Viable Future-Tech Economy?

[K. A. Pital]

But I was thinking of intellectual property in the way of a guy that invents a new widget. He'll want to sell that and make money

Thankfully, that doesn't automatically work this way even now, because the potential for abuse is enormous. You're still thinking about widgets. How about someone makes Penicillin Mk2 and keeps that to himself? What should we do, help him pay his bills or forcibly demand that this invention be spread to all industrial production plants in existence and such?

Probably the latter; so of course non-critical things, various luxuries and luxury addons like improved cars, widgets, games et cetera still constitute an industry where you can play with your "digital rights". But I doubt anyone would tolerate someone playing with "rights" to very essential things in automated production - like for example certain configurations of production lines, key technologies for production automatons, etc.

It all depends on to what extent society will tolerate this. In case the productive potential is already enormous compared to daily demands of a citizen, society doesn't have to tolerate anyone's attempts to monopolize inventions in the critical sectors; and I think it wouldn't tolerate it really. Some products will go off-hands for private patent rights as soon as fully automated production spreads everywhere.

[Coyote]

Also, the fact that in Coyote's proposed ultra-automated pseudo-utopia, a lot of people would be unemployed or "partially employed" (3 day work weeks), it might prompt some to seek a better life in the off-world colonies.

We'd get advertisement zeppelins blaring stuff about how "a new life awaits you at the off-world colonies" and stuff. Goddamn Replicants.

Ohh, I could definitely see thatbeing marketed. Like military recruiting promises a hard life but full of adventure, etc. Colonies would seek eager suckers people seeking challenges and rewarding lifestyles and market to them the "adventure" of farming with your own hands.

I can also see a movement of people choosing to live like that as far away as possible for the peace and quiet and being away from the all-intrusive government/corporations/whatever, although that probably wouldn't be a big enough social movement to count on.

[Coyote]

How about someone makes Penicillin Mk2 and keeps that to himself? What should we do, help him pay his bills or forcibly demand that this invention be spread to all industrial production plants in existence and such?

Well, in a way, doesn't this happen with corporations such as Pfizer that develop pharmaceuticals? "Pfizer" as an entity holds the rights rather than "Bob the researcher" but it is up to Pfizer to release the medicine on the market. A desire for profit means they probably will do just exactly that, but even then they'll try to squeeze as much profit as they can, and they could potentially charge high enough that the poorest people can't afford it. We see this already, of course. A government could theoretically step in and issue regulations that force the company to better prices, but this might only be done in case the drug in question is a cure for a current disease that is sweeping the population. If it's, say, Botox, I don't see a pro-market government interfering.

[Nyrath]

I'm honestly not sure what exactly an effective postscarcity economy would look like. My guess would be that the line between hobby and job would become basically nonexistant.

IIRC this is more or less the situation one finds in Iain Banks The Culture novels. Everything in life is basically free, people only "work" at things that interest them.

Of course, an argument can be made that in those novels, human beings are basically pets of the large AIs who run everything.

[Nyrath]

From CHILDHOOD'S END by Sir Arthur C. Clarke:

...Production had become largely automatic: the robot factories poured forth consumer goods in such unending streams that all the ordinary necessities of life were virtually free. Men worked for the sake of the luxuries they desired: or they did not work at all...

...People could indulge in such whims, because they had both the time and the money. The abolition of armed forces had at once almost doubled the world's effective wealth, and increased production had done the rest. As a result, it was difficult to compare the standard of living of twenty-first-century man with that of any of his predecessors. Everything was so cheap that the necessities of life were free, provided as a public service by the community as roads, water, street lighting and drainage had once been. A man could travel anywhere he pleased, eat whatever food he fancied -- without handing over any money. He had earned the right to do this by being a productive member of the community.

There were, of course, some drones, but the number of people sufficiently strong-willed to indulge in a life of complete idleness is much smaller than is generally supposed. Supporting such parasites was considerably less of a burden than providing the armies of ticket-collectors, shop assistants, bank clerks, stockbrokers and so forth whose main function, when one took the global point of view, was to transfer items from one ledger to another...

[Darth Wong]

But I was thinking of intellectual property in the way of a guy that invents a new widget. He'll want to sell that and make money, but if the moment he shares the concept with the world, instant piracy. The world becomes a better place thanks to his widget idea, but he still can't pay his bills. So the next guy to invent Widget Mk.-II will just keep it to himself, perhaps.

If we're talking about a fanciful society where costs are so low as to make basic living expenses trivial for everyone, then you are engaging in a wrong-context thought exercise by projecting your present-day mentality onto this hypothetical person. He doesn't need to worry about "paying his bills", so why should it bother him that people are stealing his work? Maybe the fame associated with inventing a useful new device is more than enough to motivate him.

[Darth Wong]

From CHILDHOOD'S END by Sir Arthur C. Clarke:

...Production had become largely automatic: the robot factories poured forth consumer goods in such unending streams that all the ordinary necessities of life were virtually free. Men worked for the sake of the luxuries they desired: or they did not work at all...

...People could indulge in such whims, because they had both the time and the money. The abolition of armed forces had at once almost doubled the world's effective wealth, and increased production had done the rest. As a result, it was difficult to compare the standard of living of twenty-first-century man with that of any of his predecessors. Everything was so cheap that the necessities of life were free, provided as a public service by the community as roads, water, street lighting and drainage had once been. A man could travel anywhere he pleased, eat whatever food he fancied -- without handing over any money. He had earned the right to do this by being a productive member of the community.

There were, of course, some drones, but the number of people sufficiently strong-willed to indulge in a life of complete idleness is much smaller than is generally supposed. Supporting such parasites was considerably less of a burden than providing the armies of ticket-collectors, shop assistants, bank clerks, stockbrokers and so forth whose main function, when one took the global point of view, was to transfer items from one ledger to another...

Now there was a man who clearly had a very optimistic (and I would say hopelessly naive) view of human nature. Really, if his vision of human nature was true, then the useless superficial spoiled idle rich kids of today should not exist, or at most, they should be a tiny proportion of the wealthy class' youth.

I would think that the only way to enforce useful behaviour in such a society would be to have a rather harsh social code about productivity, or perhaps even criminalization of idleness.

[Slacker]

Well, to be fair, superaliens were tweaking human consciousness there. The 'downside' to human society at the end of Childhood's End is as extreme in the other direction, I think.

As for a good treatment of a future economy, I'd look at John Barnes' A Million Open Doors series. Aside from being fantastic books, the Thousand Cultures have a post-AI society as well, and he did a number of the same things Mike just mused on-professions as hobbies, that sort of thing. In fact, the government actually *makes* people take the place of low-level AIs in various jobs-the service industries, etc-for a set period of time, just to encourage a fraction of them to actually contribute to society and do something useful. "Going into the box" is a big problem on Earth, although I can't give much more away without spoiling plot.

[Junghalli]

Also, the fact that in Coyote's proposed ultra-automated pseudo-utopia, a lot of people would be unemployed or "partially employed" (3 day work weeks), it might prompt some to seek a better life in the off-world colonies.

Actually, this brings up a good point, although one somewhat opposite to what you were saying. A lot of the impetus for emigration comes from things sucking back home. In a realistic starfaring society, this probably wouldn't be true. If you can build starships you should realistically be able to support your population at a quite high standard of living. What then is the appeal of leaving the comfortable homeworld to face the dangers and deprivations of bringing civilization to an empty planet?

If you assume some sort of McGuffinite that's actually worth trading over interstellar distances, then acquiring that would be the main impetus for interstellar colonization. Otherwise, the only people who would want to become colonists would be people willing to leave a comfortable First World style life to go spend their time carving cities out of jungles and risking getting eaten by space bears. Basically people who would probably be considered crazy by the vast majority of the population.

I suspect realistically interstellar colonization would mostly happen quite slowly for this reason, even if you had fast and cheap FTL.

[Samuel]

Why would you even bother colonizing alien worlds? Just build orbitals around the stars and you can enjoy the fact that you have an entire continent on some ice moon as your playground.