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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you start looking for ways to increase your margin on each tomato you sell
That happens unconditionally under capitalism, there's no set profit margin where the owner says "I've made enough money, time to lower prices and raise wages".
Competition only exists within a very narrow context within capitalism. If you want the capitalists to do x y z, you don't deregulate, you simply restrict them from doing anything else and prepare to use every means the government has at their disposal to punish the ones who violate the public trust.
There's a reason China manages to operate a healthier capitalist system within a very clearly defined bird cage.
Wrt your China example, I will default to my null hypothesis here - China is on the upswing from opening itself to global trade, and has 1 billion people. Any argument in favor of China's prosperity must demonstrate that they are doing well beyond what we would expect in these circumstances.
That happens unconditionally under capitalism, there’s no set profit margin where the owner says “I’ve made enough money, time to lower prices and raise wages”.
And sure. But eventually someone will start trying to undercut others by accepting lower margins.
And of course, this is why we should have and enforce laws against price fixing and collusion.
None of this changes the fact that, even if governments took on the construction of new housing themselves and dedicated themselves to solving the housing shortage, they also wouldn't be able to build enough new housing fast enough because of their own regulations on how housing must be constructed.
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You can go to the hardware store and buy a screwdriver. Or go to walmart and buy a frying pan. Etc.
Unlike food and housing, a screwdriver isn't required to live. That's why food is subsidized and regulated. Whereas non essentials are allowed to compete in a free market.
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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.
I don't forking understand why in 2025, taking pills is still the only way for me to get better for some illness. As someone who gets pretty bad anxiety about taking pills and who sometimes almost chokes on them, I seriously can't understand how we have pocket PCs but we don't have a way to just treat things without pills. Hell, I'll drink something that tastes horrible if it means I don't gotta test my gag reflex.
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UBI will be necessary when the combination of AI and robotics creates a permanent 35+% unemployment rate. We will have to institute UBI, or reduce the population by that much. Which objective will each party choose to support, and how will they accomplish it?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Which objective will each party choose to support, and how will they accomplish it?
One leading party often seems willing to accept war as a means to ends they care about.
In a total lack of contrast, the other leading party seems roughly equally willing to accept war as a means to ends they care about.
The bigger question that bothers me is how much war exactly will they feel is needed for any population reduction they feel is necessary?
And will it be more war than the amount of war I would have otherwise participated in, in my lifetime?
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Unlike food and housing, a screwdriver isn't required to live. That's why food is subsidized and regulated. Whereas non essentials are allowed to compete in a free market.
Food is subsidized because of farm lobbying, which is why there are far more subsidies for the corn that goes into Doritos than there are for spinach and blueberries.
Food is regulated because it can create public health crises. Afaik, most food prices are not regulated beyond anti-gouging and anti price fixing laws, which also apply to screwdrivers.
Food, and screwdrivers, are cheap because they are commodities in a competitive market. Any given tomato or screwdriver is more or less like the next, and customers can always go from Home Depot or Kroger to Lowes or Walmart across the street.
Regardless, you are failing to engage with my actual point, which is that unnecessary restrictions on the production of goods will drive manufacturers to produce only the most high-margin options, which is why developers never seem to build affordable housing.
Now, I'm not unsympathetic to your argument - maybe it really is impossible for profit-seeking entities to build affordable housing under ideal conditions (though then you need to explain how we built affordable housing in the past...). But my argument is: there are some very obvious regulatory and tax reasons for why housing is in such short supply, and these hurdles would need to be overcome by anyone building housing - public or private. So, we should remove these barriers first and see what happens.
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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.
I think a moon colony was possible at minimum the mid 90's. I only think bureaucracy got in the way along with a very stunted space shuttle.
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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).
Oceans don't need seeding, they just need us to stop fucking bottom trawling for, like, 5 minutes
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Which objective will each party choose to support, and how will they accomplish it?
One leading party often seems willing to accept war as a means to ends they care about.
In a total lack of contrast, the other leading party seems roughly equally willing to accept war as a means to ends they care about.
The bigger question that bothers me is how much war exactly will they feel is needed for any population reduction they feel is necessary?
And will it be more war than the amount of war I would have otherwise participated in, in my lifetime?
War is a useful tool to reduce populations, but fairly inefficient until they start throwing bombs around. It can't be the only strategy.
Another good strategy is to restrict access to medical care. Make it incredibly expensive, so costly that many people will choose to die, rather then burden their families with the cost.
Another good one is to end childhood vaccines. A good pandemic can wipe out millions. Of course, this is only happening in America, so the wealthy will be able to afford vaccines from foreign countries, and survive any strategic pandemics. I wouldn't be surprised if Stephen "PeeWee Himmler" Miller released a deadly virus on purpose, something like Ebola, just to speed the process along.
Then there is Climate Change, which is wreaking havoc on our environment, and causing far worst storms and floods. Restrict or even end FEMA, and our annual natural disasters can claim victims with much more efficiency.
Criminalize EVERYTHING, and throw more people in prison, where the mortality rate is much higher. Allow the military/ law enforcement to fire on protesters. Allow police to kill without consequences.
Prohibit Birthright Citizenship, allowing the deportation of millions of American citizens. Don Jr, Ivanka, and Eric are all Birthright Citizens, so they should be deported as well, but we all know that Aristocrats won't be included.
And if doing all this, and more, doesn't reduce the population fast enough, we can always go down the proven path of Death Camps.
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Food is subsidized because of farm lobbying, which is why there are far more subsidies for the corn that goes into Doritos than there are for spinach and blueberries.
Food is regulated because it can create public health crises. Afaik, most food prices are not regulated beyond anti-gouging and anti price fixing laws, which also apply to screwdrivers.
Food, and screwdrivers, are cheap because they are commodities in a competitive market. Any given tomato or screwdriver is more or less like the next, and customers can always go from Home Depot or Kroger to Lowes or Walmart across the street.
Regardless, you are failing to engage with my actual point, which is that unnecessary restrictions on the production of goods will drive manufacturers to produce only the most high-margin options, which is why developers never seem to build affordable housing.
Now, I'm not unsympathetic to your argument - maybe it really is impossible for profit-seeking entities to build affordable housing under ideal conditions (though then you need to explain how we built affordable housing in the past...). But my argument is: there are some very obvious regulatory and tax reasons for why housing is in such short supply, and these hurdles would need to be overcome by anyone building housing - public or private. So, we should remove these barriers first and see what happens.
Regardless, you are failing to engage with my actual point, which is that unnecessary restrictions on the production of goods will drive manufacturers to produce only the most high-margin options,
Yet you gave the example of food being cheap which has regulations. It's cheap because it is subsidized. Farmers aren't the only industry with lobbiests.
how we built affordable housing in the past.
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We killed the existing land owners so there was a surplus of land.
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_Act_of_1949 (required cheap housing to be built to replace any cheap housing torn down.)
So, we should remove these barriers first and see what happens.
The only barrier is the people who vote. If a community votes against a developer, that's their constitutional right. Which is why I said the supply is the problem. Giving more money to renters does not change the supply. If more housing was built, the price would go down and ubi wouldn't be needed.
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Wrt your China example, I will default to my null hypothesis here - China is on the upswing from opening itself to global trade, and has 1 billion people. Any argument in favor of China's prosperity must demonstrate that they are doing well beyond what we would expect in these circumstances.
That happens unconditionally under capitalism, there’s no set profit margin where the owner says “I’ve made enough money, time to lower prices and raise wages”.
And sure. But eventually someone will start trying to undercut others by accepting lower margins.
And of course, this is why we should have and enforce laws against price fixing and collusion.
None of this changes the fact that, even if governments took on the construction of new housing themselves and dedicated themselves to solving the housing shortage, they also wouldn't be able to build enough new housing fast enough because of their own regulations on how housing must be constructed.
wrote last edited by [email protected]You don't need need to explicitly collude (though many compabies do) for companies to realize if they lower prices or invest in better technology, so will other companies, and then they'll all be worse off. We observe this in any mature industry under capitalism.
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AR. Being able to just pop into someone's AR world and walk around as if I was in tge same physical location.
Bikes/Ebikes/motorcycles replacing cars for single-person transport in cities.
VR chat.
AR is more complicated.
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VR chat.
AR is more complicated.
Yes, I want to pop into a live recreation of the world around somebody (as a sparkly wolf dragon with a 3million polygon ass obviously). We have the technology, just not the hardware and software.
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I think a moon colony was possible at minimum the mid 90's. I only think bureaucracy got in the way along with a very stunted space shuttle.
Agreed, a lot of sci-fi infastructure is technically feasable its just the logistics and our lack of organisation as a species that gets in the way. We could also technically start on a dyson swarm and a lunar space elevator (not an earth one though) with modern technology and materials.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Brain operated electronics.
Eeg headbands detect brainwaves and are used in diagnosing mental illnesses. There is also expensive portable ones for yoga people that track your sleep cycle and give statistics.
You can VERY easily have it change the TV channel or move player in a VR game. In fact there is an old starwars toy where you lift some ball by powering a hairdryer with your brainwaves for like $40.
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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.
Only the things scifi wanted to warn us about.
We already live in dystopia timelie.
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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.
Post capitalism.
We have automation for so much manufacturing. We have solar energy which is basically free after manufacture. We could spend a fairly small amount of time really working towards automating most resource extraction and processing.
We could have a really good standard of living not just in the west but globally and we could in the process resolve the threats of climate change but instead we have billionaires.
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Terraforming Earth. Making Earth Earthlike.
It sounds much clever than venusforming Earth
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Post capitalism.
We have automation for so much manufacturing. We have solar energy which is basically free after manufacture. We could spend a fairly small amount of time really working towards automating most resource extraction and processing.
We could have a really good standard of living not just in the west but globally and we could in the process resolve the threats of climate change but instead we have billionaires.
I think if we had the tech to make replicators (Trek), we would easily be able to go full on post-cap, as that would essentially end hunger, our over extraction of earth’s resources, landfills, recycling, people not being able to afford basics like groceries, etc. I think we have the capability to do that now without that tech, but as a species, lack the will and compassion.
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Agreed, a lot of sci-fi infastructure is technically feasable its just the logistics and our lack of organisation as a species that gets in the way. We could also technically start on a dyson swarm and a lunar space elevator (not an earth one though) with modern technology and materials.
I'm glad to see that we are moving forward with it, I just would rather it not be by Elon. But he has the tools to get it done.
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I think if we had the tech to make replicators (Trek), we would easily be able to go full on post-cap, as that would essentially end hunger, our over extraction of earth’s resources, landfills, recycling, people not being able to afford basics like groceries, etc. I think we have the capability to do that now without that tech, but as a species, lack the will and compassion.
From what I have read there is no physical reason that we could not all have a reasonable standard of living right now with no extra technology. The reason for poverty is not a scarcity if resources, it is a distribution problem. Some people take too much and use systems like law and governance to enforce their relative position. Ditching individual wealth would solve most of the issues which prevent a good life for everyone. Being as most wars are ultimately about wealth and the same for borders it would be revolutionary.