An energy-based science fiction economy

[takemeout_totheblack]

I'll come out and say it first, I have absolutely no formal education regarding economics. As such my knowledge of real world economics and all it's hideous little complexities is admittedly limited. However, I am currently writing an original sci-fi story and would like to have your guys' thoughts on one of the aspects of my work. I would like to run it by you guys to see if it makes sense/could work.

An energy-based economic/monetary system.

For instance 1 credit is equal to X amount of joules, and those joule equivalents go towards the purchasing of goods and services based on the energy needed to fabricate/transport them.

E.D. An artificially produced nutrition cube would 'cost' less than an apple of equivalent nutritional value grown in a hydroponics bay or in a field. This cube, while cheaper than the apple and equal in nutritional value, is designed to be unpalatable to motivate consumers to strive for higher quality (re: 'expensive' ) goods such as the apple.
Naturally this price is added to by transportation costs/bureaucracy in the form of taxes.

There are several other economic facets involving this economic style, but I would like to hear thoughts regarding this sample I have given before discussing them. I figure a relatively arbitrary economic system like the one we have today would not necessarily be the best one for a far-future high-tech space faring society and that one based on a universal constant like energy would make more sense.

[madd0ct0r]

ok, but how do you measure the joule equiv of advertising for example, or design?

[AniThyng]

ok, but how do you measure the joule equiv of advertising for example, or design?

Presumably by how much coke, lattes and pizzas were consumed by the desk worker times an arbitrary multiplier (heres where the system breaks down and ends up the same as money) plus the electricity consumption of the fancy screen used to work on.

[Ariphaos]

I had a science fiction economy that was loosely based on various weights of deuterium, typically traded as heavy water when used as a physical currency or digital cryptocurrency units representing rights to a certain amount of power for a duration, say from solar power.

The main issue I had wasn't with the value of the currency itself, but rather that the advent of widely available fusion and solar power seems to imply a limited scarcity economy already - you use 'money' for things like land, rare historical artifacts, and sometimes uncommon resources. Otherwise, presumably, it's tracked, but humans generally don't concern themselves with the value of an apple, say.

[Darth Tanner]

How is this system any different from money as it is now? The price of a good is determined by the cost of its production plus whatever profit the company in question wants to make. The fact you are focusing on 'energy' instead of other raw materials or labour is pretty much irrelevant.

Also how does it work when a power station could overproduce to get more credits arbitrarily? A central authority would have to set the value of a credit and set the value of joules per credit. Within ten minutes of starting off the energy part would be dropped into obscurity and it would simply be exactly the same as any other currency.

Your system might make a little more sense if for example all raw material and labour costs were magically eliminated with energy to mass transmutation and plentiful robot labour. By this point in a society however your more or less at post scarcity. Also it would necessitate that those who control the electricity generation infrastructure are either under the control of the central authority or are the central authority as they more or less control the entire economy.

[takemeout_totheblack]

How is this system any different from money as it is now? The price of a good is determined by the cost of its production plus whatever profit the company in question wants to make. The fact you are focusing on 'energy' instead of other raw materials or labour is pretty much irrelevant.

Also how does it work when a power station could overproduce to get more credits arbitrarily? A central authority would have to set the value of a credit and set the value of joules per credit. Within ten minutes of starting off the energy part would be dropped into obscurity and it would simply be exactly the same as any other currency.

Your system might make a little more sense if for example all raw material and labour costs were magically eliminated with energy to mass transmutation and plentiful robot labour. By this point in a society however your more or less at post scarcity. Also it would necessitate that those who control the electricity generation infrastructure are either under the control of the central authority or are the central authority as they more or less control the entire economy.

Well, first off, it's not a system based on how much energy can be generated by say a fusion reactor but rather how much equivalent energy a citizen can earn through their job.
This facet of the economy is based on the citizen who, depending on how much they work/relative complexity of the job, is given more X-joule-credits to put towards higher quality goods. The idea being that these credits can grant a citizen access to the facilities necessary to produce food/clothing/misc from their labour. For this sort of thing the calculation would be something like hours of labour X difficulty/specialization of job = X amount of joule equivalent credits. Energy and joules would simply represent a constant on which to base the value of a day's work. (I sure hope I'm making some kind of sense)

So energy production doesn't really matter to this part of the economy, rather the 'claiming' of energy in the form of credits in addition to access to the technologies and resources necessary for production. I picked energy because it's a universal constant with set value, making this kind of economy less susceptible to inflation/multiple other things that fuck up economies...I think.

[takemeout_totheblack]

As I said I'm no economist but from what I've read we stopped using the gold standard because of several reasons. One being gold as a physical standard was/is in short supply, humanity having mined less than 150 kilotons of the stuff. Another one being that while stable in the long term using the gold standard was very inflexible and any given country was dependent on the physical quantity they had in their stocks. This made recovery from economic downturns difficult.

Is that right?

However, current IRL economic situations have also lead me to believe that fiat/credit economies aren't all that great either, so just putting a Spess-copy of modern day economics didn't quite sit well with me either. (A derailing political debate is not welcome in this thread, it's all theoretical, so calm down people)

I'd like to formulate a fictional economic system that would appeal to a very technologically advanced governing party/nation that values control and stability over a profit margin and constant expansion. Was I mistaken in assuming that basing an economy around a universal constant would be more stable than one that doesn't?

[Darth Tanner]

But you’re not really basing the currency on energy. Under the gold standard the theory was I could turn up at the bank of England and get my £5 worth of gold from their vaults. Obviously it didn’t happen like that in reality but under your system that isn’t there at all even in theory. I can't turn up and demand my 50 joules, number of joules in circulation probably doesn’t even represent national electrical output for example. On the basic level you’re fundamentally just changing the name of dollar to joule, nothing is changing about how the currency works or how it will be used in society.

What I think your really getting at is a command economy where the central authority dictates value based on its own objectives, as with your apple/nutrition cube example. Look up the USSR for how that works out though, however if your sci-fi universe has a benevolent AI running things then there’s no reason it couldn’t run a command economy for the betterment of society. Having your characters fighting against the AIs target driven program to eliminate activity A, B or C could be a good story line.

[takemeout_totheblack]

The USSR comparison is fairly accurate in spirit, less so in application.

I suppose I should provide a basic description:
The society I envision is certainly more socialist than it is capitalist although it does maintain a pronounced reward system for its citizens while ensuring that all their basic needs are met (nutrition, clothing, housing, etc.), what is provided by the government is necessarily the most efficient to produce and of curse the lowest quality. These government supplied necessities serve as a sort of baseline, it being up to the citizen to improve their standard of living through work/education.
On top of a baseline that everyone gets there's an addition allowance where you can get X-joule-credits in exchange for labor or services.
What I was saying (and probably didn't word very well) was that this addition is less an arbitrary 'one dollar for an apple plus tax' and more of a direct 'apple costs X more energy to produce than a baseline ration, thus determining the amount paid'. It's not that different from IRL economies, but I feel it is at least more consistent and more easily quantifiable when applied on the scale I'm thinking of.

Tanner was correct in his postulation regarding A.I.s having a large part in my story, in fact the whole reason I formulated this system of exchange was that I thought it would make more sense to a computer to have a direct and quantifiable reference on which to base value of an object or service.

[Ariphaos]

If you have AIs at that level, why make everyone work? What value is there in having a sapient being with aches, pains, wants and desires pick apples, mow lawns, or plow fields?

[Spoonist]

That's directly ripped from ST TNG.

Now, why do even want to wet it out first? Its scifi do whatever you want.

But with that said for this to "work" in some sense you'd have to divide it into two economies. One Interstellar economy which trade in energy in vast amounts. Then local economies that have local 'ordinary' currency which trade with 'shares' of those vast energy amounts.
Why? Because an interstellar economy wouldn't work as you want with too much local variety without degrading into a barter economy. Why you'd have different local economies would be obvious after demand and supply.

Oh, and your apple vs artificial would be the other way around, an apple is very low energy consumtion because of riping in the sun, while artificial food would cost a lot due to being artificial.

[Simon_Jester]

I'll come out and say it first, I have absolutely no formal education regarding economics. As such my knowledge of real world economics and all it's hideous little complexities is admittedly limited. However, I am currently writing an original sci-fi story and would like to have your guys' thoughts on one of the aspects of my work. I would like to run it by you guys to see if it makes sense/could work.

An energy-based economic/monetary system.

For instance 1 credit is equal to X amount of joules, and those joule equivalents go towards the purchasing of goods and services based on the energy needed to fabricate/transport them.

Obvious problem with this: changing the supply of electricity changes the supply of money. How many energy credits is a new powerplant worth, compared to the amount of energy it generates over its lifetime? Isn't the value of the energy credit going to be very sensitive to availability of oil or other energy-related commodities?

E.D. An artificially produced nutrition cube would 'cost' less than an apple of equivalent nutritional value grown in a hydroponics bay or in a field. This cube, while cheaper than the apple and equal in nutritional value, is designed to be unpalatable to motivate consumers to strive for higher quality (re: 'expensive' ) goods such as the apple.
Naturally this price is added to by transportation costs/bureaucracy in the form of taxes.

So... who's setting these costs? What happens if I come up with an amazingly energy-efficient way to produce food but which has substantial other costs (like labor?)

There are several other economic facets involving this economic style, but I would like to hear thoughts regarding this sample I have given before discussing them. I figure a relatively arbitrary economic system like the one we have today would not necessarily be the best one for a far-future high-tech space faring society and that one based on a universal constant like energy would make more sense.

How is energy availability a universal constant? Today, only a small fraction of our GDP gets spent on producing the energy to run our economy. Most of the rest goes to things like skilled labor, importing goods whose price is not directly related to the amount of energy it took to make them, and so on.

[madd0ct0r]

I still refer you back to the skilled work problem - it's not specifically energy, it's a limit on the number of skilled human hours available to make an object.
Especially in the case of advertising or art, where the output's value is extremely detached from the energy input.
(and frequently detached from the hours put into it too. I could spend 100 hrs on a painting, and an Andy Warhol print will still be worth more artistically)


I'm also interested in this 'energy availability' aspect - if i build a powerplant, am I literally producing money?
If i build 100 powerplants, far more then are needed, do i end up 100 times richer or just cause inflation?

Or if the AI does everything, is a unit of energy equivalent to a certain number of computational cycles?

[takemeout_totheblack]

Thanks guys, this input is really great, I'm already streamlining this thing in my head. I may just bring a few more of my ideas up for critique!

Anyway.
I'm tempted to say that the energy isn't so much the money itself but is rather a constant point of reference that can be used to prevent the sort of thing that Zimbabwe went through/is still going through as the relative cost of production stays more or less the same in terms of gross energy expended. It's sort of the gold standard but less arbitrary/somewhat less restrictive.
So no, you can't just build a powerplant and make money, you have to work for a government agency to receive government credits that equates to X amount of joules that allows you 'purchase' goods from a government outlet. In this universe the economy and government are fused for the sake of greater control by those at the top. The production of energy is not as important as how it is utilized, and in this system doing a job for the government gets you credits that allow you to access the government's industry in order to improve your standards of living.

I think I have this idea pegged, tell me what you think:
The value of a work hour is not directly equal to the energy value of each credit, but rather the value assigned to it by the government. Since energy production for a civilization like the one I'm writing about is not an issue, the only restricting factor to how much money one can make is the value placed upon that profession by the people/misc in charge.
For example a teacher will make more than a sewer worker on average. But a teacher who specializes in, say, macrame, will make far less than a sewer worker who keeps a main sewage pump/filtration system working. (naturally there would be robots for the sewage thing, but you get the idea)
So the energy-based portion of the economy isn't so much the whole of it, but it serves as a golden standard of sorts, making for a stable and constant basis on which one can form an economic system. Also I feel the energy element adds a more direct connection to production of goods as it is actually part of the production system and not just some useless rare metal or sheet pressed cotton and bits of nickel filled with promises and goodwill.


As for madd0ct0r's art thing, that's interesting, there's a story in that. Some artist struggling to exist in a world where unquantifiable 'non-essentials' like art are at best only partially recognized by the monolithic and technically soulless economic structure as something done for its own sake and therefore worthless. I like it.

[Simon_Jester]

Thanks guys, this input is really great, I'm already streamlining this thing in my head. I may just bring a few more of my ideas up for critique!

Anyway.
I'm tempted to say that the energy isn't so much the money itself but is rather a constant point of reference that can be used to prevent the sort of thing that Zimbabwe went through/is still going through as the relative cost of production stays more or less the same in terms of gross energy expended. It's sort of the gold standard but less arbitrary/somewhat less restrictive.
So no, you can't just build a powerplant and make money, you have to work for a government agency to receive government credits that equates to X amount of joules that allows you 'purchase' goods from a government outlet. In this universe the economy and government are fused for the sake of greater control by those at the top. The production of energy is not as important as how it is utilized, and in this system doing a job for the government gets you credits that allow you to access the government's industry in order to improve your standards of living.

So these things aren't actually on an energy standard, in that you can't pay your electric bill in a fixed allotment of them per kilowatt-hour?

I think I have this idea pegged, tell me what you think:
The value of a work hour is not directly equal to the energy value of each credit, but rather the value assigned to it by the government. Since energy production for a civilization like the one I'm writing about is not an issue, the only restricting factor to how much money one can make is the value placed upon that profession by the people/misc in charge.
For example a teacher will make more than a sewer worker on average. But a teacher who specializes in, say, macrame, will make far less than a sewer worker who keeps a main sewage pump/filtration system working. (naturally there would be robots for the sewage thing, but you get the idea)
So the energy-based portion of the economy isn't so much the whole of it, but it serves as a golden standard of sorts, making for a stable and constant basis on which one can form an economic system. Also I feel the energy element adds a more direct connection to production of goods as it is actually part of the production system and not just some useless rare metal or sheet pressed cotton and bits of nickel filled with promises and goodwill.

Why does this matter? A command economy which can set everyone's salaries arbitrarily like that would just issue scrip, like the Soviets did. Making it "energy-backed" doesn't actually change anything, especially since the government doesn't necessarily let you pay your electric bill in a fixed allotment of energy credits.

[avatarxprime]

I think I have this idea pegged, tell me what you think:
The value of a work hour is not directly equal to the energy value of each credit, but rather the value assigned to it by the government. Since energy production for a civilization like the one I'm writing about is not an issue, the only restricting factor to how much money one can make is the value placed upon that profession by the people/misc in charge.
For example a teacher will make more than a sewer worker on average. But a teacher who specializes in, say, macrame, will make far less than a sewer worker who keeps a main sewage pump/filtration system working. (naturally there would be robots for the sewage thing, but you get the idea)
So the energy-based portion of the economy isn't so much the whole of it, but it serves as a golden standard of sorts, making for a stable and constant basis on which one can form an economic system. Also I feel the energy element adds a more direct connection to production of goods as it is actually part of the production system and not just some useless rare metal or sheet pressed cotton and bits of nickel filled with promises and goodwill.

Why does this matter? A command economy which can set everyone's salaries arbitrarily like that would just issue scrip, like the Soviets did. Making it "energy-backed" doesn't actually change anything, especially since the government doesn't necessarily let you pay your electric bill in a fixed allotment of energy credits.

Like Simon is saying, your fears of getting into a situation like Zimbabwe or the current world economic disaster are unfounded. You have a closed system (I imagine this is an interstellar Empire where all control is routed through the single government and thus no external trade), where the government controls all means of manufacture, sets the price of all goods, determines how much currency is available in the market at any given time, and has advanced AI in charge of making sure things run smoothly. Honestly, money doesn't matter at that point. You already hit on the important part, this "economic system" is being used as a means of social control, so then go for broke.

People don't work since between AI and advanced robotics all labor can essentially be handled. The only real positions left available would be those that require "human creativity"* since human intelligence has already been outstripped. Although to be perfectly honest I doubt a human is going to be coming up with something an AI couldn't. We already have genetic algorithm based engineering programs that can come up with designs better than human engineers and the human engineers have difficulty figuring them out, they just know they work. So, your incentive program to keep people entertained/working would have to revolve around getting them to do things that are good for them in the first place (eating right, exercising, continuning their education even if its not necessarily something productive, etc) or creating things others can enjoy (producing art, literature, etc). Add in a certain amount of social stigma that makes it seem wrong to just be a leach on the system and enjoy basic housing, food, clothing, etc so people want to actually do those things and just natural human competitiveness will keep people going. The AIs can measure this simply through how many non-basic (i.e. provided by the government) resources are used up per capita.

*You could always use humans in trivial matters (to the AI) as well. The AI could go "oh look, the meatbags like to look around, let's make that a thing so they keep out of our hair," and send bands of explorers out to areas they wanted to have a closer look at anyway. I'm sure you could think of tons of things along those same lines that seem like they are productive activities, but are really just ways for the AI to exert control by giving the humans a new shiny toy.

[Darth Tanner]

Just a point that your system as is would do nothing to prevent Zimbabwe/Weimar Republic style hyperinflation. The state is still issuing currency and as it’s not directly tied to gold or energy they can still print as much as they want at any point to meet their needs, only their own intelligence prevents them devaluing the joule against the price of grain or robot arms for instance.

Of course if you’ve got a AI running things maybe that doesn’t matter too much as it would know not to cause hyperinflation with excess printing, or maybe its gone mad and wants to topple the economy to wipe out its organic masters through hyperinflation and pricing wars.

[Number Theoretic]

If you really wanted to avoid a Weimar republic-style hyperinflation, why not go for cryptocurrency, like for example Bitcoin? It's algorithms would have a build-in maximum limit of total currency that is available in the economic system. But a hard limit on total currency available could pose its own problems, like perhaps hyper-deflation. But anyway, if you could impose a hard limit by using algorithms, maybe you could also introduce flexible limits, that set hard lower and upper bounds on the increase or decrease of curreny circulating in the system.

[dworkin]

Just imagine the chaos caused by something being out by a decimal point.

[Number Theoretic]

Just imagine the chaos caused by something being out by a decimal point.

Granted, this danger exists and things like the Ariane 5 blowup or the case where one of Saddam's Scud rockets claimed the lives of 26 American soldiers during Operation Desert storm because the Patriot system has run too long before being rebooted and so accumulated numeric error are part of every lecture or seminar on software errors, error tolerance or numerical methods.

But if that's the reason to not go for a computerized monetary system, the current economy just wouldn't exist, because the great majority of money in circulation today is already not printed bills but purely virtual. It works, because the engineers developing the trade systems know about this error source and because the likelihood of such errors is rather low and can even be mitigated by using redundant computer systems.

[dworkin]

I was thinking more alog the lines of the error with spinach and iron content. Everyone in the empire has spinach for dinner! Anyways, the fun and conflict in any scenario comes from when things go wrong or at least not as intended.

Imagine.

What if it decides windows in a work environment decrease productivity? It's observed people looking out of them and not doing any productive work after all. Or if it's 'most effeicient room temperature' was based on a faulty thermometer?

Or imagine what happens when trying to decide what sort of art best inspires it's citizens? The AI checks what sort of 'art' the citizens access on the networks the most.
High art could become lolcats and porn.

An effectivly 'immortal' AI may take a different view on other risks. Like giant rocks hitting the planet. A significant percentage of the population may be employed tracking everything larger than a lunchbox in system. Your 'national service' could be in the space corps chasing stray rocks!

And gods forbid it decides on holiday camps from 60's Britain to be the best / most effecient way for workers to relax. Hi di hi campers!

[avatarxprime]

If you really wanted to avoid a Weimar republic-style hyperinflation, why not go for cryptocurrency, like for example Bitcoin? It's algorithms would have a build-in maximum limit of total currency that is available in the economic system. But a hard limit on total currency available could pose its own problems, like perhaps hyper-deflation. But anyway, if you could impose a hard limit by using algorithms, maybe you could also introduce flexible limits, that set hard lower and upper bounds on the increase or decrease of curreny circulating in the system.

OK idea, but bad example. Since Bitcoin was limited in the maximum number of currency units available it does seem to follow your logic at first, but the thing about Bitcoin is that you can also divide it. The way to deal with the limited number of coins was supposed to be to hand out milli-Bitcoins, micro-Bitcoins, nano-Bitcoins, etc... You'd eventually end up with the same situation as now with it being just another fiat currency unless you had some body that decided how far you can divide one Bitcoin and other such rules, but at that point you're just back to a control economy where the central authority makes all decisions i.e. what the OP is already proposing.

[K. A. Pital]

A limited scarcity economy has no need for personal finance and personal "money" as we use it now. Repeat ad nauseum. I'm in the process of writing about such a civilization, and Spoonist above pretty much explains it all. There is a high likelihood though that even the 'interstellar economy' wouldn't rely on "money", since at that level of excess capacity and extrapolatory capabilities there's nothing preventing you from running an interstellar command economy. Which is what the AIs would probably do by default. In other words, that's not yet the Culture, but it is reasonably advanced as to not require "money", including energy money. Abolition of money would make the command economy run better, not worse, at that level of AI capabilities.

Seriously. Either it would be an adhocracy with an entirely weird idea of money (Doctorow's masterful "Down and Out" described a possible one) or an AI-led command economy with huge, excessive and "reasonable enough for almost all you need" amounts of energy allocated to daily needs/consumption and yet greater amounts allocated to reinvestment/development.

No real "money" as an exchange medium in either case.

[Number Theoretic]

I would say the success of such a command economy depends on how unique or not-easily-reproducable people's possessions are. Suppose, you had such an economy and some people start producing, for example, art. Other people see it and like it and want to obtain it, so they start figuring out how to compensate the artist for his work, which gets you to bartering: "if i give you this, do you give me that?". Then, someone comes along and proposes "Hey, let's introduce coupons for things, that represent them. Saves you the effort of carrying your unique possessions around." Which is effectively the same as re-introducing money. So, my hypothesis is: as long as there are unique possessions or any other scarce goods, some sort of money will always emerge.

OK idea, but bad example. Since Bitcoin was limited in the maximum number of currency units available it does seem to follow your logic at first, but the thing about Bitcoin is that you can also divide it. The way to deal with the limited number of coins was supposed to be to hand out milli-Bitcoins, micro-Bitcoins, nano-Bitcoins, etc... You'd eventually end up with the same situation as now with it being just another fiat currency unless you had some body that decided how far you can divide one Bitcoin and other such rules, but at that point you're just back to a control economy where the central authority makes all decisions i.e. what the OP is already proposing.

Interesting, i didn't know you could do that. But somehow it's a natural way to circumvent the hard upper limit indeed. Sorry for the late answer, but better late than never On the other hand, if your knowledge of algorithms and number theory is good enough, you could design an cryptocurrency with almost any properties you like.

[Duckie]

People don't work since between AI and advanced robotics all labor can essentially be handled. The only real positions left available would be those that require "human creativity"* since human intelligence has already been outstripped. Although to be perfectly honest I doubt a human is going to be coming up with something an AI couldn't. We already have genetic algorithm based engineering programs that can come up with designs better than human engineers and the human engineers have difficulty figuring them out, they just know they work. So, your incentive program to keep people entertained/working would have to revolve around getting them to do things that are good for them in the first place (eating right, exercising, continuning their education even if its not necessarily something productive, etc) or creating things others can enjoy (producing art, literature, etc). Add in a certain amount of social stigma that makes it seem wrong to just be a leach on the system and enjoy basic housing, food, clothing, etc so people want to actually do those things and just natural human competitiveness will keep people going. The AIs can measure this simply through how many non-basic (i.e. provided by the government) resources are used up per capita.

The Luxury Service industry will still exist, because unlike AIs there's a more strictly limited number of them and they can't be programmed to find your desires as important as their own (not as easily anyway). Getting served by a human waiter or fucked by a human prostitute or, despite what you'd think nowadays, helped by human tech support (with a subtle link to a skilled expert system in this person's ear, naturally, so she's almost as skilled as the computers) will always be valuable even after the robots are better at it. "Home Made" always fetches a better price than factory made, just like a letter is more formal than an email for no particular reason. Marketing will just have to remind people that sleeping with a real human, or getting a real human to wait on your desires, or whatnot, is superior because it's classy and expensive even if it's from a naive point of view inefficient, inferior, and perhaps even morally questionable in some cases. Like using real Diamonds instead of artificial ones.

Unless there's huge cultural changes that make people work differently. But people aren't practical- lots of things are eaten because they're rare even though rich people might divorced from context like a cheeseburger more*, or expensive because they're rare or hard to do or awkward to do even with no logical reason to do them. In practice, the big difference will be that all work in a futuristic economy (where robots can do everything better and people have a comfortable basic living stipend without work) will be part performance art and little utility. People would only work if they enjoy it- there's no need to be a prostitute or a waiter or a masseuse or a novelist or whatnot unless you like it, and people will only consume human-made anything for aesthetic reasons.

Assuming people 'buy' anything at all, but barter (sort of), favour, and gift based economies all work even post-scarcity. Even if they could replicate one themselves right now with an expert system designing the prose, giving someone a hand-written love letter is more aesthetic and emotionally important to humans, so it'd fetch a higher abstract gift value (and thus 'price'). Similarly, replicated cultural artefacts vs real, authentic cultural artefacts.

*For that matter, wine tastes better the more expensive it is, regardless of its actual origin in most cases. People insist real diamonds look shinier. People swear that no matter what, home-made cookies made with love taste better than industrial factory cookies made with the same recipe. It's just how we are, and that's why people will still desire human made products and thus produce work. (Humans will desire to work because despite what everyone figures, give a man a completely well supported living and odds are he still does something instead of sitting around eating and watching TV all day. It'll usually be less practical, though, like art or writing or self-cultivation of martial arts instead of 'fix someone else's plumbing', but it could be practical like 'make someone else's life better'. In an economy where robots are better, there'll just be less people being doctors (because dobots do it better) and more humans being service employees or even a few luxury fake doctors who provide human smiling faces on top of the robot-made cures and diagnoses. We all have goals and projects, unless we're afflicted by ennui that tends to come from using all our efforts on someone else's plumbing just to live in the first place.).

Come to think, weirdly, there might be a middle class industry of human-replicoids that make it almost like you're getting a human-made product but without the expense (value exists even in a moneyless gift economy, remember). To provide a fake 'human doctor' who would be a fake doctor just listening to the expert systems' judgments in the first place. Nobody ever said modern advertising made sense, where clothes can go up in value because of whose name is written on them (a guy who didn't really design them even though we all pretend he did), and the future will be even weirder.