Yes. Post-scarcity. Star Trek.

If you there is no labour to pay, how do you derive the value of something? Iron is everywhere - what is the value of it if no one has to extract it. It's fascinating to think about. Is basic income the answer? Probably not - why pay money to people when you don't have to pay anything.

I think that in the end game that Matt describes, the value of objects will be in their raw materials, energy used to produce them, and possibly (depending on how IP laws evolve) the intellectual property involved in their design.

I don't know how we ever reach "post-scarcity" on earth. The planet's resources (i.e., energy and raw materials) are finite.

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"100% of the people who confuse correlation and causation end up dying."

I grew up below the poverty line with the "Government cheese" and other benefits, but never really thought about it. Neither did my friends who for the most part were in the same boat until we moved to an area that didn't have many military families.

I always saw the value of school work, and was one of those people who knew that high school was NOT a prison but rather the best life we would have until a long time after graduation. I also saw that the military, while it did not make one rich, DID give me a trade and a career with benefits and the opportunity to grow and succeed.

I followed that path, the only one in my family to do so, and it worked as advertised, I am now looking at a very comfortable retirement at a reasonable age after a pretty successful career. Serving in the military has advantages in the education, opportunities, and in creating a mindset that current difficulties can be overcome with hard work and perseverance.

I have met others, including family members, who never got any of that and are still living below the poverty line. Several have resented my success with snide comments and other put downs as "that guy" who isn't part of the family anymore. Every time I just say "if YOU had done what I have done, then you would have the life that I have!" That answer doesn't seem to satisfy them very much, because they seem to want prosperity without the effort to pursue that outcome.

In a way, we're in a post-scarcity world right now. We can certainly feed, clothe, and shelter everyone. The problem is that half the world's wealth resides in the pockets of something like 100 people.

That said, I think at that point possessions will be valued less since anyone can pretty much have anything, and people will attempt to demonstrate their value in other ways - likely through being socially valued, such as having more "likes" than others or being talked about by more people than others. Basically, we'll all become bored bourgeoisie with only a few of us being industrious enough to pursue art or science.

On another note, AI is going to clobber jobs we once thought untouchable, like people working in finance, bookkeeping, risk analysis, architecture, personal assistants - even art like film and writing. By 2050 it's going to be a very interesting world.

Maybe you have it backwards... these are values and traits that lift you into middle-class.

"What's even clearer is that your personal decisions about your life are going to greatly affect where you end up in life. So the middle-class values of hard work, perseverance and delaying gratification seem to have come into being for good reason, I'd say. "


I don't disagree. But what if you've got issues?

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...runtraining;#1612485

You must be new here.

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War is god

Ahhh!

I was thinking in terms of scarcity of natural resources, whereas it looks like you were talking about scarcity of basic necessities.

I think that we're on the same page, especially with regards to AI.

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"100% of the people who confuse correlation and causation end up dying."

I don't know how we ever reach "post-scarcity" on earth. The planet's resources (i.e., energy and raw materials) are finite.


It's an energy issue. At the point we find a very cheap, highly renewable easily repeatable energy source we've pretty much reached that point. Mass is energy and energy is mass. If we can find a way to easily convert one into the other we've passed the post scarcity point.

At that point it becomes nearly 100% about IP rights. When you can live like a 1% for what nearly no cost people pay for the things they want.



I will agree that it's possible we never get there and it's also possible we hit a huge shit storm and or a number of them during the journey.

In any case I just think we are in much of a current danger of people being put out of jobs by new technology. I just spent a day at IMTS in Chicago and earlier in the year I spent two days at the Hannover Fair in Germany. When I go to these place I don't think "Wow these are going to put everyone out of work" I think "Holy crap now I can do that thing I couldn't do 10 years ago" or "Wow that makes this thing less expensive and marketable".

Yep, if you have no skills and no desire to learn one, you're going to be put out of a job. Right now and IMO for the foreseeable future, 20-30 years at least there seems to be more and more opportunity not less. I mean really, I can have an idea for a thing and send it to some place on the internet and have them make it for penny's on the dollar of what it would have cost 20 years ago.

~Matt