5 ms·

If you can make many replicators, money stops making much sense. You probably end up with energy (if these devices take a lot of energy to operate) as the new c

If you can make many replicators, money stops making much sense. You probably end up with energy (if these devices take a lot of energy to operate) as the new currency. My gut says that _somehow_ the middle class will get screwed as always, but I struggle to articulate the way that abundant cheap goods lead to that outcome. Maybe because the very few that control the replicators will be able to cut people they don’t like out of partaking from them? That’d make some sense. If replicators were replicatable, that control evaporates quickly. Remember how nervous we all were about LLM censorship, then suddenly a $2000 MacBook Pro could run pretty great open source models that seem a few months behind SOTA?

SoftTalker 1y ago
But energy is essentially free also, at least on the margin, and if we're talking about sunlight.
- petre 1y ago
  Sure. And AI will only run at peak solar times.
  - lukan 1y ago
    Did you know, that there is always a place on earth enjoying peak solar time right now?
majormajor 1y ago
What does it mean in practice to have energy instead of money as currency? People would still want to be able to trade with lower friction than lugging batteries around, so don't you just re-invent money on top of it? orrrrrr just keep having the current money around the whole time? -- The general limiting factor with the "one person controls the replicators, only they have income" idea is that they would rapidly lose that income because nobody else would have anything to trade them anymore. (If you toss in the AI/robotic dream scenario, they don't even need humans to manage the raw material.) But then does that turn into famine and mass-die-off, or Star Trek utopia?
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > But then does that turn into famine and mass-die-off Probably extremely bloody revolt and collapse
  - noduerme 1y ago
    Only if you assume people's major motivation is wanting what they don't have, as opposed to wanting a little more to survive. History shows the opposite.
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      > History shows the opposite. I strongly disagree, everything I know about history points the other way Human history is littered with "people's major motivation is wanting what they don't have" Look at the conflicts happening right now in Ukraine, or Israel Come on, be serious
- scotty79 1y ago
  > What does it mean in practice to have energy instead of money as currency? Something like Bitcoin. When the progress in miners efficiency stalls any kWh of energy not used for something else will be used to make some amount of bitcoins. If you have energy you can make btc. If you have btc you can give your btc to someone in exchange for their energy so that they give you their energy, instead of using it to mine bitcoins themselves.
  - UltraSane 1y ago
    That just seems very wasteful when proof-of-stake works.
    - FabHK 1y ago
      Or even good old centralised distributed systems that do it another 4 to 6 orders of magnitude more efficiently than PoS.
motorest 1y ago
> If you can make many replicators, money stops making much sense. You probably end up with energy (if these devices take a lot of energy to operate) as the new currency. If you can make many replicators, you certainly won't be providing them to anyone else. You'd be using them to ensure that money starts funneling into your revenue stream, and use that as a cash cow to pursue other projects.
- simonh 1y ago
  That’s only a temporary possibility, once the tech gets out everyone will have replicators.
  - card_zero 1y ago
    What are they replicating? Patented things, copyrighted things? Or groceries? Do they want to replicate things? In Star Trek, they travel light, wear uniforms, and have few personal possessions, because they're on a ship, in the navy. That's why everything has to be digital and everybody stuffs their life inside a phonecorder and drinks synthale. When he's back on earth, Picard has a horse. I could be wrong but I don't think he replicated it.
  - heavyset_go 1y ago
    Just like everyone owns factories today
bluefirebrand 1y ago
> I struggle to articulate the way that abundant cheap goods lead to that outcome. It has nothing to do with how cheap the goods are The problem is that at some point people won't be able to afford literally anything because all, and I mean literally all, of the wealth will be hyper concentrated in a super small percentage of the population
- squigz 1y ago
  Do you have anything to support this hypothesis?
  - neel8986 1y ago
    Simple hypothesis. Top 5percent of US wealth now belongs to top 50 richest American. Even if you ignore corruption, lobbying and any ill intent you can definitely conclude that this top 50 individuals have better way of getting return from money than rest of the population. Even if if their delta of return is 5% we can assume that withing next 50 years there is a high probability that these guys will own 30-50% of wealth. I have a strong belive AI will acclerate that further.
    - prewett 1y ago
      But all your numbers (except maybe top 5% one) are completely made up. Strong beliefs don't prevent one from being completely wrong. Neville Chamberlain has a strong belief that he had ensured peace; Einstein had a strong belief that quantum theory's "spooky action at a distance" was incorrect. Both were wrong. Fifty years is a long time, and anything could happen. The last fifty years had the fall of Communism, the EU, China going from an impoverished countryside to a superpower, video phones in our pocket, social media upending communication and mental health, renewable energy displacing coal, Trump, etc.
      - squigz 1y ago
        Not to mention that 50% of US wealth is only 15% of the world's total wealth - a far cry from "literally all wealth"
intended 1y ago
IMO - Money will NEVER stops making sense. Money is a cheap way to translate unlike objects. Cows to art, labor to goods. Green to triangle. Money (or something) will always exist, because it is a needed lubricant for transactions.
- Quekid5 1y ago
  In a word: it's fungible[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility
- scotty79 1y ago
  > Money (or something) will always exist, because it is a needed lubricant for transactions. So it's only useful for as long as you have the need for transactions.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > So it's only useful for as long as you have the need for transactions Which you will always have some need for, because resources aren't infinite, real estate isn't infinite, services aren't infinite, etc
delusional 1y ago
> Remember how nervous we all were about LLM censorship You're taking the wrong lesson from that observation. Models that people actually use are just as censored now as they ever were. What changed was the the hysterical anti-censorship babies realized that it's not that big of a problem, at least acutely.
x______________ 1y ago
You probably end up with energy (if these devices take a lot of energy to operate) as the new currency. So what's stopping you from replicating a power source and battery? Seems analogous to LLM's: replicators replicate but do not create. Information would then seem to the proper choice for a new currency..
FabHK 1y ago
> If you can make many replicators, money stops making much sense. There are many, many, many, many positional goods. Beachfront properties, original art, historical artifacts, elite clubs, limited edition luxury goods, top restaurants, etc. The notion that we'd all live happily and contentedly without money if only we had some more iPhones and other goods produced by replicators strikes me as false. Remember that Keynes predicted about a century ago that 100 years thence (in other words, now) everyone would just work 10 hours a week at most, and the biggest challenge would be to avoid boredom? He predicted productivity growth accurate enough, but assumed that people would have enough with 4x, 5x as much as they had back then while simultaneously working 4x, 5x less. Instead, people opted to work just as much and consume 16x as much.

SoftTalker 1y ago

But energy is essentially free also, at least on the margin, and if we're talking about sunlight.

petre 1y ago
Sure. And AI will only run at peak solar times.
- lukan 1y ago
  Did you know, that there is always a place on earth enjoying peak solar time right now?

majormajor 1y ago

What does it mean in practice to have energy instead of money as currency? People would still want to be able to trade with lower friction than lugging batteries around, so don't you just re-invent money on top of it? orrrrrr just keep having the current money around the whole time? -- The general limiting factor with the "one person controls the replicators, only they have income" idea is that they would rapidly lose that income because nobody else would have anything to trade them anymore. (If you toss in the AI/robotic dream scenario, they don't even need humans to manage the raw material.) But then does that turn into famine and mass-die-off, or Star Trek utopia?

bluefirebrand 1y ago
> But then does that turn into famine and mass-die-off Probably extremely bloody revolt and collapse
- noduerme 1y ago
  Only if you assume people's major motivation is wanting what they don't have, as opposed to wanting a little more to survive. History shows the opposite.
  - bluefirebrand 1y ago
    > History shows the opposite. I strongly disagree, everything I know about history points the other way Human history is littered with "people's major motivation is wanting what they don't have" Look at the conflicts happening right now in Ukraine, or Israel Come on, be serious
scotty79 1y ago
> What does it mean in practice to have energy instead of money as currency? Something like Bitcoin. When the progress in miners efficiency stalls any kWh of energy not used for something else will be used to make some amount of bitcoins. If you have energy you can make btc. If you have btc you can give your btc to someone in exchange for their energy so that they give you their energy, instead of using it to mine bitcoins themselves.
- UltraSane 1y ago
  That just seems very wasteful when proof-of-stake works.
  - FabHK 1y ago
    Or even good old centralised distributed systems that do it another 4 to 6 orders of magnitude more efficiently than PoS.

motorest 1y ago

> If you can make many replicators, money stops making much sense. You probably end up with energy (if these devices take a lot of energy to operate) as the new currency. If you can make many replicators, you certainly won't be providing them to anyone else. You'd be using them to ensure that money starts funneling into your revenue stream, and use that as a cash cow to pursue other projects.

simonh 1y ago
That’s only a temporary possibility, once the tech gets out everyone will have replicators.
- card_zero 1y ago
  What are they replicating? Patented things, copyrighted things? Or groceries? Do they want to replicate things? In Star Trek, they travel light, wear uniforms, and have few personal possessions, because they're on a ship, in the navy. That's why everything has to be digital and everybody stuffs their life inside a phonecorder and drinks synthale. When he's back on earth, Picard has a horse. I could be wrong but I don't think he replicated it.
- heavyset_go 1y ago
  Just like everyone owns factories today

bluefirebrand 1y ago

> I struggle to articulate the way that abundant cheap goods lead to that outcome. It has nothing to do with how cheap the goods are The problem is that at some point people won't be able to afford literally anything because all, and I mean literally all, of the wealth will be hyper concentrated in a super small percentage of the population

squigz 1y ago
Do you have anything to support this hypothesis?
- neel8986 1y ago
  Simple hypothesis. Top 5percent of US wealth now belongs to top 50 richest American. Even if you ignore corruption, lobbying and any ill intent you can definitely conclude that this top 50 individuals have better way of getting return from money than rest of the population. Even if if their delta of return is 5% we can assume that withing next 50 years there is a high probability that these guys will own 30-50% of wealth. I have a strong belive AI will acclerate that further.
  - prewett 1y ago
    But all your numbers (except maybe top 5% one) are completely made up. Strong beliefs don't prevent one from being completely wrong. Neville Chamberlain has a strong belief that he had ensured peace; Einstein had a strong belief that quantum theory's "spooky action at a distance" was incorrect. Both were wrong. Fifty years is a long time, and anything could happen. The last fifty years had the fall of Communism, the EU, China going from an impoverished countryside to a superpower, video phones in our pocket, social media upending communication and mental health, renewable energy displacing coal, Trump, etc.
    - squigz 1y ago
      Not to mention that 50% of US wealth is only 15% of the world's total wealth - a far cry from "literally all wealth"

intended 1y ago

IMO - Money will NEVER stops making sense. Money is a cheap way to translate unlike objects. Cows to art, labor to goods. Green to triangle. Money (or something) will always exist, because it is a needed lubricant for transactions.

Quekid5 1y ago
In a word: it's fungible[0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fungibility
scotty79 1y ago
> Money (or something) will always exist, because it is a needed lubricant for transactions. So it's only useful for as long as you have the need for transactions.
- bluefirebrand 1y ago
  > So it's only useful for as long as you have the need for transactions Which you will always have some need for, because resources aren't infinite, real estate isn't infinite, services aren't infinite, etc

delusional 1y ago

> Remember how nervous we all were about LLM censorship You're taking the wrong lesson from that observation. Models that people actually use are just as censored now as they ever were. What changed was the the hysterical anti-censorship babies realized that it's not that big of a problem, at least acutely.

x______________ 1y ago

You probably end up with energy (if these devices take a lot of energy to operate) as the new currency. So what's stopping you from replicating a power source and battery? Seems analogous to LLM's: replicators replicate but do not create. Information would then seem to the proper choice for a new currency..

FabHK 1y ago

> If you can make many replicators, money stops making much sense. There are many, many, many, many positional goods. Beachfront properties, original art, historical artifacts, elite clubs, limited edition luxury goods, top restaurants, etc. The notion that we'd all live happily and contentedly without money if only we had some more iPhones and other goods produced by replicators strikes me as false. Remember that Keynes predicted about a century ago that 100 years thence (in other words, now) everyone would just work 10 hours a week at most, and the biggest challenge would be to avoid boredom? He predicted productivity growth accurate enough, but assumed that people would have enough with 4x, 5x as much as they had back then while simultaneously working 4x, 5x less. Instead, people opted to work just as much and consume 16x as much.