Top products from r/redditisland
We found 1 product mention on r/redditisland. We ranked the 1 resulting product by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
We found 1 product mention on r/redditisland. We ranked the 1 resulting product by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
> I refuse to accept the faulty argument that capitalism is fair, or ethical, by any measure.
Just note, my post didn't say anything about capitalism. That said:
Capitalism isn't fair. Socialism isn't fair. LIFE isn't fair. The universe doesn't care about 'fair'. Reality has very basic physical limits that aren't going to be broken by a cornucopia machine. These limits mean that in reality we can't all have everything all the time. Money (or more accurately trade) will exist as long as someone else has something I want, and I have something they want.
If at all serious about this, I'd HEAVILY suggest you read 'Anarchy, State, And Utopia'. This addresses the holes in your utopian philosophy a lot better than I can in a reddit comment. The basic problem is that your vision above will require enforcement of rules by some entity, and this is intrinsically LESS fair and just than our current system. I won't touch on this topic here again, since I don't have time to do it justice.
> There is no reason to think peopke would take so much everything would collapse.
Lets go completely optimistic for a minute and show that money won't disappear:
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A group of people is able to fully cover everything with these machines and has no profit motive. Solar cells above, food below, desalination on the edges. Fully automated. 'Effectively' unlimited energy/water/power.
Awesome. But you honestly don't think people's wants will progress further? Let's focus on energy.
Assuming 100% efficiency (and ignoring boiling of the atmosphere), you're getting 88*10^15 watts. That's enough to support 30,000 2012-era United States of America. That allows the current world population to use 130 times what the US currently uses per-capita.
Now that everything's free and we don't need jobs, population is going to go up with almost no limit. Ah, shit. If we increase to the population density of Singapore, we just increased the population 142 times. Now parts of the population gets LESS energy than today. I'm hesitant to support any project that suggests neutering or unrealistic social education to supersede our genetic desires. There will be still be competition for land, location and status. 'Money' will be involved.
Hell, just assume we want to get everywhere 5 times faster. Thanks to the laws of physics, total energy use just increased by 8 times. And it still takes over a few hours to get from most of the Western world to Asia and Australia. There will be varying levels of service, and realistic limits to how fast you can go in crowded airspace. This becomes a limited good that leads to trae.
And during all this, there are still material shortages. All of a sudden, there's a tulip craze. Like most fads, prices will skyrocket in a bubble until supply catches up. People will be trading things, regardless of your view on 'money' and 'capitalism'.
As a side effect, the temperature of the oceans (assuming we use them as a heat sink, otherwise we'd all die real fast), will be increasing 1 K every 736 days, based on 5.6×1024 Joules/Degree Kelvin. Within a few generations, the oceans will be boiling.
There's also the matter of trying to get off this rock now that we've thrown off the energy balance and started to boil the atmosphere with all the residual heat. People will start competing for the same land. Do YOU want to be stuck on Pluto or Mars? Again, there's a good that will be limited. And it takes a hell of alot of energy. See Energy and Interstellar Travel
These, and other things, will lead to the creation of markets, which will keep money (in some form) flowing. There's also individuals who are dangerous and need to be limited, but that's better addressed via the book referenced above.
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: back to your regularly scheduled discussion :
The best realistic outcome of this project is being able to supply:
The economy won't go away; minerals/materials do not magically become free and neither does land or human labor (even if only wanting human actors for nostalgic reasons). People's wants and needs will increase. There will still be rationing via some method. 'Free market' is currently the most fair way we have.