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What will that tech need to survive? Lithium, for batteries. Heavy metals, for processing. Energy, most of all. I wonder how long it'll be until we replace fia

What will that tech need to survive? Lithium, for batteries. Heavy metals, for processing. Energy, most of all. I wonder how long it'll be until we replace fiat currencies with a balance of kilowatt-hours.

hodder 9y ago
The problem with those is they are capital intensive industries with commodity products. Not exactly the kind of thing that compounds capital at fast rates.
Apocryphon 9y ago
Energy is the currency of the future. - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Centauri Monopoly"
- endgame 9y ago
  That game was incredibly prescient. I was going to link to its page on Paean to SMAC but it turns out that quote is from "Global Energy Theory", a tech that didn't make it into the final game (but had data set up for it). So there's no write-up about it. Instead, I'll link to the Paean's "First Time Here?" page: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/first-time-here/ https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/first-time-here/
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    "No check, no tech." is something I use often.
- ucontrol 9y ago
  That game man... It's really a piece of art.
philipkglass 9y ago
I wonder how long it'll be until we replace fiat currencies with a balance of kilowatt-hours. It won't be any time soon. A kWh of potential energy is actually pretty bulky/heavy if it's stored as anything but nuclear fuel. Different forms of energy are not fungible. You'd either be bartering a large number of actual energy sources, or you'd be exchanging "normalized" energy-currency units whose normalization WRT different forms of energy is set by fiat.
politician 9y ago
Well, if we can get some variant of the ARC reactor or ITER working, never. Or if we see grid-scale energy storage systems become cost effective to deploy.
- adrianN 9y ago
  "Too cheap to meter" was already the promise of fission. Fusion won't be much cheaper. The actual fuel doesn't make up the bulk of the cost of fission power. Building the plants and operating them is not cheap. Those costs have to amortized into the electricity price.

hodder 9y ago

The problem with those is they are capital intensive industries with commodity products. Not exactly the kind of thing that compounds capital at fast rates.

Apocryphon 9y ago

Energy is the currency of the future. - CEO Nwabudike Morgan, "The Centauri Monopoly"

endgame 9y ago
That game was incredibly prescient. I was going to link to its page on Paean to SMAC but it turns out that quote is from "Global Energy Theory", a tech that didn't make it into the final game (but had data set up for it). So there's no write-up about it. Instead, I'll link to the Paean's "First Time Here?" page: https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/first-time-here/ https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/first-time-here/
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  "No check, no tech." is something I use often.
ucontrol 9y ago
That game man... It's really a piece of art.

philipkglass 9y ago

I wonder how long it'll be until we replace fiat currencies with a balance of kilowatt-hours. It won't be any time soon. A kWh of potential energy is actually pretty bulky/heavy if it's stored as anything but nuclear fuel. Different forms of energy are not fungible. You'd either be bartering a large number of actual energy sources, or you'd be exchanging "normalized" energy-currency units whose normalization WRT different forms of energy is set by fiat.

politician 9y ago

Well, if we can get some variant of the ARC reactor or ITER working, never. Or if we see grid-scale energy storage systems become cost effective to deploy.

adrianN 9y ago
"Too cheap to meter" was already the promise of fission. Fusion won't be much cheaper. The actual fuel doesn't make up the bulk of the cost of fission power. Building the plants and operating them is not cheap. Those costs have to amortized into the electricity price.