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I only get one coin out of this article, and it's got two sides: 1. Infinity is really, really big. 2. 0 is really, really small. Infinite clean energy with

I only get one coin out of this article, and it's got two sides: 1. Infinity is really, really big. 2. 0 is really, really small. Infinite clean energy with no cost? Nonexistent transaction costs (economics meaning)? Yeah, this is probably a very mild description of what the world might look like with those constraints removed. To me, this is the economic equivalent of a think-piece on what the world would be like if gravity and magnetism disappeared as forces. It may be interesting, and there is likely value in such counterfactual thinking. But it's not something we need to plan for or a goal to aspire to. It's a thought experiment.

anm89 6y ago
As this interesting article points out, the surface of the earth would exceed the boiling temperature in about 400 years if we sustain 2.3% energy consumption growth over that period. Something I think a lot of techno utopians have not considered when they mention unlimited energy. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
bccdee 6y ago
Yeah, it has a strange sense of economic blindness. The article seems to think that the big innovations they're talking about are "renting clothes by the day," or "everyone uses driverless cars," but in reality the innovation is in how the economy doesn't need money to function. Like, I get that this is a post-automation utopia, but at no point in history has capitalist automation ever meant that people need to do less work. It has always meant that people lose their income and go hungry. "We created a society which encourages people to innovate & pitch in without punishing them when they don't work" is, sociologically speaking, a much more interesting and important development than "the algorithm recommends me clothes in the morning." The most interesting thing is that the author seems not to realize that this all entails an end to capitalism. They say things like "my living room is used for business meetings when I'm not there," but what business meetings? How is anyone making money in a society where everything's free? If no one's making money, is it even a business? Does everyone do it purely out of passion? Or do we needed some form of soft incentive for people to be involved in the economy? What form would that take? This article raises a million interesting questions, but seems interested only in entertaining the most boring ones, like "how would algorithms be involved with this?" and "what if I had no privacy?" It's as if they picture every business being like Gmail, where it's free because that's in the interest of the service provider. But Google still needs to turn a profit from somewhere. It' can't be Gmails all the way down. He's trying to propose communism, but imagining that that would merely entail businesses gradually reducing all their prices down to zero for some unexplained reason.
rvense 6y ago
I think it's just kind of like the economic version of something like "in the future, you will be able to seamlessly communicate with everyone, constantly!" - which is true and can be turned into a really nice, cleanly-looking scifi promotional video. But then the reality of that is you have 12 different ways of sending text to other people and you can never remember which one each person prefers; the apps all spy on you and are owned by different corporations that are held at gunpoint by different governments, not to mention that you're stressed to the gills by all the notifications and absolutely everything is covered in advertisements.

anm89 6y ago

As this interesting article points out, the surface of the earth would exceed the boiling temperature in about 400 years if we sustain 2.3% energy consumption growth over that period. Something I think a lot of techno utopians have not considered when they mention unlimited energy. https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist/ https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...

bccdee 6y ago

Yeah, it has a strange sense of economic blindness. The article seems to think that the big innovations they're talking about are "renting clothes by the day," or "everyone uses driverless cars," but in reality the innovation is in how the economy doesn't need money to function. Like, I get that this is a post-automation utopia, but at no point in history has capitalist automation ever meant that people need to do less work. It has always meant that people lose their income and go hungry. "We created a society which encourages people to innovate & pitch in without punishing them when they don't work" is, sociologically speaking, a much more interesting and important development than "the algorithm recommends me clothes in the morning." The most interesting thing is that the author seems not to realize that this all entails an end to capitalism. They say things like "my living room is used for business meetings when I'm not there," but what business meetings? How is anyone making money in a society where everything's free? If no one's making money, is it even a business? Does everyone do it purely out of passion? Or do we needed some form of soft incentive for people to be involved in the economy? What form would that take? This article raises a million interesting questions, but seems interested only in entertaining the most boring ones, like "how would algorithms be involved with this?" and "what if I had no privacy?" It's as if they picture every business being like Gmail, where it's free because that's in the interest of the service provider. But Google still needs to turn a profit from somewhere. It' can't be Gmails all the way down. He's trying to propose communism, but imagining that that would merely entail businesses gradually reducing all their prices down to zero for some unexplained reason.

rvense 6y ago

I think it's just kind of like the economic version of something like "in the future, you will be able to seamlessly communicate with everyone, constantly!" - which is true and can be turned into a really nice, cleanly-looking scifi promotional video. But then the reality of that is you have 12 different ways of sending text to other people and you can never remember which one each person prefers; the apps all spy on you and are owned by different corporations that are held at gunpoint by different governments, not to mention that you're stressed to the gills by all the notifications and absolutely everything is covered in advertisements.