What's a sci-fi thing you feel is achievable with our current level of technology that you'd love to see become a thing?
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There's a few reasons. Firstly greed is a motivator, and people work hard if they believe they'll receive more for more effort. This gets people to go out and generate the resources that need to be distributed. Second, fungible tokens allow people to trade on the open market instead of having to find a particular person who is willing to trade say, a worm gear for a bale or two of cotton. The token is the middle man that allows someone trying to sell something sell to someone who doesn't have what the seller plans to finally trade for. That's why money started to exist in the first place.
Even in a communist system, there needs to be a way to transfer the results of labor into the things a person needs. Money is that way. Even if it means everyone gets the same amount of money to buy what they need. Everyone's resource needs are different. You can't just say everyone gets the exact same everything.
Finally, we're not post-scarcity. Not really. Until resource manufacture is so automated that it doesn't require people to do labor to acquire it, we either pay people to do the labor or we force them to via slavery. For that reason alone, we need money.
As I said to the other person, there can be a donation and request system to make sure everyone gets what they need, without tying money into it and having this weird limit of the amount of stuff people can get, and tying the idea of value to it all.
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I'm going to go against the trend here and say that libertarian corporate city-states actually sound pretty cool. They're generally not portrayed positively in fiction but I think they might work well in practice. I'm a lot less optimistic about cooperating with all my fellow Americans in order to govern the whole country democratically than I used to be. Choosing to move to an independent city-state with a government that I agree with (albeit one I don't elect) might work better.
yeah, being blacklisted and exiled from modern society all because I called great leader "Fuckerberg" in 2010.
so fucking cool /s
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We have flying cars. They're called helicopters. And the limits to us having post scarcity are all societal/political, not technological.
Helicopters aren't exactly convenient personal transport. We could definitely make smaller maybe autopiloted transports.
Regarding post scarcity, that was the point, we could do it now with enough motivation.
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Flying cars.
Not just no, hell no. I've driven in Tennessee.
Yeah I wouldn't want them with people driving then, I'd definitely want some sort of automation to be in charge especially if there were similar amounts to road traffic.
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Socialized healthcare. A living minimum wage. UBI.
A permanent base on the moon. We should have had that 40 years ago, minimum.
Madness!!
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Yeah I wouldn't want them with people driving then, I'd definitely want some sort of automation to be in charge especially if there were similar amounts to road traffic.
That may be okay, but not if Musk is within a thousand miles of coding the automation.
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Slow down there. Keep it reasonable
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Socialized healthcare. A living minimum wage. UBI.
A permanent base on the moon. We should have had that 40 years ago, minimum.
THAT'S COMMUNISM
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I'm going to go against the trend here and say that libertarian corporate city-states actually sound pretty cool. They're generally not portrayed positively in fiction but I think they might work well in practice. I'm a lot less optimistic about cooperating with all my fellow Americans in order to govern the whole country democratically than I used to be. Choosing to move to an independent city-state with a government that I agree with (albeit one I don't elect) might work better.
Look at the companies that are really successful. Telecoms, Amazon, Nestle... the big ones. Note the trend of every single one of them doing the absolute most unethical shit they possibly can to make a quick buck. Do you really want to hand them things like a military/police force, or authority over your civil liberties?
Not to say that existing governments aren't also abusing those powers, but do you seriously think your life would improve if you gave that power over to fucking Comcast or something??
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Terraforming.
The formerly-water deserts can be terraformed by just digging holes at specific angles so the shadow protects plants from drying up.
It's sci-fi not like a "future robot" thing but more of a "hey we know the math we can do this reliably well" type of thing.
Also those expensive EEG headbands that track your brain during sleep and give you stats can be modified to change TV channel at specific brainwave values.
I don't know why I haven't thought about terraforming earth until I read it in a sci Fi book and it seemed like the simplest and best thing to do, over terraforming mars or Venus. We have the tech for bioengineering, cloud seeding (I think), chemicals to help stimulate growth of natural plants (at least for the ocean).
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Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
::: spoiler Rosey!
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Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
Arcologies.
Dense housing with good soundproofing, atop commercial space, in a walkable neighborhood.
Wouldn't need rent control if there was more houses.
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I'm confident that we could set up permanent human habitation on the Moon or on Mars with our current level of technology, and that's featured pretty prominently in sci-fi.
I don't know if it would actually provide a cost-effective return, but I do think that it'd be interesting to see happen in my lifetime.
Vegas can make money from tourusm in a desert, a hotel on the moon (with a casino) will do just fine.
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Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I'd love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
Alarm clock that reads my brain activity and only wakes me up at the point in my REM cycle, where i'll feel refreshed waking up.
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You don't need currency for that. You just need a request system. And ideally some form of moral rejection mechanism that refuses to distribute sentient beings as resources. I didn't say it had to be distributed equally just because there's no money.
Oh, is that all
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Alarm clock that reads my brain activity and only wakes me up at the point in my REM cycle, where i'll feel refreshed waking up.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I believe this does actually exist but the most reliable one is from a company that went out of business, so you have to buy second hand
Edit: Its the Zeo Sleep Manager
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Look at the companies that are really successful. Telecoms, Amazon, Nestle... the big ones. Note the trend of every single one of them doing the absolute most unethical shit they possibly can to make a quick buck. Do you really want to hand them things like a military/police force, or authority over your civil liberties?
Not to say that existing governments aren't also abusing those powers, but do you seriously think your life would improve if you gave that power over to fucking Comcast or something??
Corporations are predictable - they try to make money. If their profit motive aligns with my own interests, then what they do will be good for me. Amazon, for example, sells me all sorts of things for low prices and with great customer support. My interests and corporate interests won't necessarily align and that's why exit rights are so important, but at least I will still be dealing with an entity acting more-or-less rationally.
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THAT'S COMMUNISM
Socialism technically, but I get your sarcasm. I hope it is sarcasm.
Well they did say Sci-Fi and we all know how likely that stuff is. So I think we're "safe" with Late Stage Capitalism.
The technology has never been what is holding us back.
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The limit is skill and discipline.
Most people can’t even drive a car that is held on the ground by gravity. You want them to…fly?
Its kinda harder to crash when you add an extra dimention (more space to freely maneuver around)
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the end of scarcity. that's a totally bogus concept that capitalism uses to keep the rich in power. we produce far more than the whole of humanity would need to feed and cloth themselves, and we have more houses empty than there are families. we could end poverty right now, we just choose not to.
Not just capitalism, but all forms of corrupt, greedy governments.
