[BartSimpson]

Okay, so maybe you wouldn't be able to have your own island, but what if everyone had their own place to live, plenty of food, access to the best medical care possible, plenty of vacation time every year, and none of these things were linked to your job?

Meaning if you wanted to focus on art all the time you could and your income would be there anyway.

Sure, it's total Utopian claptrap, but what if?

You could travel as you desired, use all the energy you want, and whatever.

Just imagine for a moment that instead of everyone being poor (like in too many countries) everyone was relatively rich and living secure and in comfort?

Would you support it or oppose it?

[Thanos]

I'd try to save as much of it as I could, live under the radar as much as possible, do small things where the greatest luxury would be something like a lifelong golf course membership, and just make sure that the necessities were safely covered. I'd also avoid as much as possible any kind of entanglements with banks or any other such 'legalized' criminal organizations just so I never got fleeced by them ever again. All in all it would be a small and quiet existence, with a concentration on safety from being pillaged and looted by the bandits again.

[Zipperfish]

If you read Iain M Banks Culture books, it's a bout a hyper-acdvanced humanoid race called the culture. There is no such thing as scarcity anymore, so there is no money and everything is free. You live to be pretty much as old as you want. During that lifetime you can opt be male, female, half animal, a mythical beast or live in virtual reality. And the entire civilization is benignly looked after by hyper-intelligent AI beings.

[Thanos]

Zipperfish Zipperfish:

If you read Iain M Banks Culture books, it's a bout a hyper-acdvanced humanoid race called the culture. There is no such thing as scarcity anymore, so there is no money and everything is free. You live to be pretty much as old as you want. During that lifetime you can opt be male, female, half animal, a mythical beast or live in virtual reality. And the entire civilization is benignly looked after by hyper-intelligent AI beings.

Hmmm, interesting.

$1:

In vesting all power in his individualistic, sometime eccentric, but always benign, AI Minds, Banks knew what he was doing; this is the only way a liberal anarchy could be achieved, by taking what is best in humans and placing it beyond corruption, which means out of human control.

Which is why I've come to believe that the Skynet kind of fear is the biggest load of bullshit out there. An AI won't feel hate so the idiotic paranoia over a machine genocide/apocalypse becomes even sillier on closer examination. Anything that isn't tainted by human emotion and bias it by default far cleaner and pure than anything that has anything of humanity in it. Like in Colossus: The Forbin Project, how bad of a 'tyranny' could it possibly be when the basic idea is that the world is too precious to keep allowing you people to be assholes towards each other all the time?

Know what scares me the most? Nanotech. And not these grey-goo scenarios either, which are just as silly as the Skynet paranoia. What scares me about nanotech is the potential it has for greatly lengthened lifespans, to the point where a person could become for all intents and purposes immortal. But it the early stages where such nanotech because possible it would be only affordable to the wealthy, and I can't imagine a worse kind of hell than the one that would spring into existence than if the contemporary wealthy who are alive today became virtually immortal. Imagine, for example, something like this living forever:



The future is a cigar, being forever stubbed out on the face of anyone unfortunate enough to be an underling, all the while accompanied by the sick bellowing malicious laughter of the immortal frat boys who will never ever grow up. Logan's Run, where everyone gets offed when they turn thirty, would be a million times better than a future like that.

[BartSimpson]

raydan raydan:

Socialism?

Quite the opposite.

In socialism wealth is sucked up by the state and redistributed to the masses after the state takes most of it for itself.

In this situation there is no need to have anything redistributed since everyone would already have everything they could want or need.

You want a 50' cabin cruiser? Just ask.

You want to fly to Milan? When do you want to go?

There's nothing to buy because everything you want is free.

[BartSimpson]

raydan raydan:

Nobody would be happy if everything was free because most people judge their happiness by comparing themselves to others... sad, but true.

The politics of envy would be dead.

[BeaverFever]

If everyone was rich there would be no workers, robots would have to do all the work, not just the unskilled labour they do now, but also the work that requires reflection, judgment, discretion and creativity.

And as discussed on a recent thread, soon after they start doing that, we'll have to break out the EMP weapons to keep the robots from enslaving us.

[BartSimpson]

BeaverFever BeaverFever:

If everyone was rich there would be no workers, robots would have to do all the work, not just the unskilled labour they do now, but also the work that requires reflection, judgment, discretion and creativity.

And as discussed on a recent thread, soon after they start doing that, we'll have to break out the EMP weapons to keep the robots from enslaving us.

I think a lot of people would work anyway. Just that they'd work at something they want to do as opposed to something they have to do.

I'd be a full-time wine drinker.

[BRAH]

This is how I would roll.

[Thanos]

If those girls had all the resources they needed and were no longer slaves to the economy-of-scarcity they could do something else with their lives and not have to ho it up for you.

[andyt]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

In this situation there is no need to have anything redistributed since everyone would already have everything they could want or need.

You want a 50' cabin cruiser? Just ask.

You want to fly to Milan? When do you want to go?

There's nothing to buy because everything you want is free.

The end of humans. No way we could handle that. We need effort to keep us healthy. What we don't need is a rigged game that keeps some people down.

Most people wouldn't have a clue about what to do with all that freedom and possiblity. In the first half of the 20th century, there was great hope that increasing wealth and free time would lead to a great renaissance, where people got involved in culture and community. Instead, everybody wound up chasing the almighty buck, trying to get ahead of the Jones' and spent their leisure time with the idiot box and watching sports instead of playing them, which has now become full on gladiatorial games, ie UFC. so if there was unlimited wealth, people would just suck up resources even faster than they are now, trying to amuse and divert themselves instead of producing anything of value.


But what is attainable and would be helpful is everybody having enough to eat, a decent place to call home (not a McMansion), and sufficient leisure time to spend it with family are re-created themselves. Certainly envy wouldn't disappear with unlimited wealth for everybody, since it's an intrinsic emotion with survival value. People would always find some way to try to one-up the other.

[Brenda]

That would be rather boring, wouldnt it.
You could want to travel, but there wouldnt be a difference from where you are now, other than the surroundings.
But you can get the same lobster in Mexico City as you can get in Iran.
There wouldnt be a friendly face serving you anymore, just you telling a robot to make you your lobster.

Booooring!!

[JaredMilne]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Okay, so maybe you wouldn't be able to have your own island, but what if everyone had their own place to live, plenty of food, access to the best medical care possible, plenty of vacation time every year, and none of these things were linked to your job?

Meaning if you wanted to focus on art all the time you could and your income would be there anyway.

Sure, it's total Utopian claptrap, but what if?

You could travel as you desired, use all the energy you want, and whatever.

Just imagine for a moment that instead of everyone being poor (like in too many countries) everyone was relatively rich and living secure and in comfort?

Would you support it or oppose it?

Maybe I shouldn't be looking a gift horse in the mouth, but I'd be somewhat curious as to what actually makes this society function. How is everyone capable of living in comfort and security, without ever having to work or make tough financial and educational decisions? Is there some sort of magical ether that provides limitless power? Some form of new form of money that pays for everything all at once, defying all economics as humans have ever conceived them? How are collective decisions made when conflicts arise, as one would think they inevitably would in human societies?

And how long would it be before the system started experiencing malfunctions, given that the problem with any supposedly "perfect" society is the imperfect humans that have to use it?

That's why I chose "Undecided"-I'd need to know everything, and I mean everything, about this system before I could support it.

Given the epic fails and false promises that make up the legacies of guys like Lenin and Mao, I'm very leery about supporting something that might lead to heaven on earth.

While it certainly sounds nice, I am not entirely sure what to make of such a system.

[Caelon]

BartSimpson BartSimpson:

Okay, so maybe you wouldn't be able to have your own island, but what if everyone had their own place to live, plenty of food, access to the best medical care possible, plenty of vacation time every year, and none of these things were linked to your job?

Meaning if you wanted to focus on art all the time you could and your income would be there anyway.

Sure, it's total Utopian claptrap, but what if?

You could travel as you desired, use all the energy you want, and whatever.

Just imagine for a moment that instead of everyone being poor (like in too many countries) everyone was relatively rich and living secure and in comfort?

Would you support it or oppose it?

It seems most people have ignored the basics of supply and demand economics. If we were all 'rich' then the cost of the desirable would escalate. If you wanted to go inside the pyramids and had to compete against several million others who wished to do the same thing when only a few thousand could be accommodated per year; then the price would go up until only a few thousand would be willing to pay the cost to achieve their desire.

There would become a new definition of 'rich' versus 'poor'. So now are you only rich or obscenely rich.

[martin14]

Thanos Thanos:

If those girls had all the resources they needed and were no longer slaves to the economy-of-scarcity they could do something else with their lives and not have to ho it up for you.

Then you just have to find the girls who WANT to ho it for you.

They are out there.