Viable Future-Tech Economy?

[Coyote]

We've decried Star Trek's odd socio-utopian/crypto-communist system; we've looked at the clues Star Wars provided for some sort of market economy and nodded in agreement; we've seen political defense-budget wrangles and labor strikes on Babylon-5...

...but let's face it, typically, when 'economy' is mentioned in most science fiction, or at least operatic science fiction, it is a background issue with little depth. Or, on the flipside, a sci-fi story will feature a theorized future economy as a primary plot focus, in which case it'll be some sort of polemic in favor of one system or another, or a distopian noir vision of one system or another.

I've been trying to come up with a economic & political system that is a logical outgrowth of technology in a far-future, operatic level science-fiction story. I think it is logical so far to assume some sort of mixed economy, where a strong, market-driven capitalist system works within the bounds of a strong government system of regulations and agreements. A pure socialist, government-owned business model would not work, nor would a pure market-driven economy, for reasons we're probably already familiar with.

But where technology comes in is how the labor force is divided. Imagine, say, a world where a great deal is automated-- most consumer goods can be built by automation and highly artificially-intelligent robots. Humans may be hired by such a company for quality inspections and product testing at the end of the line, but that won't provide too many jobs.

I was thinking about a society where '3-D printers' are common in nearly every household. If you want to, say, buy a new toaster, you don't order one built online or go to a store (unless you wanted to-- maybe some boutique and specialty shops would exist as novelty destinations). Instead, you look online and see a type and style you like, you customize it with features you want from function to color, then you buy the program, which is transmitted to you, and your 3-D printer goes to work. In a few minutes, you have your new toaster.

What this tells me is that for the most part, shops are no longer needed, so that work force is gone. Delivery men, parking lot attendants, etc-- gone. The real workers would be the people who write the programs that become your consumer goods-- and that becomes the workforce. Them, and the people that repair robots, 3-D printers, and service the network when other robots can't do it.

How would such a system work? I think for big projects, such as designing a car, it'd take forever for one programmer to think of everything a car needs to be built, and few homeowners are going to want to download and assemble separate parts as they pop out of his/her 3-D printer. So big-ticket items would probably be programmed by a guild of workers, each specializing in different aspects of car-part program writing, which then create the parts which are assembled at a automated factory and delivered to the consumer. Apart from the automated factory and the handful of people employed there to fix 'bots, there'd be no need for all these programmers to work together at an office, or even on the same planet with a planet-spanning internet type system (remember this is for a space-opera type setting).

So the end result is that I see an economy that boils down to this:
1- People who make programs for practical items.
2- People who program items for artistic or entertainment value.
3- People who service the network and manufacturing robots.
4- People who work in rare 'boutique' shops and service industries, probably for high-end customers: "Real wait staff!"
5- People who provide public services (teachers, police, firemen & fire inspectors, military, etc)

I'm trying to think of anything else there might be. Classic jobs as we know them in building & manufacturing will be practically non-existent; the big wage-earning sectors would be the various programmers, repairmen, and public-service providers. People working 'boutique' jobs would essentially be a disposable work force if the economy contracts, since they're doing things that robots could do, but people are hired instead for the atmosphere of having live staff. The real movers and shakers would be the programmers.

So how would one get hired into one of these de-centralized collectives of programmers? You submit your application to, say, Ford Programmers Guild to build cars? It would be a sort of "Guild Socialism", where the workers own and control their means of production, but work as part of a team that specializes in building things that are beyond the reach of most individuals.

The buying and selling of programs and the shipping of high-end goods to destinations would provide the tax base (as well as the extraction of raw materials needed to make those goods). I suppose there'd have to be a certain quota for programmers to meet or they'd be kicked out of the guild, and a lot of legal code would be based on the intellectual property rights of programs owned by the Guild. But once you've programmed four or five 'perfect' fenders for Ford Motors Guilds, what do you do then? Live off of royalties?

So, would something like this work as an economic model?

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

You're assuming that programming jobs can't be automated by a sufficiently advanced machine intelligence. If they can, there goes a large slice of the workforce.

Repairs are only going to matter in locations (due to lack of infrastructure) and with products (due to simplicity of construction) where it's more economical to repair rather than scrap and replace. I'm not even talking about landfill, I'm thinking 'into the furnace, separate it out, more feedstock for 3-D printers'.

Economies of scale could easily make that more practical than repairs, they very nearly have now.

How do you intend to deal with shareholding driving companies into solutions that minimise the number of people needed to do work, and seeking as much automation as possible- thereby leaving large numbers of people out of work and disaffected?

How do you tax the output of a 3-D printer? For that matter, how does someone without a high- paying job manage to afford it in the first place? Even if they are of low absolute cost, say the equivalent cost of a car, how many americans don't own or have access to cars now? That transition is going to leave a lot of people behind.

I can see the intellectual property that is a printer template being pirated, and the larger items, the army of bureaucrats that would spring up to enforce the health and safety legislation would drown the world...actually, considering that most of them will be nothing more than programs themselves, maybe not. They may, however, be genuinely necessary.

It's a nice idea, but it looks like a transitional stage on the way to something like Mega- City One, with an average unemployment rate of 87% and the only jobs available in the service industries or the state bureaucracy, or dealing with creaking, decaying legacy infrastructure. Not a problem on a colony planet, admittedly.

[frogcurry]

Fundamentally: No, because you're magically assuming that everything can be made by programmers using 3D printers without any further input or co-ordination. Your toaster will need a fuse, computer circuits, etc as well as a plastic shell. It will need to be fireproof and electrically safe. Theres nothing in 3D printer tech that can do that sort of multi-material work and combine it all together, today or near future. What you are talking about isn't a 3D printer, its a magic assembly machine ala Star Trek.

And you're making a concerted effort to try and eliminate the magic word "corporation" from the solution from the look of things. Collectives of programmers work well for open-source at present because they have jobs at real companies, often corporations which encourage open-source contribution due to the gain it nets the employer from having an input to the programs produced, plus employing that expertise and primary source knowledge inhouse as opposed to having it all outside its control. The same won't really apply for everything, where you need to make an object out of stuff (as opposed to an essentially formless set of data thats endlessly replicatable and has no net inputs required to make it other than human time and a little electric).

Finally, you assume the fender would be perfect after a few goes. If that was the case, why does every car out there today not have the "perfect" fender on it by now? Meh. Oh wait, its because designs evolve, fashions change, materials change, technology progresses.

Other things that I think you've missed:
- You'll still need management structures to oversee the process of making stuff, handling hiring and firing, whether thats for a company or a "Guild". And designers, engineers, scientists etc to actually design the new technology, test it, etc. You'll need investment, which means banking and stock markets or similar, to give the capital to get businesses started off. A lot of people will still work in these areas, the fringes of the 'real' work.

-I see no mention of R & D, which unless its state-funded tends to be funded by corporations. There'd need to be something similar for your guilds.

-Building and manufacturing might actually still be quite successful to be in - the difference is that instead of lots of low wage labourers you'll have middle income site supervisors overseeing robots, QA's checking their work, etc. Also a lower net cost (by eliminating the expensive human part of the job) would potentially allow more activity by lowering the threshold cost of doing replacement, re-building or modelling. I.e. why use an old office building as is, when its not so expensive to re-engineer a lot of its outside appearance? Or buy new kit to replace your old furniture etc. You make less profit on each sale but more sales.So the economy might be more throw-away than it is today, as it would be even cheaper to do so, leading to:

- Recycling and waste breakdown - a LOT of work will be in this in the future, with much more advanced re-use processes for almost all materials.

-A lot more work would be probably involved in solicitors, QA etc (checking that programming is correct), design reviews, etc. We seem to be heading to a much more careful society in that regard. Also as things become more automated the importance of not having a computer code error would increase substantially, as a bug in a car control system might kill 20 due to crashes or accidents, and the liability would be with the company and not the car owner.

- Entertainment services. Those shop employees who we won't need anymore in 30 years time? Your future personal entertainment service providers, employed by corporations who give cheap plastic surgery and computer guided training, then send them round to your programmers house to give her a night of companionship (of various sorts). The amount of this stuff you can get from people out there, using the internet to find customers, is going up steadily (case in point - massage services, erotic and otherwise). This will just grow and grow.

[Coyote]

So far, so good, and thanks for the responses. I just sat down to try to piece this together because a sudden inspiration to tackle the idea hit me, so the concept is starting with some holes in it.

I'm trying to avoid terms like 'corporation' not because I want to experiment with a utopian idea without evil corporations; but rather just a world where corporations exist in a very decentralized manner. A society that is so well-connected electronically that there is no need to have a corporate headquarters building except maybe to house a showroom floor for luring prospective customers with example of finished products. Work-from-home has all kinds of advantages, after all-- no need to buy a building, pay for upkeep, etc. This would not eliminate the "logistical tail" of a corporation, but it would allow it to shrink.

There'd be a handful of managers and business coordinators to make sure everything came together smoothly, of course, and there'd still be a place for delivery people up to a point (getting the raw materials to the fabricators; delivering the final products to the consumers, etc).

Would copyright law be eliminated? If people can't make money off their intellectual property, what would encourage an inventor to make an invention public in the first place? Could a program be made in such a way that, for example, you can only make new parts for your Brand-X toaster in a Brand-X 3-D printer? Naturally, there'd be encryption and other codes to try to protect the programs from piracy, but that'd be a cost of doing business. I'm not trying to think of a perfect economy where there is no graft or corruption, it'll exist somehow... so I guess I can add lawyers to the list of guaranteed jobs that would survive a future tech economy!

Taxing the wages robots would have earned if theye'd been organic workers is a good idea, and seeing to it that everyone has buying power regardless of productivity is good, too-- a person's "job" may be nothing more than "consumer", but even that minimal activity in the market is useful and worth an allowance of some sort.

[Genii Lodus]

What stops people from producing open-source programs for things and releasing these for free? Then why would you want to pay for a toaster when there are a hundred free toasters which are perfectly serviceable if not superior to the paid for models? I had a similar idea in my own sci-fi verse and the only thing I could postulate was that people wanted to buy into brands and certain designers rather than generic product whatever. Even then most people could live perfectly adequately off of free designs and thus disengage from the economy somewhat.

I don't think it's a problem to have mass unemployment due to technology automating the process of manufacturing and distributing goods - you've just given a lot of people a lot more time to enjoy hobbies and leisure. I'd think that while there would be a number of people who never wanted or needed anything that wasn't free and so didn't work most people would at some time or other want something that actually cost and so take a temporary job doing something. If you intensify the current trend for increasing obsolescence of technical knowledge then you can have people spend these gaps in their career learning new skills. I think the number of jobs destroyed by this new economy will probably be offset by the number of people leaving the workforce due to satisfaction with freely obtainable goods. Lots of opportunities for people to be useful individually producing cultural, artistic, media stuff which couldn't be automated (unless there was also true AI but that opens up even more possibilities).

[Coyote]

What stops people from producing open-source programs for things and releasing these for free? Then why would you want to pay for a toaster when there are a hundred free toasters which are perfectly serviceable if not superior to the paid for models?

There'd probably be a lot of public perception (and no doubt encouraged by the program-for-pay guilds/corporations/etc) that the open-source programs are not supported, are not as dependable, or don't have as many options and features. A lot of people today, for example, eschew Linux for various reasons and but into more expensive Mac or Microsoft products. Product support, warranties, certain guarantees, etc, probably provide a level of comfort for consumers that open-source publishing can't match.

I could see small businesses offering products for free, but charging for options, add-ons, upgrades, etc. And I think a true market advocate would actually like the open-source freebie programmers out there because it keep the regular corporations from price-fixing (at least to an extent). Of course, they'll try to portray it as "unfair competition" and so on, but again, that's part of the risks of the business world.

[Darth Wong]

But where technology comes in is how the labor force is divided. Imagine, say, a world where a great deal is automated-- most consumer goods can be built by automation and highly artificially-intelligent robots. Humans may be hired by such a company for quality inspections and product testing at the end of the line, but that won't provide too many jobs.

Increasing automation tends to bring clamour for labour law reform. I would expect something like a 3 day work week in a very highly automated environment with stagnant demand, thus effectively spreading the small number of jobs around among a larger number of people. And you would still need humans to design new products and maintain things, unless the robots are so smart that they approach or exceed human intelligence and can do all of that without human intervention (which strikes me as a scary development). Of course, if demand is kept high through something like the present-day capitalist system and social value set, then we will simply waste more, buy more, and spend more.

I was thinking about a society where '3-D printers' are common in nearly every household. If you want to, say, buy a new toaster, you don't order one built online or go to a store (unless you wanted to-- maybe some boutique and specialty shops would exist as novelty destinations). Instead, you look online and see a type and style you like, you customize it with features you want from function to color, then you buy the program, which is transmitted to you, and your 3-D printer goes to work. In a few minutes, you have your new toaster.

You still have to buy supplies and maintain the rapid-fabber. It would need an extraordinary variety of raw materials to be able to make whatever you want. This is made more complicated by the fact that some of the chemicals used in modern technology are actually highly toxic, and are only "safe" in manufactured form because they've been turned into something else, sealed into an airtight container, etc. They would have to be stored in vats for you to make anything you wanted with your hypothetical rapid-fabber.

What this tells me is that for the most part, shops are no longer needed, so that work force is gone. Delivery men, parking lot attendants, etc-- gone. The real workers would be the people who write the programs that become your consumer goods-- and that becomes the workforce. Them, and the people that repair robots, 3-D printers, and service the network when other robots can't do it.

Are you assuming that this device can perform elemental transmutation? And that robots are maintaining everything, and running all of the mines, and all of the power plants, and all of the power transmission systems, and policing the streets, and purifying the water, etc?

How would such a system work? I think for big projects, such as designing a car, it'd take forever for one programmer to think of everything a car needs to be built, and few homeowners are going to want to download and assemble separate parts as they pop out of his/her 3-D printer. So big-ticket items would probably be programmed by a guild of workers, each specializing in different aspects of car-part program writing, which then create the parts which are assembled at a automated factory and delivered to the consumer. Apart from the automated factory and the handful of people employed there to fix 'bots, there'd be no need for all these programmers to work together at an office, or even on the same planet with a planet-spanning internet type system (remember this is for a space-opera type setting).

Have you ever worked in manufacturing? That's already how it's done; designs are done collaboratively across the globe for all of the parts that go into a vehicle, and then they are manufactured in parts and assembled in highly automated factories. In fact, the parts manufacturing is far more efficient than your 3D printer would be: 3D printing would be a slow process whereas a stamped-steel press can churn out thousands of parts an hour.

So the end result is that I see an economy that boils down to this:
1- People who make programs for practical items.

Components in modern manufacturing are already programmed by humans and then built by machines. Unless you have human-intelligence robots, it takes a lot more than that to overturn the nature of the manufacturing industry.

2- People who program items for artistic or entertainment value.
3- People who service the network and manufacturing robots.
4- People who work in rare 'boutique' shops and service industries, probably for high-end customers: "Real wait staff!"
5- People who provide public services (teachers, police, firemen & fire inspectors, military, etc)

I'm trying to think of anything else there might be. Classic jobs as we know them in building & manufacturing will be practically non-existent; the big wage-earning sectors would be the various programmers, repairmen, and public-service providers. People working 'boutique' jobs would essentially be a disposable work force if the economy contracts, since they're doing things that robots could do, but people are hired instead for the atmosphere of having live staff. The real movers and shakers would be the programmers.

So how would one get hired into one of these de-centralized collectives of programmers? You submit your application to, say, Ford Programmers Guild to build cars? It would be a sort of "Guild Socialism", where the workers own and control their means of production, but work as part of a team that specializes in building things that are beyond the reach of most individuals.

The buying and selling of programs and the shipping of high-end goods to destinations would provide the tax base (as well as the extraction of raw materials needed to make those goods). I suppose there'd have to be a certain quota for programmers to meet or they'd be kicked out of the guild, and a lot of legal code would be based on the intellectual property rights of programs owned by the Guild. But once you've programmed four or five 'perfect' fenders for Ford Motors Guilds, what do you do then? Live off of royalties?

So, would something like this work as an economic model?

I honestly think you haven't thought this through at all. Much of what you describe does not exist at the end-user level, but it does effectively exist at the manufacturing supplier level already, and yet we aren't all laying around on the beach soaking up rays.

Want to know how the Sprite bottle in your hand was made? Somebody designed it in a computer. Then he sent that design to a tooling design shop, where they made sure it was practical for blow-moulding. Then, they designed a steel mould in the computer, and they created a 3D model which was sent to a CNC programmer. The CNC programmer wrote a program to control the CNC machine which would cut the mould (notice: all of this is so far happening electronically, just as it does in your future world). Now they send the program down to the shop floor where they cut a block of steel with the CNC machine. After assembly and polishing, it goes to the blow-moulding facility where it gets plugged into a blow-moulding machine, which also runs on software and which will pump out millions of Sprite bottles per day.

Is that really so much different from your scenario? The problem is that there are a lot of steps in that process where humans must do things because you can't trust a robot to do it. It's not smart enough. The problem is not the fabrication machinery; it is the rest of it, which requires human intervention because robots aren't smart enough.

[Coyote]

I only briefly worked manufacturing for small-business document machines-- assembling binders, etc. (so, really, "assembly" more than "fabrication", the parts were already made). I'm not too familiar with the way the system works, I was looking at a system where the "manufacturing" for appliances was done at home, with the fabber, basically going from the concept-program guy right to the consumer's hand, and eliminating all the middlemen.

Obviously, as mentioned with larger items, it wouldn't work, but if high-speed fabbers, or nano-manufacturing is commonly available, how could or would such things be applied in a future economy? What corners would be cut and what levels of management & personnel would face elimination, that sort of thing.

Take the plot in one Babylon-5 episode with the labor strike. Dock workers loading and unloading ships. The important focus of the plot was the labor strike and the resolution of that strike by diverting money from the defense allocation to the dockers, but it never adequately explained why ordinary people had to be hired to unload ships when it seemed that not only would robots do the job more efficiently (and without striking), but also that a system had to be in place where cargo was either shipped palletized of containerized for automated loading and unloading (unless the strikers were the guys that ran the robots?).

I'm trying to imagine a way tech would be used without resorting to magic "replicators" that can bring you complex machinery in 30 seconds, the manufacturing of which had to involve deadly toxins. So that would be out. So far it looks like things like fabbers and nanofacturing would simply become part of the existing model of industry, in those ares where they would actually be useful, but they'd not be able to supplant or out-do the entire manufacturing process.

[Darth Wong]

Obviously, as mentioned with larger items, it wouldn't work, but if high-speed fabbers, or nano-manufacturing is commonly available, how could or would such things be applied in a future economy? What corners would be cut and what levels of management & personnel would face elimination, that sort of thing.

Well, that's what I'm saying: high-speed fabbers (albeit specialized rather than the generalized magic devices in Star Trek) exist today, relative to the situation 30 years ago. We have vastly more automation, and far more technology. So why aren't we working less than we were 30 years ago? We're actually working more, not less.

It seems to me that the whole idea of assuming labour will necessarily decline with technology is based on an assumption that demand will remain static. Instead, we responded to increased fuel efficiency in cars by demanding bigger and more powerful cars. We responded to greater manufacturing efficiencies by demanding more stuff, and treating it more like a disposable commodity once we have it. I would expect a society with further increased manufacturing efficiencies to be more luxurious, not necessarily more leisurely. People would have even more pointlessly large dwellings, and more ostentatious possessions which they exchange for new models more often.

Unless, of course, there is a change in social values, which is where the biggest changes might occur.

Take the plot in one Babylon-5 episode with the labor strike. Dock workers loading and unloading ships. The important focus of the plot was the labor strike and the resolution of that strike by diverting money from the defense allocation to the dockers, but it never adequately explained why ordinary people had to be hired to unload ships when it seemed that not only would robots do the job more efficiently (and without striking), but also that a system had to be in place where cargo was either shipped palletized of containerized for automated loading and unloading (unless the strikers were the guys that ran the robots?).

Standardization brings its own problems, specifically in the area of flexibility, and B5 does not have human-level intelligence for robots.

Let's put it this way: if every car had the exact same design of trunk, with a drop-in replaceable pallet, it would be easy to design a mechanical system for automatically loading and unloading the contents of those trunks. But nobody will design a car that way, so we still have people to help you load your stuff into your car. We could only automate that with some pretty intelligent robots.

I'm trying to imagine a way tech would be used without resorting to magic "replicators" that can bring you complex machinery in 30 seconds, the manufacturing of which had to involve deadly toxins. So that would be out. So far it looks like things like fabbers and nanofacturing would simply become part of the existing model of industry, in those ares where they would actually be useful, but they'd not be able to supplant or out-do the entire manufacturing process.

Instead of thinking about dramatic changes to the entire structure of society which are caused by technology, it's probably more realistic to extrapolate social trends.

[Xon]

Would copyright law be eliminated?

One thing any Earth-derived human civilization will have is a fucking mess of copyright laws.

Copyright was originally conceived when the cost of copying something was in proportion to actually making it in the first place.

Digital copies completely break this. There is effectively zero marginal cost on duplicating data electronically, yes it can be expensive to duplicate a few hundred terabytes of information but the contents don't matter.

[Nyrath]

In Neal Stephenson's novel The Diamond Age, a basic household appliance is the "matter compiler", which is an Eric Drexler style molecular assembler that acts like a Star Trek replicator. In addition the the electricity bill for operating the device, you also have to play the bill for the "matter feed" into the machine. This carries a stream of various molecules needed by the compiler. You also have to pay the copyright fee on the blueprints used.

The poor and homeless can go to a public matter compiler and obtain for free a limited selection of goods. These are items that use only inexpensive molecules with public domain blueprints, and of limited size. Things like simple clothing and shoes.

Replicator like devices appear in Ralph Williams's "Business as Usual, During Alterations" Murray Leinster's The Duplicators, and George O. Smith's "Pandora's Millions".
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket ... nsequences
In all three novels, the devices totally destroy the economy of the civilization that invents the technology. In "Pandora's Millions," they switch to a service based economy. That is, while your replicator will give you an infinite supply of gold, Fillet Mignon, and Mona Lisas; you still need to pay for a surgeon to take your appendix out. And the currency you pay is services that you yourself perform.

Also in "Pandora's Millions," they have to invent a substance that cannot be replicated. Otherwise it is impossible to have hard currency, cheques, or printed paper contracts. All can be replicated to the point where it is impossible to distinguish the original from the duplicate.

[Starglider]

Also in "Pandora's Millions," they have to invent a substance that cannot be replicated. Otherwise it is impossible to have hard currency, cheques, or printed paper contracts. All can be replicated to the point where it is impossible to distinguish the original from the duplicate.

As of the 21st century I think it's more likely that we'd just scrap those things altogether. Electronic versions based on strong encryption and digital signatures have already gone a long way towards obsoleting the physical versions, general matter replication would simply accelerate the process.

[Darth Wong]

Replicator like devices appear in Ralph Williams's "Business as Usual, During Alterations" Murray Leinster's The Duplicators, and George O. Smith's "Pandora's Millions".
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket ... nsequences
In all three novels, the devices totally destroy the economy of the civilization that invents the technology. In "Pandora's Millions," they switch to a service based economy. That is, while your replicator will give you an infinite supply of gold, Fillet Mignon, and Mona Lisas; you still need to pay for a surgeon to take your appendix out. And the currency you pay is services that you yourself perform.

The fact that many authors have written it, does not mean it actually makes sense. I suppose these replicators must also perform elemental transmutation in order to eliminate the need for resource industries (which alone leads to obvious problems, like the ability of a 10 year old kid to make a thermonuclear device), but even so, it begs the question of who is manufacturing these devices and providing the enormous amount of energy that this industry must consume.

[Junghalli]

I think the question here, Coyote, is what is the purpose of this exercise? Are you trying to figure out what the logical consequences of a replicator-based economy would be, or are you trying to figure out what sort of economy makes realistic sense for an interstellar civilization? The answers will be different depending on which one it is.

If you're trying to figure out what the logical consequences of a replicator-style economy will be, I'd say that it'd probably be that there's a significant reshuffling in the details how the economy works but things stay essentially the same. The big consequence would be that a lot of light industry would dry up, since small-scale manufactured goods would probably be mostly produced by replicators now. If the replicators can make food, agriculture will also be changed dramatically, with an eye toward producing raw biomass for the replicators rather than actual edible food products (and a lot of the biomass you feed to the replicators could be recycled sewage - although there may be consumer resistance to this). The replicators would probably become another utility, with people being charged for the raw materials and energy they consume. The big employers would now be the service industry and the people who build and maintain the infrastructure of civilization, including the infrastructure that keeps the replicators functioning. Heavy industry would probably survive in some form (somebody has to build the planes, trains etc., even if it just means making them in jumbo-sized replicators).

Now if you're trying to figure out what sort of economy makes sense for an interstellar civilization, that's more complicated, because it involves a lot of assumptions about tech advance. The big question, as Darth Wong alluded to, is how smart your robots are.

The smarter your robots, the more they can accomplish without humans babysitting them. Eventually, when you reach the point where they are as capable as humans, you render human labor essentially superfluous (note: this need not necessarily mean the robots will be sapient - I imagine it would be quite possible to have a robot that's, say, as good as a human at assembling automobiles but is only programmed to care about assembling automobiles and isn't really sentient in the way we are). At this point you've got a situation where we could, if we wished, basically live as parasites in the robots' infrastructure. This is what you might call the point of effective postscarcity. At this point work most conventional economics goes out the window as working becomes optional and for the most part probably becomes something closer to what we'd consider hobbies than actual jobs.

The question is going to be how close your civilization is to that point. And a related question to that is which one your civilization is going to get first: starships or robots that are as capable as humans. Personally, I suspect in a realistic universe starships will be the more formidable engineering challenge, so effective postscarcity will come first. I could be wrong about that though.

[Starglider]

The fact that many authors have written it, does not mean it actually makes sense. I suppose these replicators must also perform elemental transmutation in order to eliminate the need for resource industries

It's a short step from molecular-scale manufacturing to molecular disassembly. That would provide the bulk of routine requirements simply from recycling waste. For everything but the most stubbornly bonded compounds, it would also make refining and smelting cheaper and much less plant-intensive.

(which alone leads to obvious problems, like the ability of a 10 year old kid to make a thermonuclear device)

There would be no sane reason to make elemental transmuters (that non-specialists have access to) capable of making high-atomic-mass elements such as fissiles. Its probably more difficult to make those elements anyway, and even if it isn't you'd want to put an artificial limit in. Unless you mean a pure fusion bomb that is, which frankly considering the magitech you need for elemental transmutation and the destructive applications that implies, is probably one of your minor problems at that point.

but even so, it begs the question of who is manufacturing these devices and providing the enormous amount of energy that this industry must consume.

That is certainly a major concern, but coating every roof and road with ultra-cheap replicated solar panels would be a good start.

[Singular Intellect]

When it comes to speculating about futuristic economies and infrastructure, doesn't it seem prudent that you have to factor in advanced and powerful AI running things, perhaps even potentially taking over all work and technological advancement?

Given what I percieve the trend of technology to be, the issue of actual artificial intelligence coming into being isn't so much a matter 'if', but when.

[Coyote]

I think the question here, Coyote, is what is the purpose of this exercise? Are you trying to figure out what the logical consequences of a replicator-based economy would be, or are you trying to figure out what sort of economy makes realistic sense for an interstellar civilization? The answers will be different depending on which one it is...

You know, I think that's a distinction I needed to see but didn't realize it. I'm operating on the assumption that replicator-like technology will advance and grow, and that it will find a niche in everyday life. Seeing a market for such is not difficult.

The only real concern I had was limiting the quasi-fantasy element of the Star Trek replicator, where inert materials could be rendered into materials that should be all rights be toxic, or on the flipside, into materials that are edible and nutritious. The only way a 'replicator' could do that would be some sort of matter transmutation (high-tech alchemy, lead to gold) so that inert materials could be safely stored until needed for plutonium or potatoes.

While I'm admittedly curious about what a space-opera economy might look like, I'm not interested in truly fantastic ideas since, of course, that makes all speculation about how it's done pointless.

I think that we'll see robots increase in intelligence and ability, and like you and DW mention it'll be the singularity threshold that determines where that end... I also think we'll see continued advances in realistic fabbers, and of course we'll see continued advances in nanofacturing... and I suppose it is fair to say that we'll also see other stand-alone techs that show promise such as cloning, stem cells, and myomers. Virtual worlds, holography, full-spectrum 3-D experience chambers (holosuites if you will)... and I'm trying to speculate what an economy would look like with all this, and what new jobs would be added and what would be done away with. I suppose I'm trying to conjure up an image of what all our current tech would look like when it comes to such fruition that it is considered ordinary and everyday, and what that does to our economy.

And, of course, how this would affect politics, since politics and economy are joined at the hip. Not all consumer goods would be made by fabricators, although simple devices could be. If a corporation is a disjointed entity, where some of your chief designers aren't even on the same planet, and your PR department is partially populated by attractive, semi-intelligent holographic sales reps tied into a mainframe that monitors exchanges while negotiating, what will it look like in the end? A corporation may be more of a state of mind than a physical location, hence my thought that the term 'guild' might be a good way to break the automatic assumptions that come with the term 'corporation'... a vast stock market would fluctuate so much in a split-second that exact process may not even be possible, but a price range will become the norm. For some investments, no one will truly know exactly how much something is until at the very moment the deal is made.

It seems logical to me that most manufacturing would continue much as we see it today, with more robotics, Food production would be interesting to speculate; would vast "farms" of vat-grown meats and vegetables by built right in the cities where distribution could be immediate? No more grocery stores, maybe, just put in your order for that day and it's delivered, all frozen or in stasis containers? Or would it be possible to skip even that process and have the vats right in your home?

I also think DW got it right when he said that a lot of these causes and effects will also depend on how the society itself is geared for consumerism. A society where goods are cheap, plentiful immediate and-- also important-- their disposal footprint is minimized, then why not have an endless parade of constant consumer acquisition? New clothes every day, exactly as you like them, with this week's fashion tweaks added. The very idea of washing and re-wearing the same clothes would seem barbaric or gross, perhaps.

[Coyote]

When it comes to speculating about futuristic economies and infrastructure, doesn't it seem prudent that you have to factor in advanced and powerful AI running things, perhaps even potentially taking over all work and technological advancement?

Given what I percieve the trend of technology to be, the issue of actual artificial intelligence coming into being isn't so much a matter 'if', but when.

A giant intellect, perhaps monitoring pop culture, trends, marketing, and what celebrities are doing that will try to anticipate, or maybe even tweak, tomorrow's hot new trends. Your clothes and even your new car for this week's version of "cool" is already being delivered to your door or transmitted to your fabber...

I could see marketing empires trying to harness that kind of split-second marketing.

[Junghalli]

A giant intellect, perhaps monitoring pop culture, trends, marketing, and what celebrities are doing that will try to anticipate, or maybe even tweak, tomorrow's hot new trends. Your clothes and even your new car for this week's version of "cool" is already being delivered to your door or transmitted to your fabber...

I could see marketing empires trying to harness that kind of split-second marketing.

Well, as I said the big matzo ball here is that if you can produce an AI that's equal or superior in capability to the human brain*, and do it cheaply and reliably, then there's pretty much nothing a human worker can do that a robot can't theoretically do. At that point you hit what might be called effective postscarcity: the point where the entire human race could throw up its hands and spend the rest of their lives as beach bums if they wanted to. For a far-future setting, this is something that needs to be considered. Either man's whole relationship with labor is changed, or there needs to be some reason that robots are still inferior to humans at some things.

* Note: again, humans capability need not necessarily mean human sapience. I suspect most of these systems would be nonsentient expert systems, programmed to care only about their assigned function and not even really self-aware. It would probably be more efficient that way, and using sapient systems would IMO be cruel - it would amount to slavery.

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. For the most part people would work because it was something they wanted to do, not something they had to do or that really benefitted them materially. My first instinct is that most people would just veg out, but actually I'm not so sure about that: I think mindlessly lying around and passing the time would get really boring after a while. Maybe a decent guide might be to look at the lives of very rich people today, as they're basically in the same position (could live very well without doing any work themselves if they wished).

[K. A. Pital]

Actually, making assumptions about a future economy that it would have to include either capitalism or socialism as we understand them today, and the types of property we use today, are kinda like trying to predict new industrial production principles by looking at the old production lines. Often they are more than wrong.

Neither do I believe that information security has reached a stage that programs which supply essential goods, would be legally sold and bought without massive piracy rising in every possible instance where people can breach the system. Either the system will be socialized, or it will not exist. The private attempts to enforce "information security" and "intellectual property" meet lots and lots of animosity even today, when these goods are totally non-essential.

Imagine when it becomes a question of physical comfort as opposed to just watching a movie. Thinking that all people would simply oblige with "intellectual patent rights" strikes me as somewhat naive.

To be fair, with a high level of automation, lots of routine jobs will be destroyed, but depending on whether the investment is state (socialism) or private (capitalism), the people who oversee financing, quality control, re-distribution of resources, and accounting, will always remain.

Expect lots of socialization, that's for sure: more productive powers, the more people will press for socialization. When one can run an entire automated factory, the only solution is to either share with the other 10 who went jobless, share in the form of direct re-distribution or creation of new workplaces by tax-deducted state investment... or face social stress and polarization of society unseen since the days of the October Revolution, heheh.

[Coyote]

Neither do I believe that information security has reached a stage that programs which supply essential goods, would be legally sold and bought without massive piracy rising in every possible instance where people can breach the system. Either the system will be socialized, or it will not exist. The private attempts to enforce "information security" and "intellectual property" meet lots and lots of animosity even today, when these goods are totally non-essential...

I wonder if part of the animosity felt today towards the enforcement of intellectual property rights is because the high-profile cases we see are mostly dealing with entertainment property-- pirated movies, songs on the Internet, etc. The perception by the public is that these things are already "public" by being mass produced on CDs/DVDs, and enforcement of the copyrights is for the benefit of a monopolistic elite who's done nothing to add to the creative process except own the name. I could easily see artists doing art for free, and then making their real money on tour and selling merchandise.

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.

Unless an intellectual property agency, government or private, that specializes in encryption security for tall the world's widget plans can be made... for a percentage of the proceeds, they can provide computer security. Hmm.

[Singular Intellect]

A giant intellect, perhaps monitoring pop culture, trends, marketing, and what celebrities are doing that will try to anticipate, or maybe even tweak, tomorrow's hot new trends. Your clothes and even your new car for this week's version of "cool" is already being delivered to your door or transmitted to your fabber...

I could see marketing empires trying to harness that kind of split-second marketing.

Let us hope that AI would be that helpful and parental; it's by no means a certainty.

[Shroom Man 777]

Economies would vary. Perhaps in a homeworld or a core planet, you can get a strong government with a socialized economy ruling over the cityworld making sure the tube-trains run on time and everyone gets vaccinated against nanoviroids and gets free health care bacta coupons.

But in the outer colonies, things might be different. The socialized homeworld might actually have to deal with off-world corporations that are working in asteroid belt mines or Cloud City Tibanna-gas extractor rigs or something, and then and there you could see a more corporatocratic approach at things - with people punching cards and stuff and stuff.

But then, in colonies that are just starting out, with lesser industrialization, with people figuring out how to farm and just building their settlements, we'd see another different type of economy. Something like present day? Maybe something like in the good old colonial days with a Space Settlement Syndicate (an East India Company in space)?

Space is big. Worlds can vary a lot.

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.

[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.