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Ask HN: What could be done to create low maintenance, sustainable living?
Hi HN,
there is a lot of talk on hn about the government providing basic income, but my thought has always been in the future people would create a low maintenance, sustainable life style...
examples might be: owning your own home, owning solar panels for power, owning an electric car, using 3d printers for stuff, growing your own food (with robotic harvesting).
what other technologies or ideas might create help create an independent sustainable future? why doesn't this idea have much traction?
- brudgers 12y agoAll the material aspects of the envisioned 'sustainable life style' depend on the current style of industrial infrastructure for their creation and distribution...heavy duty 3d printers and solar panels and components for agricultural robots don't grow from seeds and soil. They depend on materials made in factories with tooling and loading docks and forklifts. Pastoral utopias based on technology depend on industrial dystopia.
- yen223 12y agoDecentralised power generation and manufacturing is horribly inefficient. In general, ten small engines is going to be less efficient than 1 large engine, because of the constant overhead costs that each device incurs. Not sure about agriculture, but I suspect the same thing applies: if we gave everyone a small farm each, overall you'd wind up with more land usage producing less food.