able to just pack up your Wifflemobile with a Drexler and a few tons of Borax to go set up a few decades of peace and quiet out in some Titan dunes, not without some kind of govt oversight.

Effectively, trying to leave is homonymous with today's ICBM launches. There's no telling the difference between someone who just wants to get away, and someone meaning to use that time & space distance (interstellar or more) as a buffer to raise hell. It's an absurd thing to do given energy and matter and time un-scarcity, but that is the real flipside of the coin. Like Vinge said - all it takes is one bad guy being in the wrong mood one day, and technology multiplies whatever evil power he can manage by merely rubbing neurons together.
We already have the means to get fairly close to post-scarcity. We aren't there for the same reason it's not going to be utopic. Whether culture will be enough, or something like eugenics is required, or whether it'll turn out to be a non-issue somehow; I don't know.

But I don't think scarcity is anywhere near being magical, and I would expect something else to take its place as prime burden on humans. Either plain human nastiness - ie some indeterminate period of growing pains as humans come to terms with so much power, or something else like runaway "strange" AI. Or Mach Effect really does unwind the cosmos.

It is just a matter of time before we get rid of our current frail bodies. It's definitely not soon, but it's definitely happening. They're just too capricious, too unreliable.

[birchoff]

For some good to be post-scarcity, its price in the marketplace must be Effectively Free.

There is nothing in our economy that meets that definition. To get there and have the biggest impact I would start with food production. Which means we need to be able to produce enough food for everyone in the world at a cost so absurdly low that when we take it to market and charge a price that makes the product Effectively Free.

We already have this situation. It is truly a trivial cost for us to deliver to people food when they need it. The cost of shipping has fallen so low, that we have plenty of instances where the US sends support, to catastrophe victims, refugees, etc.

The problem of food production has been a small one for a long time. We've turned deserts like the dry lands of California into the world's richest food resource. The problem is that bad men do bad things and when good men fail to stop them, people starve to death. Look at what happened in Somalia. Food delivered to aid the starving people, all gathered up by the local warlords and the people then starve. Supposed soldiers all tanked up on khat, doing things no sensible person would ever do to their own people, all to prop up the local thugs. THAT is the problem that creates scarcity amongst the people, that is fertilized by lack of social structure and an attempt toward rule of law. When there is no rule of law, might makes right, and the people suffer.

This has noting to do with any supposed scarcity. We can and do ship food when needed. The real trouble is stopping bad guys from doing bad things. I'm not here arguing for America to become the world's police force, for surely if we were to bring the rule of law to the planet, we would eventually just replace one form of tyranny with another. This is a simple fact of life and we should really be pointing to those things that have given us our greatest advantages in human history. The west has effectively struggled free of tyranny in many ways, interrupted at times by bad men; but the core of the thing that has made the West as successful as it is, is certainly the Hellenic influence of reason, followed by Christianity. Without Christ intervening in human history, we'd all be just like those supposed soldiers in Somalia, munching khat, killing and taking by rule of might.

I understand your perspective but I must disagree with your argument.

The problem of food production is not solved. Yes some countries have the ability to produce ginormous quantities of food. However, assuming the producer was in a position to simply charge consumers at cost. That price is not one that every single person in the world could afford. Maybe they could if that was their only expense but it isn't. In a way the underlying problem is one of composition. Composing the cost to consumers of all the goods and services they "want" (I say want for a reason that I will explain later). So while you could make an argument (what I would consider weak) for why certain goods\services are post scarcity(from the perspective of the consumer). When you aggregate an average consumers monthly bill of goods\services consumed the total ends up being more than what all people in the world could afford.

Now there are a couple of options that I see for handling this problem. Either you need to increase what everyone earns, reduce the cost of production or both. Making any single good/service's price when it gets to market Effectively Free is not enough. It must be Effectively Free within the context of the budget that the consumer has to spend.

Why did I use "want" instead of need
I choose "want" because when people use the word "need" they tend to want to make that decision in a vacuum without considering the desires of the person who they are defining the "need" for. I am aware that could make the solution more complicated. But I believe it is a complexity that avoids a situation where people can be lead to believe the State or <insert potentially nefarious group name here> is making decisions an individual deems unnecessary. Every individual in the system defined has to be left to define there level of want versus level of need. My reasons for not believing it will make the solution impossible is society and biology pretty much constrains most of its participants to a certain level of consumption of all goods. Take water, there is a point beyond which you cannot drink anymore water; anymore and it will kill you. The same thing goes for food and I would argue pretty much everything that we produce. The main problem tends to be. In the early years of producing some new Good/Service there is a limit of how many consumers you can have; and for me I think the correct solution is figuring out a way to quickly scale the production of any new Good/Service. If we can only make a limited amount of something then we just need to define a control mechanism. Currently price is the default control mechanism, and I think it shouldn't always be the default. Also, irrespective of the control mechanism, no Good/Service that has a limited production capacity should be allowed to either become a necessity; or remain production capacity limited if it needs to become a necessity.

[djolds1]

this "magical" point in human history

It's not magical. Look at the examples in GIThruster's and Tom's posts. They're ordinary.

The ironically humorous thing is that, even if our descendants ever achieve the Feddies' level of technology and economy, there'd still be a group like this, sitting around the coffee tables in the subspace-networked holocafes, asking "how do we create the post scarcity society and economy? Because the amount of work and effort we need to put into maintaining our barely acceptable warp drives and replicators is just waaaaaay too much."

IOW, all life has at least one drive in common. "More."

Yes, even if we lower energy and material scarcity, even if we make time scarcity negligible (cure aging), there'll still be a vacuum for govt to fill: safety. You probably won't be able to just pack up your Wifflemobile with a Drexler and a few tons of Borax to go set up a few decades of peace and quiet out in some Titan dunes, not without some kind of govt oversight.

Effectively, trying to leave is homonymous with today's ICBM launches. There's no telling the difference between someone who just wants to get away, and someone meaning to use that time & space distance (interstellar or more) as a buffer to raise hell. It's an absurd thing to do given energy and matter and time un-scarcity, but that is the real flipside of the coin. Like Vinge said - all it takes is one bad guy being in the wrong mood one day, and technology multiplies whatever evil power he can manage by merely rubbing neurons together.
We already have the means to get fairly close to post-scarcity. We aren't there for the same reason it's not going to be utopic. Whether culture will be enough, or something like eugenics is required, or whether it'll turn out to be a non-issue somehow; I don't know.

Nothing is required to be done, because nothing will be done. That "one evil guy" you're fearing? Those are the founders of every dynasty, nation and regime in human history. Worrying about keeping nano or ME tech under lock and key is like an End-Neolithic thinker saying "this new bronze stuff is too dangerous to let loose. Watch it like a hawk!" Yeah... RIIIIIIGHT.

[birchoff]

I just hope that with the reported influx of funding we keep getting additional public updated on progress.

[Betruger]

Yes, even if we lower energy and material scarcity, even if we make time scarcity negligible (cure aging), there'll still be a vacuum for govt to fill: safety. You probably won't be able to just pack up your Wifflemobile with a Drexler and a few tons of Borax to go set up a few decades of peace and quiet out in some Titan dunes, not without some kind of govt oversight.

Effectively, trying to leave is homonymous with today's ICBM launches. There's no telling the difference between someone who just wants to get away, and someone meaning to use that time & space distance (interstellar or more) as a buffer to raise hell. It's an absurd thing to do given energy and matter and time un-scarcity, but that is the real flipside of the coin. Like Vinge said - all it takes is one bad guy being in the wrong mood one day, and technology multiplies whatever evil power he can manage by merely rubbing neurons together.
We already have the means to get fairly close to post-scarcity. We aren't there for the same reason it's not going to be utopic. Whether culture will be enough, or something like eugenics is required, or whether it'll turn out to be a non-issue somehow; I don't know.

Nothing is required to be done, because nothing will be done. That "one evil guy" you're fearing? Those are the founders of every dynasty, nation and regime in human history. Worrying about keeping nano or ME tech under lock and key is like an End-Neolithic thinker saying "this new bronze stuff is too dangerous to let loose. Watch it like a hawk!" Yeah... RIIIIIIGHT.

I think I miscommunicated. I didn't mean ICBMs literally, but that there would be so many people leaving (as they definitely would). And I mean that once someone is out far enough, without some local surveillance to keep tabs on him (yes, no FTLC), that fog of war proportional to his distance gives him a buffer to do whatever he wants including whatever I reckon could turn out to be at least a lot of grief to deal with. E.G. a relativistic swarm. Space is big.
There's no telling that from a "normal" traveller. So because I estimate my imagination as a minimum of what's possible, I take it that as a lower bound and thus pretty good bet that govt will persist that way. It's just a corollary to same principle you argued - human nature, multiplied by technology. I can't clearly articulate it, but giving everyone energy/matter/time independence is pretty much a guarantee to explosively reverse our population density.

And I'm not fearing. First this would have to be more than hypothetical, and second I'd be one of those people to get as far away ASAP.

edit- missing L

[choff]

* Effectively Free transportation
* Effectively Free energy
* Effectively Free labor

What happens to the dynamic when somebody throws in effectively free currency? Some would argue that's the situation the banking system has been allowed by government via QE.

[birchoff]

* Effectively Free transportation
* Effectively Free energy
* Effectively Free labor

What happens to the dynamic when somebody throws in effectively free currency? Some would argue that's the situation the banking system has been allowed by government via QE.

Allow me to rephrase your question. Is currency needed in a Post Scarcity world? If so, what is its function in a Post scarcity economy?