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> These days the real wealth comes from brainpower, but you can't capture that wealth by pointing a gun at someone. You should rethink your assumptions. Yes, a

> These days the real wealth comes from brainpower, but you can't capture that wealth by pointing a gun at someone. You should rethink your assumptions. Yes, a lot of the new wealth is created by technology, but ask any oil company if they would give up their oil fields, or to mining companies, agro companies, etc. In the US the biggest example is the Koch family that made a fortune by controlling land and natural resources -- the same theme repeating itself over undeveloped countries.

jbob2000 7y ago
You can't run any major resource operation without smart people. Unless you want to do it with shovels, you need smart people to set up the machinery and keep it running. You need trade agreements so you can actually get that machinery shipped in.
- adminu 7y ago
  If history has shown anything, then that smart people wont refuse to work under such a system. There is always someone who is willing to do the job and more importantly, as soon as the system is established, rewards for good work will drive the gross of smart people to work. After all they have to feed their families, too.
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- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  > You can't run any major resource operation without smart people. Given "perfect automation", owning the means of production will be all, there will be no labor aspect to it. That's gonna be a whole lot of wealth and power in very few hands, and the few specialists needed to built and operate the machines may very well get be forced at gunpoint (i.e. threat of perfected, indefinitely prolongable torture of people they are close to and/or themselves) to do their work, and they will never know how many other specialists elsewhere recreate the same work they do to make sure they are not doing anything funny. If I can think of that in the time it took me to write this, absolutely water-proof solutions can be found, too. With enough in the balance, nothing is too cruel or too invasive. edit: Who knows, "not smart" people might end up as pets in some kind of zoo, their harmless spontaneity a source of enjoyment for the owners; while the super smart people might end up completely scrutinized and controlled, being both a source of danger and power. Go further, and assume they will be bred for harmlessness and utility, whereas the remaining pet humans will at least be bred for harmlessness and beauty.
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crimsonalucard 7y ago
The main reason why China, United States, Russia and many other countries were or now are considered to be super powers is not because of access to raw resources but because of GDP and technology. Technology is simply low value resources configured in such a way that it is now called technology. It is the physical crystallization of information. There's no denying the fact that the transfer, production and copying of such information can only be done by expending energy. So the question is... Do we live in the information age or the age of oil? Only future historians would know.
- coldtea 7y ago
  >The main reason why China, United States, Russia and many other countries were or now are considered to be super powers is not because of access to raw resources but because of GDP and technology. The main fuel (pun intended) to drive GDP and technology is raw resources. Without them, and even more essentials, like arable land and water, technology and GDP shrink to insignificance...
  - crimsonalucard 7y ago
    You will note most of these super powers gather raw resources from other countries. The country that has raw resources tends to be more technologically backwards.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      That's because they are kept that way (if not invaded / colonized outright), so that their raw resources can be plundered. But that doesn't diminish the importance of raw resources, rather the contrary. It just adds the importance of a strong military and being ruthless.
      - crimsonalucard 7y ago
        > But that doesn't diminish the importance of raw resources, rather the contrary. It does diminish the importance of raw resources, so much so that simply having raw resources doesn't do anything for an economy. Never did I say raw resources aren't required. But in the modern economy it takes a back seat to countries that are technologically mighty, because tech is what determines the power of a country not the availability of resources. > It just adds the importance of a strong military and being ruthless. If you think raw resources are taken by force think again. Most countries that have raw resources simply export their resources. Those raw resources move to other countries and are transformed into technological artifacts which are then exported back to the origin country in a form of lower entropy. What this shows is that their is ZERO correlation with technological power and positional vicinity to resources. Power is in information more so than it is resources as all countries that are or were once considered super powers with High GDP had one thing in common: High Technology and not necessarily easy access to raw resources. In fact, anthropological studies of human civilizations show the opposite. Low technology societies tend to appear around places where resources are plentiful and vice versa. The theory is, is that low resources necessitates ingenuity while high resource areas do not. Think about the food resources located in Europe vs the amount of resources in tropical africa. The tropics are plentiful yet high functioning economies tend not to develop around these areas. Please be more knowledgeable before voting me down. Thanks.
PeterisP 7y ago
But we're not talking about companies in a narrow sector of economy but about whole countries. The companies are large in absolute terms but not that large compared to the rest of the economy. All the oil fields in the USA plus all the mining resources in the USA plus all the direct agriculture in the USA together constitute something like 3% of USA GDP, and it's about the same for every developed country except for places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Even in the small and oil-rich Norway the oil fields contribute just 17% of GDP and the majority of productivity is elsewhere. In developed countries idustry & manufacturing is a much, much larger part of added value than resource extraction, and services are even larger part than industry & manufacturing. If "mirror-USA" suddenly appeared next to it in the Pacific Ocean, and USA had the choice to go to war and capture all their land and natural resources, then that'd be a bad deal - a major war costs more than 3% of GDP, so gaining these natural resources (assuming that the remaining 97% of economy that's not agriculture/fishing/forestry/mining/extraction won't give you benefit because it's likely destroyed to the point that it just supports the local population and can't be "extracted") is not worth it.
- coliveira 7y ago
  Except that, even though agriculture, mining and oil exploration are a small percentage of the GDP (in the US), the rest of the economy depend on it. Can you tell me what the US would do if it suddenly lost access to oil? What about food production? The point is that these are strategic areas, even though they may not be the largest in a developed country. Being strategic gives a lot of political leverage to people who control these assets.

jbob2000 7y ago

You can't run any major resource operation without smart people. Unless you want to do it with shovels, you need smart people to set up the machinery and keep it running. You need trade agreements so you can actually get that machinery shipped in.

adminu 7y ago
If history has shown anything, then that smart people wont refuse to work under such a system. There is always someone who is willing to do the job and more importantly, as soon as the system is established, rewards for good work will drive the gross of smart people to work. After all they have to feed their families, too.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
PavlovsCat 7y ago
> You can't run any major resource operation without smart people. Given "perfect automation", owning the means of production will be all, there will be no labor aspect to it. That's gonna be a whole lot of wealth and power in very few hands, and the few specialists needed to built and operate the machines may very well get be forced at gunpoint (i.e. threat of perfected, indefinitely prolongable torture of people they are close to and/or themselves) to do their work, and they will never know how many other specialists elsewhere recreate the same work they do to make sure they are not doing anything funny. If I can think of that in the time it took me to write this, absolutely water-proof solutions can be found, too. With enough in the balance, nothing is too cruel or too invasive. edit: Who knows, "not smart" people might end up as pets in some kind of zoo, their harmless spontaneity a source of enjoyment for the owners; while the super smart people might end up completely scrutinized and controlled, being both a source of danger and power. Go further, and assume they will be bred for harmlessness and utility, whereas the remaining pet humans will at least be bred for harmlessness and beauty.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

crimsonalucard 7y ago

The main reason why China, United States, Russia and many other countries were or now are considered to be super powers is not because of access to raw resources but because of GDP and technology. Technology is simply low value resources configured in such a way that it is now called technology. It is the physical crystallization of information. There's no denying the fact that the transfer, production and copying of such information can only be done by expending energy. So the question is... Do we live in the information age or the age of oil? Only future historians would know.

coldtea 7y ago
>The main reason why China, United States, Russia and many other countries were or now are considered to be super powers is not because of access to raw resources but because of GDP and technology. The main fuel (pun intended) to drive GDP and technology is raw resources. Without them, and even more essentials, like arable land and water, technology and GDP shrink to insignificance...
- crimsonalucard 7y ago
  You will note most of these super powers gather raw resources from other countries. The country that has raw resources tends to be more technologically backwards.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    That's because they are kept that way (if not invaded / colonized outright), so that their raw resources can be plundered. But that doesn't diminish the importance of raw resources, rather the contrary. It just adds the importance of a strong military and being ruthless.
    - crimsonalucard 7y ago
      > But that doesn't diminish the importance of raw resources, rather the contrary. It does diminish the importance of raw resources, so much so that simply having raw resources doesn't do anything for an economy. Never did I say raw resources aren't required. But in the modern economy it takes a back seat to countries that are technologically mighty, because tech is what determines the power of a country not the availability of resources. > It just adds the importance of a strong military and being ruthless. If you think raw resources are taken by force think again. Most countries that have raw resources simply export their resources. Those raw resources move to other countries and are transformed into technological artifacts which are then exported back to the origin country in a form of lower entropy. What this shows is that their is ZERO correlation with technological power and positional vicinity to resources. Power is in information more so than it is resources as all countries that are or were once considered super powers with High GDP had one thing in common: High Technology and not necessarily easy access to raw resources. In fact, anthropological studies of human civilizations show the opposite. Low technology societies tend to appear around places where resources are plentiful and vice versa. The theory is, is that low resources necessitates ingenuity while high resource areas do not. Think about the food resources located in Europe vs the amount of resources in tropical africa. The tropics are plentiful yet high functioning economies tend not to develop around these areas. Please be more knowledgeable before voting me down. Thanks.

PeterisP 7y ago

But we're not talking about companies in a narrow sector of economy but about whole countries. The companies are large in absolute terms but not that large compared to the rest of the economy. All the oil fields in the USA plus all the mining resources in the USA plus all the direct agriculture in the USA together constitute something like 3% of USA GDP, and it's about the same for every developed country except for places like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Even in the small and oil-rich Norway the oil fields contribute just 17% of GDP and the majority of productivity is elsewhere. In developed countries idustry & manufacturing is a much, much larger part of added value than resource extraction, and services are even larger part than industry & manufacturing. If "mirror-USA" suddenly appeared next to it in the Pacific Ocean, and USA had the choice to go to war and capture all their land and natural resources, then that'd be a bad deal - a major war costs more than 3% of GDP, so gaining these natural resources (assuming that the remaining 97% of economy that's not agriculture/fishing/forestry/mining/extraction won't give you benefit because it's likely destroyed to the point that it just supports the local population and can't be "extracted") is not worth it.

coliveira 7y ago
Except that, even though agriculture, mining and oil exploration are a small percentage of the GDP (in the US), the rest of the economy depend on it. Can you tell me what the US would do if it suddenly lost access to oil? What about food production? The point is that these are strategic areas, even though they may not be the largest in a developed country. Being strategic gives a lot of political leverage to people who control these assets.