The Economics of Star Trek and Scarce Scarcity

Loughton_Monkey

We always get this sort of pie-in-the-sky prediction when economies are back on the mend. Falacious predictions (such as the paperless office) come and go.

Robot technology will, I'm sure, continue to improve, but if current robot developers were asked to list the potential challenges and stumbling blocks, the price of energy would come about 100th on the list!

If we were to find the holy grail of dirt-cheap renewable energy, then that would be fine, but it wouldn't cause GDP to mushroom from £13K to £100K. Prices would plummet accordingly. It's a bit like saying (in the 60's) that the £500K mainframe computer in the company head office will develop so that every home has one, hence GDP will rise by 25 million times £500K. The prediction had some merit, but we only pay £500 for a similar computer.

However you cut it, economics will remain broadly the same. You will only create 'wealth' by some form of labour. Then the rotten government will come along and steal that wealth to give it to someone who doesn't/can't labour. Or you will give your wealth away to your children or the beggar in the street.

As we know, the 'wealth' of today's 25/30 year olds who have a car, computer, mobile phone, 50" TV, and are to be found clubbing 3 nights a week are no happier [and do not feel wealthier] than the 25/30 year olds of the 60's when we caught the bus, rented a black & white TV, and thought that a few pints down the pub once a week was sheer luxury.

antrobus

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

We always get this sort of pie-in-the-sky prediction when economies are back on the mend. Falacious predictions (such as the paperless office) come and go....

In 1964 Arthur C Clarke predicted "a world in which we can be in instant contact wherever we may be. Where we can contact our friends anywhere on earth, even if we don’t know their actual physical location. It will be possible in that age, possibly 50 years from now, for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London."

Like that's ever going to happen!:)

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

...Robot technology will, I'm sure, continue to improve, but if current robot developers were asked to list the potential challenges and stumbling blocks, the price of energy would come about 100th on the list!....

The issue is not that energy prices are any kind of stumbling block to robot development, but that energy prices are a stumbling block to the emergence of a Star Trek Economy.

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

....If we were to find the holy grail of dirt-cheap renewable energy, then that would be fine, but it wouldn't cause GDP to mushroom from £13K to £100K. Prices would plummet accordingly. ....

Err, that's exactly the point of the Star Trek Economy. Prices plummet to zero.

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

...It's a bit like saying (in the 60's) that the £500K mainframe computer in the company head office will develop so that every home has one, hence GDP will rise by 25 million times £500K. The prediction had some merit, but we only pay £500 for a similar computer.

However you cut it, economics will remain broadly the same. You will only create 'wealth' by some form of labour. ....

The point of the Star Trek Economy is that the robots do all the labour.

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

..Then the rotten government will come along and steal that wealth to give it to someone who doesn't/can't labour. Or you will give your wealth away to your children or the beggar in the street.

As we know, the 'wealth' of today's 25/30 year olds who have a car, computer, mobile phone, 50" TV, and are to be found clubbing 3 nights a week are no happier [and do not feel wealthier] than the 25/30 year olds of the 60's when we caught the bus, rented a black & white TV, and thought that a few pints down the pub once a week was sheer luxury.

In the Star Trek Economy, prices have plummeted to zero, and wealth (in the sense of material wealth) has no meaning as such.

Mistermeaner

Agree with Michaels and others - human nature is to be competitive and as the average or median standard improves some will always strive to rise above.

Inequality is a vital part of competition and happiness is generally derived from one's perceived position relative to others.

You can't switch capitalism off at a certain point when someone judges we collectively have enough and revert to communism.

cells

Mistermeaner wrote: »

Agree with Michaels and others - human nature is to be competitive and as the average or median standard improves some will always strive to rise above.

Inequality is a vital part of competition and happiness is generally derived from one's perceived position relative to others.

You can't switch capitalism off at a certain point when someone judges we collectively have enough and revert to communism.

the idea is that if everyone had access to a devise which could make anything and everything and that was self replicating and self maintaining then everyone would have everything they ever want

that is not quite communism nor is it quite capitalism


when these topics come out I wonder to myself if we humans could be this machine for some other being. We have self replicated to the point of nearly 10 billion people and we are now replicating machines to improve our own worth. maybe something will come out one day and turn a switch and we become its machine and make and do and build for it whatever it wants.

cells

https://youtu.be/sNhhvQGsMEc

Mistermeaner

cells wrote: »

when these topics come out I wonder to myself if we humans could be this machine for some other being. We have self replicated to the point of nearly 10 billion people and we are now replicating machines to improve our own worth. maybe something will come out one day and turn a switch and we become its machine and make and do and build for it whatever it wants.

I think that happened already but ambition was limited, they only wanted a boat full of animals

Unbidden however we've thrown up all sorts of pointless structures over the years, without even been asked. There's one in Salisbury plain.

The worst of them are in almost every village in the UK, tend to be the tallest thing for miles and were built at incredible cost while the poor starved and lived in squalor. Oh the hyprocrscy of religion

princeofpounds

I do think some people are underestimating the importance of energy to technology and indeed all human material progress.

Whilst many of the technological innovations of the last quarter century appear to be quite energy-agnostic, more information-focused, the truth is that a step-change in the cost of energy could unleash all sorts of potential.

Vast quantities of metal deposits would become economic. Energy-inefficient supersonic travel also - indeed logistics would be transformed as land and air transport become closer to energy efficient shipping. Laser technology will become cheap to run permitting all sorts of industrial processes. Food yields could be boosted as artificial conditions become cheap to generate. Etc.

Personally I think an even bigger development which would revolutionise engineering would be a step change in energy density I.e. Tiny long-lasting batteries.

Mistermeaner

the most mass efficient energy source we have is nuclear.

cells

Mistermeaner wrote: »

the most mass efficient energy source we have is nuclear.

the most mass efficient energy source we have is mass

70 kg of mass, for instance your good self, has the energy of v.close to 1 billion barrels of oil. So you are worth in energy terms about $5 billion dollars

Mistermeaner

cells wrote: »

the most mass efficient energy source we have is mass

70 kg of mass, for instance your good self, has the energy of v.close to 1 billion barrels of oil. So you are worth in energy terms about $5 billion dollars

On an e=mc^2 basis?

I'm carbon based though and difficult to release energy from - in terms of current conversion technology nuclear wins

Ps. I've been training hard and eating well so slightly under that now