5 ms·

Star Trek Is Wrong – There Will Always Be Scarcity

14 points by porsager 11y ago

norea-armozel 11y ago
sigh I really use to like LvMi but these days they seem to prefer to be pedantic than applicable. Here's the thing I get from post-scarcity (so-called) economics. 1. Production efficiency out strips demand for what's produced. 2. This leads to a radical reduction in pricing schemes to the point that most goods becomes free (gratis). 3. Which leads to further devolution of the economy away from complexity (simpler financial instruments, fewer investment vehicles, fewer businesses big/small in general). No where in this assessment do I see cakes made out of thin air. What I see is the cost of creating a good or providing a service falling so close to zero that in most cases the businesses in question only offer the good or service as part of something else. Think of it this way, if Apple found a way to produce the iPhone for cents on the dollar wouldn't it make more sense for them to just give it away and sell music and software (as a service)? Or how about if energy production becomes extremely cheap and common. Wouldn't utility companies find something else to sell you to use their energy (providing the energy as a gratuity for said good/service)? Essentially, that's what has happened throughout history. Stuff gets so cheap that either producers make up the difference on volume of sales or they just "give away" the product as part of some other product. Eventually, extrapolating that sort of situation out it seems logical that inevitably most things become free even without the sale of another premium good or service only because you got two choices in the situation as outlined: stop making stuff or race to the bottom (sell the stuff at the same price until the economy implodes from all wealth concentrated with the capitalist class).
- Canada 11y ago
  > if Apple found a way to produce the iPhone for cents on the dollar wouldn't it make more sense for them to just give it away I'm reminding of TNG every time I walk past the electronics section at Costco. On the show people just give each other their tablets, like it's not even worth bothering to send the file or explain where to open it. They treat their computers like we treat paper. Here's my report sir, right here on this worthless piece of computer.
  - norea-armozel 11y ago
    I should put a caveat on that assertion I made. If it were extremely cheap to make an iPhone then Apple probably would sell the whole thing as a service instead. Why bother buying an iPhone ever again when you can update for the small yearly subscription of 100/USD or whatever they felt would work for their business model in that situation. I think we're starting to see a slow movement toward the hardware of smartphones being mere platforms for exclusive content (Google Play Music vs Apple Music like how it's Amazon Video vs Netflix). Sadly, it means information won't be so free (libre or gratis) as it's always something you can justify as an extremely scarce, hard to produce item.
poelzi 11y ago
his physical understand is wrong. just because common physics does not understand the ZPE(s) (zero point energies (there are actually 2)) gives very wrong perspective on our physical world. Once you understood that 1 cm³ contains ~ 244 times the gross energy humanity used in 2012, perspective changes. Once you really understand field propulsion (EM-thruster goes in this direction, just very bad design), your perspective changes as well....
maxander 11y ago
All this article does is attack a straw-man version of post-scarcity economics. What sufficiently immature humans want is arbitrary, of course they can want more than whatever they happen to have. You could want all the figurines Matel ever made or beer made from yeast that went into space or any number of silly things. But, most people accept that there is a finite amount that humans could reasonably want, and experience carries out this view- consider the studies showing that the happiness gained from wealth tends to plateau somewhere around 100K/year. Everyone having that kind of wealth someday is plausible, and that's what most reasonable people mean when they talk about post-scarcity. (For more on people wanting things in post-scarcity societies, see the Culture series.) >Unfortunately for all of us, however, scarcity isn’t going anywhere. And the only way to maximize human want satisfaction with a limited pool of resources is with unhampered markets: private property and prices. ...I'm not sure if they take free-market dogma as a given or if they think they've supported this argument somehow. As it stands, the gross inefficiency produced by free-market capitalism is one of the biggest reasons we're not there yet. Corporations are held as paragons of resource efficiency individually, of course, but collectively they're as wasteful as anything else. For example, billions of dollars are spent in marketing wars between equivalent products (iOS and Android, DC and Marvel, Pepsi and Coke)- what do those conflicts produce, in sum? Wasted money.

14 points by porsager 11y ago

sigh I really use to like LvMi but these days they seem to prefer to be pedantic than applicable. Here's the thing I get from post-scarcity (so-called) economics. 1. Production efficiency out strips demand for what's produced. 2. This leads to a radical reduction in pricing schemes to the point that most goods becomes free (gratis). 3. Which leads to further devolution of the economy away from complexity (simpler financial instruments, fewer investment vehicles, fewer businesses big/small in general). No where in this assessment do I see cakes made out of thin air. What I see is the cost of creating a good or providing a service falling so close to zero that in most cases the businesses in question only offer the good or service as part of something else. Think of it this way, if Apple found a way to produce the iPhone for cents on the dollar wouldn't it make more sense for them to just give it away and sell music and software (as a service)? Or how about if energy production becomes extremely cheap and common. Wouldn't utility companies find something else to sell you to use their energy (providing the energy as a gratuity for said good/service)? Essentially, that's what has happened throughout history. Stuff gets so cheap that either producers make up the difference on volume of sales or they just "give away" the product as part of some other product. Eventually, extrapolating that sort of situation out it seems logical that inevitably most things become free even without the sale of another premium good or service only because you got two choices in the situation as outlined: stop making stuff or race to the bottom (sell the stuff at the same price until the economy implodes from all wealth concentrated with the capitalist class).

Canada 11y ago
> if Apple found a way to produce the iPhone for cents on the dollar wouldn't it make more sense for them to just give it away I'm reminding of TNG every time I walk past the electronics section at Costco. On the show people just give each other their tablets, like it's not even worth bothering to send the file or explain where to open it. They treat their computers like we treat paper. Here's my report sir, right here on this worthless piece of computer.
- norea-armozel 11y ago
  I should put a caveat on that assertion I made. If it were extremely cheap to make an iPhone then Apple probably would sell the whole thing as a service instead. Why bother buying an iPhone ever again when you can update for the small yearly subscription of 100/USD or whatever they felt would work for their business model in that situation. I think we're starting to see a slow movement toward the hardware of smartphones being mere platforms for exclusive content (Google Play Music vs Apple Music like how it's Amazon Video vs Netflix). Sadly, it means information won't be so free (libre or gratis) as it's always something you can justify as an extremely scarce, hard to produce item.

poelzi 11y ago

his physical understand is wrong. just because common physics does not understand the ZPE(s) (zero point energies (there are actually 2)) gives very wrong perspective on our physical world. Once you understood that 1 cm³ contains ~ 244 times the gross energy humanity used in 2012, perspective changes. Once you really understand field propulsion (EM-thruster goes in this direction, just very bad design), your perspective changes as well....

maxander 11y ago

All this article does is attack a straw-man version of post-scarcity economics. What sufficiently immature humans want is arbitrary, of course they can want more than whatever they happen to have. You could want all the figurines Matel ever made or beer made from yeast that went into space or any number of silly things. But, most people accept that there is a finite amount that humans could reasonably want, and experience carries out this view- consider the studies showing that the happiness gained from wealth tends to plateau somewhere around 100K/year. Everyone having that kind of wealth someday is plausible, and that's what most reasonable people mean when they talk about post-scarcity. (For more on people wanting things in post-scarcity societies, see the Culture series.) >Unfortunately for all of us, however, scarcity isn’t going anywhere. And the only way to maximize human want satisfaction with a limited pool of resources is with unhampered markets: private property and prices. ...I'm not sure if they take free-market dogma as a given or if they think they've supported this argument somehow. As it stands, the gross inefficiency produced by free-market capitalism is one of the biggest reasons we're not there yet. Corporations are held as paragons of resource efficiency individually, of course, but collectively they're as wasteful as anything else. For example, billions of dollars are spent in marketing wars between equivalent products (iOS and Android, DC and Marvel, Pepsi and Coke)- what do those conflicts produce, in sum? Wasted money.