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From another FussyZeus comment: > Well unless you plan to have a Startup that sells Time, the scarcity of time is rather irrelevant to Capitalism, no? WHOA, NO

From another FussyZeus comment: > Well unless you plan to have a Startup that sells Time, the scarcity of time is rather irrelevant to Capitalism, no? WHOA, NOW. Time is a zero-sum game. The scarcity of time is not even close to "irrelevant to Capitalism". Economists compare productivity gains as the ability to produce more widgets in the same amount of time. The wealthy generally value their time much higher than the poor, so there is a spectrum. Are you saying that there's no value added in a company saving you time? * USPS delivering mail to your house rather than a PO Box. * Amazon/etailer website ordering as opposed to brick and mortar * Doordash, Google Shopping Express, InstaCart, etc * FedEx/UPS delivering to your door, rather than * Pre-packaged meals. * A taxi/limo/Uber driver. * A helicopter to avoid traffic. * A dishwasher / clothes washer * Electrical hand-tools to make construction faster * A secretary / admin assistant * Amazon MechTurk * AAA membership as opposed to standing in line at the California DMV * A cousin of mine makes a living navigating local governments to gain building permits for her customers Tristan Harris even argues that there is an "attention economy". I worked at a tiny social media website in 2008+, which was effectively destroyed by the rise of Facebook. Hell, we even saw that as our users grew up and went to college, we lost their attention. The entire marketing industry is about competing for the attention of users, which is also a zero-sum game.

FussyZeus 9y ago
> WHOA, NOW. Time is a zero-sum game. The scarcity of time is not even close to "irrelevant to Capitalism". Economists compare productivity gains as the ability to produce more widgets in the same amount of time. Once widgets materialize in a box and can be moved immediately via non-human means to whomever needs them, or more likely, simply be removed from the box by the human who wanted the widget, the friction becomes 0. It's no longer about who can get the widget made faster unless you talk about the efficiency of the replicator itself, and that will likely approach a certain baseline point as well. The thing is the further along you go on this curve, the faster all of these things will work to improve each other. Why have a prepackaged meal when you could have the exact molecular composition of a fantastic soufflé made by a five star chef in Paris, instantly, for the cost of running your replicator for 10 seconds? Why take a helicopter to avoid traffic when automated streets have made the few commutes that remain extremely fast? Who cares about shipping you things when the product you bought materializes next to your oven? You're talking incremental improvements in the next 10 years. That's not going to do anything I've discussed. I'm talking the theoretical and in my mind, inevitable conclusion to capitalism: that all goods and services are worthless; not because we don't need them, but because they don't cost us anything.

FussyZeus 9y ago

> WHOA, NOW. Time is a zero-sum game. The scarcity of time is not even close to "irrelevant to Capitalism". Economists compare productivity gains as the ability to produce more widgets in the same amount of time. Once widgets materialize in a box and can be moved immediately via non-human means to whomever needs them, or more likely, simply be removed from the box by the human who wanted the widget, the friction becomes 0. It's no longer about who can get the widget made faster unless you talk about the efficiency of the replicator itself, and that will likely approach a certain baseline point as well. The thing is the further along you go on this curve, the faster all of these things will work to improve each other. Why have a prepackaged meal when you could have the exact molecular composition of a fantastic soufflé made by a five star chef in Paris, instantly, for the cost of running your replicator for 10 seconds? Why take a helicopter to avoid traffic when automated streets have made the few commutes that remain extremely fast? Who cares about shipping you things when the product you bought materializes next to your oven? You're talking incremental improvements in the next 10 years. That's not going to do anything I've discussed. I'm talking the theoretical and in my mind, inevitable conclusion to capitalism: that all goods and services are worthless; not because we don't need them, but because they don't cost us anything.