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[greatorder]

A thread for discussing post-scarcity!
Now, general rules:
1) No insults. Well, no SERIOUS ones. friendly niggling is fine so long as it doesn't lead to problems.
2) Keep derails to a minimum. Part of the reason this thread was formed was BECAUSE of a derail. A derail in a derail thread will probably cause a derail singularity made up of crashed trains.


If either of the above are violated, I'll give yer a warning. Continue and the thread's locked for a few days.
What is a post-scarcity society?
A society in which good, services and information are available to everyone. That is to say, completely free. There's a number of reasons we don't have such a society, such as the need for near 100% automation, high (near 100%) recycling of resources to prevent long-term resource shortages and a renewable source of energy for the same reasons.

It has a great deal of advantages and few drawbacks. Since resources are universal, there'd be no starvation or lack of water, people would be free to pursue whatever they wished and you don't HAVE to spend all day working in McDonald's so you don't get turfed out of your apartment. This means that if you so desired, you could just spend your entire day sleeping, or build your own house by hand, or play video games all day.

However, since most of the system would be automated, there'd be risks from numerous things. Computer viruses could potentially be catastrophic, something that interferes with electronics (such as an EMP or solar flare) could easily destroy the society and so on. Then there's people. Being the wide and varied bunch we are, some of us might try (and succeed) in destroying the system in whatever way and for whatever reason.

Hopefully, these kinds of things will be discussed in the thread.

Anyways, yes, post-scarcity societies in general. Discuss. Formation, running of them... whatever you want to discuss about them, do so. I think we were at the point of discussing how to get one to come around in the first place, so if you want to you can start from there.

[Graknorke]

People would get squishy and weak. Being forced to deal with adversity is most of why people ever get good at anything. Self-imposed challenge just doesn't give the same kind of drive as being about to die.

[Helgoland]

PTW.

Also, all the things from the precious thread. A society where luxuries still are scarce - and thus are luxuries - is not a post-scarcity society in the true sense of the word.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

People would get squishy and weak. Being forced to deal with adversity is most of why people ever get good at anything. Self-imposed challenge just doesn't give the same kind of drive as being about to die.

What I first though of when I red the end of that: "If you don't work, we'll throw you into the gladiatorial arena."

[Frumple]

Was going to drop it in the USA politics thread where it doesn't belong, but since it's gone and migrated...

Somewhat tangential to the migrating conversation, but... I'unno, part of me wonders what we could really do if we broke off from profit motive a bit. Just how long a lifespan can we engineer into a low end computer, ferex, if the idea was to make something for the entire population that lasts a substantial portion of their life and enabled, say, basic access to low-impact (like, 90s era website resource impact) digitalized libraries and maybe very basic (telnet/IRC level) intercommunication as a basic minimum? I mean, hell, I know we've got initiatives trying to get cheap laptops and whatnot to the (comparatively) impoverished, but... how much further could we take that if we actually specifically engineered for it? We had ruddy gameboys that could -- did -- last well over a decade and still functioned. Why don't we have 80s/early 90s era computers doing the same and being handed out like candy?

Just how much of our people's technological and engineering capabilities are being held back by profit motive and the various junk surrounding modern economies?

S'just... other hypotheticals. If we just suspended movie production for a year and redirected the funds toward 100-200 USD computers, how much of the world's population could we give cursory digital capabilities to? Stuff like that.

[Helgoland]

You don't need to redirect any funds. Just set up a distribution system for used but still-functional computers. There's enough of them to go around.

[SalmonGod]

Distribution system established.

For used but still functional anything.  Or just anything.

Not useful at the scale of donating stuff to poor people in other countries, but still relevant.

[LordBucket]

post-scarcity societies in general. Discuss.

Yay, post scarcity!

I'm in favor.

A society where luxuries still are scarce - and thus are luxuries - is not a post-scarcity society in the true sense of the word.

That's fine...but seem pedantic to me. Inability to achieve perfect post scarcity just...doesn't seem very important. Moves in that general direction are good and proper and healthy. Let's not be the people drinking martinis in our pool on the deck of our yacht, arguing about how imperfect it is that that we had to settle for gold plating on yachts hull rather than platinum.

Any of us can hop on google and get map directions. No Thomas Guide required. This is a good thing. the fact that many people in the world don't have web access and therefore can't receive free, ubiquitous map directions and therefore we're not truly "post map directions scarcity" doesn't in any way diminish the value of free, ubiquitous map directions for people who can access them. If next week somebody invents a solar powered Star Trek replicator and everybody can push a button and transform sunlight into food and cars and gold-played yachts and spaceships...but planets are still in short supply, and not everybody can have their own planet...we're not  "true" post-scarcity, but...come on.

Let's not require perfect solutions.

Post-scarcity is unlikely to arrive in totality from one moment to the next. It's more likely to be a gradual change.

[Zanzetkuken The Great]

Let's not require perfect solutions.

Especially since there is no perfect post-scarcity.  Not everyone can have their own omniverse.

[LordBucket]

hypotheticals. If we just suspended movie production for a year and redirected the funds toward 100-200
USD computers, how much of the world's population could we give cursory digital capabilities to? Stuff like that.

22% of those not already online, not accounting for distribution or the fact that such massive production would likely reduce costs.

Sub $100 laptop ($91.61)
One laptop per child (1.84 million free laptops distributed so far)
Project Loon (global free internet access, coming to a planet near you)

Population of planet earth: 7.125 billion
Number of people not yet online: 4.35 billion

4.35 * $91.61 = $398.6 billion to give everyone a laptop who doesn't yet have net access

Film entertainment, worldwide revenue: 88.3 billion

88.3 / 398.6 = 22%

[Orange Wizard]

4.35 * $91.61 = $398.6 billion to give everyone a laptop who doesn't yet have net access

The US government could do that if they halved their military budget. For one year.

[Cthulhu]

I'm in favor of a post scarcity society.

I'm also in favor of aliens that just give us matter replicators and great handjobs.  I'm in favor of everyone becoming wizards.

I've brought it up before, I feel like we haven't really gotten past religion, we've just transplanted its eschatology onto science.  Instead of saying Jesus is gonna come back and fix the world we say science is eventually going to invent something that'll fix the world.

The alternative is not appealing.  If we continue to expand our systems under the assumption that expansion is good and our technology will continue to advance and increase our capacity to expand, either post-scarcity will happen or we'll hit a roadblock and when we try to expand past that point the system is going to collapse and everyone is going to die.

I'm more for curtailing our expansion than banking on magic technology to keep us going.

[alexandertnt]

I generally agree with Cthulhu.

I don't think the concept of post scarcity is as ludicrous as wizards or alien handjobs, but there seems to me to be at least as much faith as there is actual science behind the concept.

[LordBucket]

I don't think the concept of post scarcity is as ludicrous as wizards or alien handjobs,
but there seems to me to be at least as much faith as there is actual science behind the concept.

Baby steps. We already live in a world that would have been difficult for most people to imagine 100 years ago. Actually, I sometimes have conversations with people in which they claim that such-and-such technology "will never happen." Where such-and-such technology has already been around for years.

As for post-scarcity more specifically, I'll point out that it already exists in some specific cases. Most obvious example: air. We don't buy or sell air. If you want some, it's available. Yes, there is a finite amount. But like above...pointing out there there's not an infinite volume of air, or that there isn't air on the moon...is missing the point. Air is not scarce in any practical sense.

But there are other things that because of human action have become effectively post-scarce.

Encyclopedic information, for example. When I was a kid, some people owned 26-volume encyclopedia sets that weighted more than I did. Now, everyone has billions of 26-volume sets worth of information available online, for free. Even if you don't own a computer, libraries provide free web access. This information is effectively abundant. Lots of things exist in effectively post-scarce abundance. Youtube videos, cat pictures, music, email.

Actually, now that I think about it, one of the more amazing things is video conferencing. That was science fiction when I was kid. It was a thing we saw in movies. That was what Darth Vader did in a fantasy future sci-fi movie to talk to his magical mentor Emperor of the galaxy. Think about that. Now, teenagers use omegle to flash each other. Nobody pays for it. Fantasy futurist sci-fi technology is now freely available to anyone who wants it.

But the webcam isn't. The computer isn't. The web access might be available for free, but the car to drive to the library to use theirs isn't.

That's the big jump we need to see. Physical goods becoming "post-scarce" abundant. Or I suppose we could go the other route, and make people not physical. I'm not entirely sure which is more speculative

[LordSlowpoke]

pondering the wasps