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Generally people have vision of a lot of "tech" in a futuristic city. To me, the following conditions are sufficient - Free healthcare - Free high quality educ

Generally people have vision of a lot of "tech" in a futuristic city. To me, the following conditions are sufficient - Free healthcare - Free high quality education - Everything else is free market (which includes legal but controlled access to drugs, prostitution, etc.) - No private ownership of vehicles; everyone MUST use public transportation which should be accessible - clean air - walkable - diversity of culture (so for example it should be as easy to find a Bible reading club as a psytrance nighclub)

throwaway210222 5y ago
- Free healthcare - Free high quality education There is no free anything. Perhaps if you called it 'free-at-the-point-of-use-but-definately-paid-for-by-someone-else' it would clarify why such nice things are difficult to achieve in the real world.
- mandmandam 5y ago
  Laughs in 'rest of the developed world'. Free education and free healthcare more than pay for themselves; not just psychologically and morally but economically.
  - throwaway210222 5y ago
    > Laughs in 'rest of the developed world'. Don't be a dick. > Free education and free healthcare more than pay for themselves… I didn't say they didn't. But they do require someone to pay for it. And those someone's aren't normally the kind of people attracted to a frontier, libertarian concept like building a new city.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    Eh I’m not sure on the education piece of healthcare even. For education I mean that’s a no-brainer controversial one. Is it worth it for society to spend resources to train more writers or art history majors? Not sure it is. At least it isn’t obvious to me. While I’m a proponent of UHC as well I think we do have to look at why people need healthcare. Is it because they are obese and just don’t care? If so more healthcare isn’t a good thing unless they also change underlying habits which lead to the need for healthcare in the first place. And also obviously someone is paying for these things. “Laughs in the rest of the developed world” is a really immature comment, especially as we start to see universities in that developed world start to sneak back in fees for things. There is no free lunch. Everything costs something. Maybe we are taxing billionaires or w/e is in vogue right now but it still costs money. By making it “free” we also separate out useful market elements - like instead of going to school to be an art history major maybe for free, maybe you should bear some of the burden for a less useful degree than say computer science where there is a need, or plumbing or electricians. “Liberal arts educations are valuable etc” yea read a book or use the Internet. If you’re not willing to do that freely on your own a university isn’t helping you there and I really doubt the costs are justified.
    - ohgodplsno 5y ago
      > Is it worth it for society to spend resources to train more writers or art history majors? Yes. Do you know why ? Because there's barely anyone doing that, relative to the total amount of students. Not only is it a small amount of people, despite the STEM circlejerk, humanities are some of the more important subjects we could teach. A country without writers or historians sounds like a hellscape to me. >yea read a book or use the Internet This is not how teaching works. > Is it because they are obese and just don’t care? If so more healthcare isn’t a good thing unless they also change underlying habits which lead to the need for healthcare in the first place. Costs have been rising recently because of that, yes, but pretending it's an exclusive choice is ridiculous. You can have universal health care _and_ fight off obesity, or smoking, with success. > By making it “free” we also separate out useful market elements - like instead of going to school to be an art history major maybe for free, maybe you should bear some of the burden for a less useful degree than say computer science where there is a need, or plumbing or electricians. Fuck the market. You don't get to pick what people study because they don't fit your closed world view. Once again, screw your STEM circlejerk. I'll happily laugh in the rest of the first world.
- ohgodplsno 5y ago
  Oh no, my 400€ taken from my salary help cover for an entire society and prevents me from going into life-crippling debt when taking an ambulance! The US is the only country with such wealth that is unable to set it up, and pays more than double than any european country with free healthcare per inhabitant. The real world is calling, and it's telling you the US's approach to health care is more fitting of a third world country.
  - throwaway210222 5y ago
    I couldn't agree with you more - I'm not an American either. Perhaps you could take 5 minutes to ponder the assumptions you make about the nationality op anonymous posters.
LinuxBender 5y ago
Free healthcare would be great but if I am building my utopian society, I would first address the need for healthcare in the first place. Automation would make healthy living choices super easy so that people could naturally gravitate towards lifestyles that avoided the need for healthcare at our current demands. You will often see debates here on HN about who should pay for healthcare but I think that is a cart before the horse problem. At the current growth in chronic health issues I do not foresee nations continuing to exist. Who pays for what? Doesn't matter, nobody will be able to afford 8 billion people having chronic health issues. Someone has to solve that first, then we can figure out who pays for the remaining issues. The advanced housing tech would also be designed so that you already know 99% of your health issues without even walking into a clinic. All that data remains on premise and under your control. Acute issues? No problem, lay down in the operation chamber. The system renders you unconscious and you wake up fully repaired and more healthy.
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  The largest driver of chronic health conditions is people being fat, because they are poor and their diet is terrible.
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    Exactly. That is something this theoretical utopian system should address. Our planet has an abundance of resources that can be fully automated and self sustaining if done correctly.
    - spywaregorilla 5y ago
      and who pays the poor people whose jobs get automated out?
      - LinuxBender 5y ago
        Nobody. Those people don't exist since we are building a new bubble from scratch. We are creating a utopian society funded by a multi-billionaire. There are no poor people. Everyone living in this theoretical bubble gets free food, housing, healthcare, entertainment, etc... But you are right, if this bubble has any dependencies on people outside of the bubble they might be poor and miserable. They would have to get on the list to migrate into this society. In full disclosure, I don't see any of this as a utopia but rather a highly dystopian society. It is the basis for some movies and books. But I am just playing along with the idea.
spywaregorilla 5y ago
> Everything else is free market > diversity of culture (so for example it should be as easy to find a Bible reading club as a psytrance nighclub) What if the market things your diversity is shit?

throwaway210222 5y ago

- Free healthcare - Free high quality education There is no free anything. Perhaps if you called it 'free-at-the-point-of-use-but-definately-paid-for-by-someone-else' it would clarify why such nice things are difficult to achieve in the real world.

mandmandam 5y ago
Laughs in 'rest of the developed world'. Free education and free healthcare more than pay for themselves; not just psychologically and morally but economically.
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  > Laughs in 'rest of the developed world'. Don't be a dick. > Free education and free healthcare more than pay for themselves… I didn't say they didn't. But they do require someone to pay for it. And those someone's aren't normally the kind of people attracted to a frontier, libertarian concept like building a new city.
- ericmay 5y ago
  Eh I’m not sure on the education piece of healthcare even. For education I mean that’s a no-brainer controversial one. Is it worth it for society to spend resources to train more writers or art history majors? Not sure it is. At least it isn’t obvious to me. While I’m a proponent of UHC as well I think we do have to look at why people need healthcare. Is it because they are obese and just don’t care? If so more healthcare isn’t a good thing unless they also change underlying habits which lead to the need for healthcare in the first place. And also obviously someone is paying for these things. “Laughs in the rest of the developed world” is a really immature comment, especially as we start to see universities in that developed world start to sneak back in fees for things. There is no free lunch. Everything costs something. Maybe we are taxing billionaires or w/e is in vogue right now but it still costs money. By making it “free” we also separate out useful market elements - like instead of going to school to be an art history major maybe for free, maybe you should bear some of the burden for a less useful degree than say computer science where there is a need, or plumbing or electricians. “Liberal arts educations are valuable etc” yea read a book or use the Internet. If you’re not willing to do that freely on your own a university isn’t helping you there and I really doubt the costs are justified.
  - ohgodplsno 5y ago
    > Is it worth it for society to spend resources to train more writers or art history majors? Yes. Do you know why ? Because there's barely anyone doing that, relative to the total amount of students. Not only is it a small amount of people, despite the STEM circlejerk, humanities are some of the more important subjects we could teach. A country without writers or historians sounds like a hellscape to me. >yea read a book or use the Internet This is not how teaching works. > Is it because they are obese and just don’t care? If so more healthcare isn’t a good thing unless they also change underlying habits which lead to the need for healthcare in the first place. Costs have been rising recently because of that, yes, but pretending it's an exclusive choice is ridiculous. You can have universal health care _and_ fight off obesity, or smoking, with success. > By making it “free” we also separate out useful market elements - like instead of going to school to be an art history major maybe for free, maybe you should bear some of the burden for a less useful degree than say computer science where there is a need, or plumbing or electricians. Fuck the market. You don't get to pick what people study because they don't fit your closed world view. Once again, screw your STEM circlejerk. I'll happily laugh in the rest of the first world.
ohgodplsno 5y ago
Oh no, my 400€ taken from my salary help cover for an entire society and prevents me from going into life-crippling debt when taking an ambulance! The US is the only country with such wealth that is unable to set it up, and pays more than double than any european country with free healthcare per inhabitant. The real world is calling, and it's telling you the US's approach to health care is more fitting of a third world country.
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  I couldn't agree with you more - I'm not an American either. Perhaps you could take 5 minutes to ponder the assumptions you make about the nationality op anonymous posters.

LinuxBender 5y ago

Free healthcare would be great but if I am building my utopian society, I would first address the need for healthcare in the first place. Automation would make healthy living choices super easy so that people could naturally gravitate towards lifestyles that avoided the need for healthcare at our current demands. You will often see debates here on HN about who should pay for healthcare but I think that is a cart before the horse problem. At the current growth in chronic health issues I do not foresee nations continuing to exist. Who pays for what? Doesn't matter, nobody will be able to afford 8 billion people having chronic health issues. Someone has to solve that first, then we can figure out who pays for the remaining issues. The advanced housing tech would also be designed so that you already know 99% of your health issues without even walking into a clinic. All that data remains on premise and under your control. Acute issues? No problem, lay down in the operation chamber. The system renders you unconscious and you wake up fully repaired and more healthy.

spywaregorilla 5y ago
The largest driver of chronic health conditions is people being fat, because they are poor and their diet is terrible.
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  Exactly. That is something this theoretical utopian system should address. Our planet has an abundance of resources that can be fully automated and self sustaining if done correctly.
  - spywaregorilla 5y ago
    and who pays the poor people whose jobs get automated out?
    - LinuxBender 5y ago
      Nobody. Those people don't exist since we are building a new bubble from scratch. We are creating a utopian society funded by a multi-billionaire. There are no poor people. Everyone living in this theoretical bubble gets free food, housing, healthcare, entertainment, etc... But you are right, if this bubble has any dependencies on people outside of the bubble they might be poor and miserable. They would have to get on the list to migrate into this society. In full disclosure, I don't see any of this as a utopia but rather a highly dystopian society. It is the basis for some movies and books. But I am just playing along with the idea.

spywaregorilla 5y ago

> Everything else is free market > diversity of culture (so for example it should be as easy to find a Bible reading club as a psytrance nighclub) What if the market things your diversity is shit?