Is this country just fucked going forward?

Smitty

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UBI would be the beginning of the end of capitalism and work incentives for everyone. It’s a worthless concept that is used by political hacks who want to perpetuate their careers and low ambition voters who keep them in office.
Again, I'm not saying we are anywhere close to it.

I'm just saying, imagine a scenario where nanobots can self-replicate by harvesting resources out of the ground, procuring their own energy (solar, or maybe fusion), can repair themselves when they break, and are programmed to farm food, build shelter, and create through automation all of the rest of humanity's basic needs. Why would I need to work, if there's an army of self-creating, self-maintaining, self-sustaining robots whose only function is to make me a house, feed me, and clean my house? I could sit on my ass all day long.

Now, you might ask, who pays for these robots? That's the thing. This type of automation is not only inevitable, but it will also eventually be so cheap as to be free.

"Work" will someday only be for the creative or for the technologically-advancing humans who want more than their basic needs met. For everyone else, there is literally a free ride for them. It doesn't even have to be from the government. Bill Gates could do this with his spare change. Free food and housing for everyone, all he needs is an initial investment of like, $2 billion dollars, to create the first self-replicating robots. He can do that in his will when he dies. Etc.

All this is hypothetical, obviously, but a scenario like this will eventually be reality.
 

L.T. Fan

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Again, I'm not saying we are anywhere close to it.

I'm just saying, imagine a scenario where nanobots can self-replicate by harvesting resources out of the ground, procuring their own energy (solar, or maybe fusion), can repair themselves when they break, and are programmed to farm food, build shelter, and create through automation all of the rest of humanity's basic needs. Why would I need to work, if there's an army of self-creating, self-maintaining, self-sustaining robots whose only function is to make me a house, feed me, and clean my house? I could sit on my ass all day long.

Now, you might ask, who pays for these robots? That's the thing. This type of automation is not only inevitable, but it will also eventually be so cheap as to be free.

"Work" will someday only be for the creative or for the technologically-advancing humans who want more than their basic needs met. For everyone else, there is literally a free ride for them. It doesn't even have to be from the government. Bill Gates could do this with his spare change. Free food and housing for everyone, all he needs is an initial investment of like, $2 billion dollars, to create the first self-replicating robots. He can do that in his will when he dies. Etc.

All this is hypothetical, obviously, but a scenario like this will eventually be reality.
I might be but I can’t see it in a global circumstance. The world is so far apart in living conditions and national leadership structures that it would take maybe centuries to get every one in the global society on the same page. That would have to happen because if a segmented part of the world population was ahead of or behind a standard it would be mayhem. It’s a nice thought and I think it could partially happen but it would have to be in a society who was far advanced in technology and economic conditions.
 

Chocolate Lab

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Most people want more that their basic needs met now. If you have zero desire for a better life you can pretty much sit on your ass and not starve or freeze to death right now, at least in this country.

And if the machines get that smart and self-sufficient, they'll probably just Skynet us anyway.
 

Cowboysrock55

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Most people want more that their basic needs met now. If you have zero desire for a better life you can pretty much sit on your ass and not starve or freeze to death right now, at least in this country.

And if the machines get that smart and self-sufficient, they'll probably just Skynet us anyway.
Yeah I think Schmitty is ahead of himself. There is no guarantee automation will ever get to that point. It's an interesting hypothetical but technology doesn't always go where people think it will. And we don't know if the resources on earth could ever sustain something like that.
 

Cotton

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UBI is never happening in this country. Ever. At least not without a civil war or something very similar.
 

jsmith6919

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UBI is never happening in this country. Ever. At least not without a civil war or something very similar.
Also socialist utopia Finland just threw in the towel on UBI as it was bankrupting the country.

All socialist countries end the same way, you eventually run out of other peoples money
 

Cotton

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Also socialist utopia Finland just threw in the towel on UBI as it was bankrupting the country.

All socialist countries end the same way, you eventually run out of other peoples money
How many times do varying forms of socialism have to fail before people realize it is an idiotic notion?
 

Smitty

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Yeah I think Schmitty is ahead of himself. There is no guarantee automation will ever get to that point. It's an interesting hypothetical but technology doesn't always go where people think it will. And we don't know if the resources on earth could ever sustain something like that.
I don't agree at all. I think absent disaster (asteroid, nuclear war, something that wipes us all out), that type of automation is completely inevitable.

Of course I am not standing on this making some sort of prediction like, "This is how it is going to happen for sure: It will be robots who serve all our needs like the Jetsons."

My premise is built on, and I think it's relatively unarguable, that capitalism succeeds in making everything more efficient and cheaper over time. Eventually -- not necessarily in our lifetimes -- basic needs will be so cheap as to be free.

3D printed homes. Hydroponic grown foods. Meat will be created in a lab.

UBI is not feasible now. I agree it's an awful idea as it's implementation would currently require.

But the day will come when human labor isn't needed to actually MAKE anything we need. I mean, it's even possible it COULD BE by the end of our lives. And when that day comes, when armies of machines can generate more food than 10 billion humans can consume (as that's about where our population will top out, thanks to various forms of birth control), when it can all be grown in massive miles-high farm towers, watered with desalinated water from the oceans, powered by unending nuclear fusion giving us free energy.... at that point, UBI will be an inevitability. Everything will be basically free. There will be no charge for food. The government will be able to make more food than we need for WAAAAAY less of a cost than we current pay in taxes right now.
 

Cotton

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I don't agree at all. I think absent disaster (asteroid, nuclear war, something that wipes us all out), that type of automation is completely inevitable.

Of course I am not standing on this making some sort of prediction like, "This is how it is going to happen for sure: It will be robots who serve all our needs like the Jetsons."

My premise is built on, and I think it's relatively unarguable, that capitalism succeeds in making everything more efficient and cheaper over time. Eventually -- not necessarily in our lifetimes -- basic needs will be so cheap as to be free.

3D printed homes. Hydroponic grown foods. Meat will be created in a lab.

UBI is not feasible now. I agree it's an awful idea as it's implementation would currently require.

But the day will come when human labor isn't needed to actually MAKE anything we need. I mean, it's even possible it COULD BE by the end of our lives. And when that day comes, when armies of machines can generate more food than 10 billion humans can consume (as that's about where our population will top out, thanks to various forms of birth control), when it can all be grown in massive miles-high farm towers, watered with desalinated water from the oceans, powered by unending nuclear fusion giving us free energy.... at that point, UBI will be an inevitability. Everything will be basically free. There will be no charge for food. The government will be able to make more food than we need for WAAAAAY less of a cost than we current pay in taxes right now.
:lol

Get off that hill. You look silly up there.
 

Smitty

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I mean, I also think we are about to be shocked regarding what is gonna happen in the next decade or so.

Let's talk climate change. I am so incredibly unconcerned about "global warming" because I see where technology is just about to revolutionize all this.

The first step is obviously, energy. We are on the verge of affordable long lasting batteries about to completely radicalize the fossil fuel industry. Electric cars are here. The day of the combustion engine is over. Every major automobile producer is working towards their entire fleet being electric/battery operated. Kia, for example, says every car it makes will be electric or have an electric option by 2022. That's not the distant future; that's near enough that they aren't speculating, they are saying "We've figured it out, that's just how long it will take us to get it implemented."

Nuclear fusion has had breakthroughs. Ie, they can do it. Fusion is a thing. The problem at this point is making it more efficient (so that it generates more power than it takes to create it), but it's possible to do it. It's no longer that "Fusion is 50 years away and always will be," it's now "Fusion is going to be solved within the next decade and a half."

Once energy concerns are solved, then everything becomes possible. We can build massive vacuums to suck carbon out of the sky. Some teenage kid created a mechanism that can remove all the plastic from the Oceans in a decade or two, once he can figure out how to power it cheaply enough. Etc.

We're at the edge of some really ridiculous advances.

So of course I believe that in 100 years, these advances are going to completely shake up how we operate even as a capitalistic society.

Maybe UBI is the wrong term. Maybe we stay as "capitalists." But capital becomes so cheap because everyone can tap into it, that everything is still basically free.
 

Cotton

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The first step is obviously, energy. We are on the verge of affordable long lasting batteries about to completely radicalize the fossil fuel industry. Electric cars are here. The day of the combustion engine is over. Every major automobile producer is working towards their entire fleet being electric/battery operated.
There have been studies done that have proven that over the life of the car, an electric car contributes just as much carbon as a gas powered vehicle. Until coal-fired electric plants are replaced with nuclear or something else. the electric car isn't doing shit for the environment. It just makes people feel better about driving.
 

Cotton

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Whoa. Don't shut him down so fast. I'm hoping to get a lightsaber out of this.
As if anything can shut Smitty down. :lol
 

Smitty

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There have been studies done that have proven that over the life of the car, an electric car contributes just as much carbon as a gas powered vehicle. Until coal-fired electric plants are replaced with nuclear or something else. the electric car isn't doing shit for the environment. It just makes people feel better about driving.
Well, that's coming too.
 

Smitty

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Also, you guys know me, I am no left leaning environmental hipster, but I'd be skeptical of any report that says electric cars are not ultimately cleaner than gas ones.
 

Cotton

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I'd be skeptical of any report that says electric cars are not ultimately cleaner than gas ones.
There have been multiple studies done. This is what I do for a living, Smitty. Don't @ me.
 

Cowboysrock55

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Also, you guys know me, I am no left leaning environmental hipster, but I'd be skeptical of any report that says electric cars are not ultimately cleaner than gas ones.
Your argument is based on an energy breakthrough that we haven't seen yet and don't know if we ever will see. And I'm not saying you're wrong but until we have this abundance of cheap energy (in terms of resources and waste) what you're suggesting won't happen. We haven't seen that breakthrough yet.
 

fortsbest

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Also, you guys know me, I am no left leaning environmental hipster, but I'd be skeptical of any report that says electric cars are not ultimately cleaner than gas ones.
It's not necessarily the cars themselves that aren't efficient. It's all the things required to make them roll that make their manufacture and use less efficient than fossil fuels. The stuff to make the batteries is environmentally damaging, the fuel to generate the required electricity to charge them is causes more emissions than cars, the cost of them, the govt funding of purchasing them. It's like Solyndra on the automotive level.
 

Cotton

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It's not necessarily the cars themselves that aren't efficient. It's all the things required to make them roll that make their manufacture and use less efficient than fossil fuels. The stuff to make the batteries is environmentally damaging, the fuel to generate the required electricity to charge them is causes more emissions than cars, the cost of them, the govt funding of purchasing them. It's like Solyndra on the automotive level.
Correct.
 
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