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> We would if a couple billion more people were given the opportunity to unlock their full human potential. No, we couldn't, the earth doesn't have the physica
by gnaritas 11y ago
> We would if a couple billion more people were given the opportunity to unlock their full human potential.
No, we couldn't, the earth doesn't have the physical resources for everyone to live the American way. Robots and AI don't change that math.
- raldi 11y agoMay I see the math?
- gnaritas 11y agoOne such summary: http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2012-10/daily-infographic-if-everyone-lived-american-how-many-earths-would-we-need http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2012-10/daily-info...
- raldi 11y agoAs I suspected, it's full of bad reasoning. For example, "We make up 5 percent of the global population, but use 20 percent of the world's energy." If we gave a billion new people access to the same kind of education you and I were lucky enough to get, do you really think we couldn't quadruple our energy resources? We could literally put ten million college-educated scientists to work on nothing but solar panels.
- gnaritas 11y agoYou're nitpicking energy; but no, that wouldn't happen because it takes energy to build those solar panels. The notion that we can somehow just up the lifestyle of the unwashed billions to our level and things will just scale up is patently silly. Our lifestyle isn't even sustainable as is. Our lifestyle exists due to third world labor arbitrage; robots can't fix that without first addressing that increases in productivity mostly help the capital holders so automated labor doesn't scale with capitalism far enough for everyone to live the American way. There are many many obstacles both politically and economically that would prevent raising the world lifestyle to ours long before resources even became a problem.