tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post5592362332707445552..comments2024-03-25T15:17:04.488-07:00Comments on Captain Capitalism: Why Post-Scarcity Economics is ScaryCaptain Capitalismhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05620212946121617985noreply@blogger.comBlogger58125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-91253845294704516952017-07-02T17:05:07.970-07:002017-07-02T17:05:07.970-07:00Some of us will become neo-Luddites and destroy th...Some of us will become neo-Luddites and destroy the post-scarcity world.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10041924211757511558noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-24398174242302760152017-01-26T09:38:07.658-08:002017-01-26T09:38:07.658-08:00I disagree with this. A post-scarcity economy is m...I disagree with this. A post-scarcity economy is most certainly possible. Does someone have to move around resources, refine raw materials, etc.? Yes. Do they have to be sentient? No. Robots can do that easily. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-7381098365455122572016-11-07T19:49:55.210-08:002016-11-07T19:49:55.210-08:00"Matter of fact the entire study of economics..."Matter of fact the entire study of economics would be unnecessary in a world where resources were unlimitedly plentiful and not scarce." Correction:the study of MONETARY economics would be unnecessary. You still need to manage resources intelligently, which is what to "economize" actually means. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02930379904988053955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-29197289482668318682016-11-07T19:46:37.757-08:002016-11-07T19:46:37.757-08:00"Matter of fact the entire study of economics..."Matter of fact the entire study of economics would be unnecessary in a world where resources were unlimitedly plentiful and not scarce." Correction:the study of MONETARY economics would be unnecessary. You still need to manage resources intelligently, which is what to "economize" actually means. Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02930379904988053955noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-16465655713709167232016-10-28T22:04:11.227-07:002016-10-28T22:04:11.227-07:00In a post-scarcity economy, some things are still ...In a post-scarcity economy, some things are still scarce.<br /><br />Take time for example. You're going to the free theme park, but you're not alone since it's a sunny day and there is a line-up. You can wait 1 hour to get in, or you can PAY to pass in front of other people and save some time. Wait in line? That 1 hour will never be refunded to you. It's spent.<br /><br />Another example is real estate, site, location. Sure everyone can now afford a super big house with a lawn, but what if your ideal is smelling saltwater and pines in the morning? Problem is, the whole coast has been built up, and to live in one of that houses by the seaside you need to displace someone. How can you do that? Pay for it. Buy the ideal spot.<br /><br />Another example is uniqueness. You can download a million songs for free, but that guy across the street has paid for something you'll never have -- a private show in his living room by the members of U2.<br /><br />Now you're taking a virtual/online art course at the university and you have the choice -- an AI teacher that'll do a pretty good job at teaching you techniques and creative approaches. Or a real/human teacher in real-time who'll interact you and challenge you in ways an AI won't be able to.<br /><br />Another example? Bandwidth. Let's say people use very powerful mainframe computers to explore virtual worlds for various reasons -- leisure, creativity, psychology, socializing, etc. These virtual worlds are ranked by qualities such as "lag", "physics model" and "pixel resolution". And of course the higher the qualities, the higher the required bandwidth and energy consumption. As soon an any experience, be it physical or virtual, can have different degrees or qualities to it, then it is possible to assign it a value and hence, a price.<br /><br />We could find at least a dozen other examples of "commodities" or "services" that would have a value in a post-scarcity world.Hugohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18359074617119057876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-53409811246706622112016-05-17T22:41:58.933-07:002016-05-17T22:41:58.933-07:00Yes because new tech will never come into existenc...Yes because new tech will never come into existence and change that. OutlawZero7https://www.blogger.com/profile/10983585741965309869noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-75584881973207416822016-02-29T17:15:05.287-08:002016-02-29T17:15:05.287-08:00Women have more value than sex, you nutjob. You re...Women have more value than sex, you nutjob. You realise both sexes contribute to art and science now, right?HFlatMinorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09997992708027324876noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-71295953513465677492015-12-30T07:35:56.504-08:002015-12-30T07:35:56.504-08:00I don't find the notion scary at all in fact I...I don't find the notion scary at all in fact I would welcome such a society,<br />the people who define their self worth through how much money they make may go quite mad to begin with but I believe they would adapt in one way or another.<br /><br />I for one dream of the day when I can pursue my many diverse hobbies without having to get up in the morning to go to work, there are certainly things I like doing because I find enjoyment in the doing of them regardless of how scarce or not things are, people after all still do things like gardening even though they can buy everything they need at the store. <br /><br />Greg Sladehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08946845698329677308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-55140930564179385352015-08-03T19:32:14.689-07:002015-08-03T19:32:14.689-07:00mind uploading and simulations will be the post sc...mind uploading and simulations will be the post scarcity world Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-69684697636205055612015-07-28T02:55:22.361-07:002015-07-28T02:55:22.361-07:00You could make everything without bound and withou...You could make everything without bound and without cost and you would not satisfy the human spirit. Left idle the human will find a way to compete. Even if you could create space without limit humans would compete over the abstract location. The human soul is competitive and understands only relative wealth. To deprive the human of the concept of relativity is dangerous. The human mind would invent an abstraction which could be scarce to compete over. Such is our nature. We would go mad. Our sanity is defined by scarcity and struggle against our environment.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-26215010409484475532015-07-10T06:54:57.525-07:002015-07-10T06:54:57.525-07:00This to a large extent was covered in a sci fi boo...This to a large extent was covered in a sci fi book called 'Voyage from Yesteryear'. In point of fact we only live in a scarcity economy due to artificial controls. The only thing keeping anything scarce at this point is... the expense of moving resources to where they need to be. Think of anything you want to consider; getting a man on the moon. Eliminating fossil fuels. What is the only rebuttal anyone ever has as to why we don't do it? "It costs too much". Since the money is no longer backed by an actual scarcity of anything (no gold standard etc) then it's a farcical construct. A scarcity model is being enforced on a post-scarcity world, to keep a select powerful few in those positions; this is partially because they feel as trapped by the system at the top as those at the other stratified levels as well.<br />In Voyage, James P Hogan makes the hypothesis that money is nothing but a symbol for 'respect' (a statement one of the other commenters alludes to as well, regarding 'expertise'). Becoming respeccted directly, without currency would be how you would be 'paid' as you then have a direct marker. To that point also, Robert David Steele makes a similar point about open source intelligence and sharing of information globally. Once a person contributes, honestly and with some measure of acccuracy, with reliability, then they accrue a sort of social currency, a form of respect. These favors are how people have always worked in the absence of money. We would return to barter system, but not for goods. Just for services. We can make all the foods we need and machines we need. Scarcity is already a sham.A. Nony Maushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10657170757463606184noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-58046660347716466872015-04-23T10:33:05.922-07:002015-04-23T10:33:05.922-07:00I think you oversimplify. The renderings of post-s...I think you oversimplify. The renderings of post-scarcity economies I am familiar with acknowledge that there will still be scarcity of a sort: it's simply the necessities of life that will cease to be meaningfully scarce. Even if we manage to create a replicator, there will still be the edges of scientific knowledge to fill out and new technologies to develop. The difference is that people will pursue these things for social capital and personal fulfillment rather than simply for base survival. If I want something that has never been made before, I'll still have to invent and create it myself. If I want to colonize another planet, I'll still have to go out and settle it myself. I see this sort of dynamic play out all the time in the open source world. Many people do, as it turns out, value more than just sex. And there's more to increasing sex appeal than building muscle and staying well-groomed. One could in fact argue that as the supply of attractive, virile humans rises, the value of differentiating traits such as unusually high intelligence would rise in relation.ryepdxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00111169010000124672noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-20307596624607760382014-08-25T05:26:52.708-07:002014-08-25T05:26:52.708-07:00There will likely still be jobs worth doing, even ...There will likely still be jobs worth doing, even if they are only creative work for self-actualisation and for a reason to contribute in that kind of way you need only look at our own schooldays. People will do anything, I mean anything, to get a gold star!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-61056142275360578352013-12-25T23:53:05.200-08:002013-12-25T23:53:05.200-08:00The only tradeable goods would be sex and attentio...The only tradeable goods would be sex and attention? What about art? Music? Literature? Dance? Theatre? Technologies furthering the advance of these fields? I don't know what most other advocates of post scarcity ideas mean when they say post scarcity. But to me that means the ability to fufill basic needs without cutting into the profits of those providing them, or requiring them to expend any mental or physical effort to do so. Things like food and housing would definitely fall into that category, at least here in America, considering how much food is wasted and how vacant houses dwarf the amount of homeless people. I'm not sure if basic hygiene and water fall into that category, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00240447650082864485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-36830307215869450282013-12-15T18:31:12.506-08:002013-12-15T18:31:12.506-08:00Read about the Technological Singularity:
https://...Read about the Technological Singularity:<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity<br /><br />Transhumanism:<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism<br /><br />Postgenderism:<br />https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgenderism<br /><br />Lesswrong:<br />http://lesswrong.com/Arthurhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11638712544129269911noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-55960032470402080582013-11-26T10:10:10.680-08:002013-11-26T10:10:10.680-08:00You have a really messed up view of men and women....You have a really messed up view of men and women. And no imagination. You deserve work! Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-65408291334980047702013-11-08T20:02:21.865-08:002013-11-08T20:02:21.865-08:00No. A post-scarcity economy is most desirable. Why...No. A post-scarcity economy is most desirable. Why? Because it implies the technological capability such that small self-interested groups (or even single individuals) are capable of accomplishment feats (curing human aging for biological immortality, space colonization) that only governments or large corporations are capable of today.<br /><br />I call this self-empowerment, which forms the basis of my personal belief system. Libertarianism, transhumanism, and free-market capitalism are world-views based on the concept of self-empowerment. That's why I am partial to these world-views. I do not believe in any world-view (e.g. philosophy, religion, etc.) that is not explicitly based on self-empowerment and individual self-ownership. Such world-views could never be of any use to me and are, by definition, worthless.kurt9https://www.blogger.com/profile/02101147267959016924noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-91148541759592092552013-11-07T23:53:40.821-08:002013-11-07T23:53:40.821-08:00Some folk (namely Neal Stephenson) think that the ...Some folk (namely Neal Stephenson) think that the speciation has already begun, in attitudes anyway.<br /><br /><br />Contemporary culture is a two-tiered system, like the Morlocks and the Eloi in H.G. Wells's The Time Machine, except that it's been turned upside down. In The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class, supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the technological wheels turning. But in our world it's the other way round. The Morlocks are in the minority, and they are running the show, because they understand how everything works. The much more numerous Eloi learn everything they know from being steeped from birth in electronic media directed and controlled by book-reading Morlocks. So many ignorant people could be dangerous if they got pointed in the wrong direction, and so we've evolved a popular culture that is (a) almost unbelievably infectious and (b) neuters every person who gets infected by it, by rendering them unwilling to make judgments and incapable of taking stands.<br /><br />Morlocks, who have the energy and intelligence to comprehend details, go out and master complex subjects and produce Disney-like Sensorial Interfaces so that Eloi can get the gist without having to strain their minds or endure boredom. Those Morlocks will go to India and tediously explore a hundred ruins, then come home and built sanitary bug-free versions: highlight films, as it were. This costs a lot, because Morlocks insist on good coffee and first-class airline tickets, but that's no problem because Eloi like to be dazzled and will gladly pay for it all.<br /><br /><br />If interested, read the rest of <a href="http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.shtml" rel="nofollow">In the Beginning Was the Command Line</a>. He also uses car analogies.Eric Henniganhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00424164738639069896noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-82533515080738825042013-11-07T18:59:13.790-08:002013-11-07T18:59:13.790-08:00This idea is impossible. It will never happen in h...This idea is impossible. It will never happen in humanities current configuration or any I have ever heard of. It might be possible as an illusion of coarse but it will be no where close to reality.<br /><br />I do see tremendous change in the future due to newly realized technology, major political realignments due to demographics and social decay. JoeAmericanoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-46196297748707026512013-11-07T16:29:56.046-08:002013-11-07T16:29:56.046-08:00interesting. i have had thoughts on the topic of a...interesting. i have had thoughts on the topic of a post scarcity economy but not in the terms you are thinking. a post scarcity economy is impossible, but in terms of calculus it is a limit. a point that is constantly being approached but that approach decelerates as it approaches so that it never reaches it but never stops getting closer.<br /><br />i thought about it in terms of human conflict. i am of the opinion that human conflict arises from competition for resources as a consequence of scarcity. in the future, say, humans mine space for things, autonamous machines perform the banal functions and human profession is in fields that machines cant do or in monitoring many many of these machines. this will 1) exponentially raise the resources at their disposal, thus raising their enjoyment of life and 2) because space, in this hypothetical future, has vast resources but very few beings that need them, the resources will be available without need for conflict because they must not be taken from anybody.<br /><br />now comes WHY absence of scarcity is impossible. even in a world where we dont need humans to obtain resources and you mustnt take resources from others to obtain them, there is still always a bottleneck ie distance to the resources, how easily are they attainable by current and projected means and abilities, how much of that resource is currently known to exist in a realistically attainable range... you get the idea.<br /><br />so as we approach the limit of non scarcity, assuming we last that long, we will see that conflict becomes less economically viable as a means for attaining resources and, the best part, as non-scarcity is impossible, there will ALWAYS be endeavors that humans must engage in besides hedonistic self service, and furthermore these endeavors will get more specialized, complicated and therefore rewarding and as a result quality of life will go up.<br /><br />i am talking about a hypothetical distant future of course, but it seems like a sound premise to me.monster221noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-34990804934300707722013-11-07T12:26:21.403-08:002013-11-07T12:26:21.403-08:00I think you can extrapolate this with the value of...I think you can extrapolate this with the value of time vs the cost of time graph. A person works a certain amount of time in order to meet their needs, and then spends the remaining time doing other activities. People balance their work time and time off so that the value of an additional hour off equals the cost of not working that additional hour.<br /><br />As the time required to meet their needs reduces due to inexpensive goods, the time available to do other things increases, and as it increases each additional hour off is worth less and less.<br /><br />So what do people with lots of time to spend do now? That is what the future looks like for everybody. Won't be too odd.<br /><br />Where it gets wierd is when SERVICES are incredibly cheap due to automation. When they can create a robot that can replace the delight provided by the admiring eyes of a woman, THEN the world is going to get seriously odd.William Hugheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10420643472530736483noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-71468221089290768682013-11-07T12:06:26.882-08:002013-11-07T12:06:26.882-08:00Cappy said:
"Post Scarcity" is basicall...Cappy said: <br />"Post Scarcity" is basically a utopian ideal of economists. It means everything is free because things are no longer scarce. Matter of fact the entire study of economics would be unnecessary in a world where resources were unlimitedly plentiful and not scarce."<br /><br />Sorry Cap, your basic premise is flawed.<br /><br />A "post-scarcity" economy is one in which all of the requirements for a human's basic physical needs are met by that humans capability to manufacturer them for his/her self.<br /><br />This immediately leads to widespread hyperventilation about the "end of money" and forays into the whys and wherefores of how "it can't possibly work because ..."<br /><br />Your taken-to-the-extreme example of humans transacting in interpersonal exchange is one of the basic assumptions inherent to the post-scarcity meme, though usually in the form of intellectual entertainment/information instead of sexual (though that seems as likely as the other to be honest). I'm hardly an Economic Lieutenant, but some of my early thinking on this can be read <a href="http://wheretheresawilliam.blogspot.com/2008/10/blast-from-my-past.html" rel="nofollow">here</a>.Will Brownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13454533450309633627noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-49926588679690698012013-11-07T03:01:26.696-08:002013-11-07T03:01:26.696-08:00I think someone would still artificially limit the...I think someone would still artificially limit the availability of the recources.<br />Just like the precious stone industry does.MaxKaisernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-77151768838786302642013-11-06T19:37:20.502-08:002013-11-06T19:37:20.502-08:00It really shows that you are an economist and not ...It really shows that you are an economist and not a quantum physicist.<br /><br />How about cyborgs and those that want to go beyond the human experience ?<br /><br />In a post-scarcity economics, flesh and blood is obsolete.<br /><br />Do Gods have sex ?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8358039.post-13636250287568284782013-11-06T14:57:38.613-08:002013-11-06T14:57:38.613-08:00New inventions cannot be duplicated because they d...New inventions cannot be duplicated because they don't exist yet. For example, *assume* that 3-D replicators existed in the age of tube televisions and brick cell phones. People would still want the future -- flat screen HD TV and Android/iPhone cell phones. So right there is something left out of your hypothesis.<br /><br />Furthermore, people still want to be healthy and long lived. Medical technology development, new drugs, and medical services would still be in high demand.<br /><br />I could go on but you get the idea.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com