Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: karajorma on October 19, 2010, 12:55:08 am
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http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html
He actually makes a quite interesting argument here. It serves as a counterpoint to all those people who believe that a Star Trek universe could never happen cause people need money. :D
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Work for the post office? You're just a human spambot
:lol:
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Yeah but most of what he talks about is non-physical entities. Give me a house, food and clothing I don't have to pay for and then we'll have star trek.
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http://www.cracked.com/article_18817_5-reasons-future-will-be-ruled-by-b.s..html
He actually makes a quite interesting argument here. It serves as a counterpoint to all those people who believe that a Star Trek universe could never happen cause people need money. :D
So basically we only need money now because we believe we need money because that's what we have done since cave men swapped a fur for a steak so for thousands of years that is the only way we have been able to get what we want as individuals. Who is going to start the Social engineering of the entire world to change this view point, though might i suggest waiting another 50-100 years until we have industrial robots capable of manufacturing most of the goods we need without human supervision.
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Give me a house, food and clothing I don't have to pay for and then we'll have star trek.
All the single mums on my estate are the founders of the federation.
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Who wants to live in that sterile boring Star Trek universe anyway? Give me Blade Runner over that any day of the week :P
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Who wants to live in that sterile boring Star Trek universe anyway? Give me Blade Runner over that any day of the week :P
I thought you wanted TBP so you could have your own Omega?
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Firefly FTW.
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That is some kinda scary article, because it's extremely plausible.
I recommend: Links to Cracked articles shall replace links to tvtropes.org articles. Who's with me!?
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Cue awkward silence..
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Cue awkward silence..
Cut us a break, we here in the Americas should all be sleeping right at this minute, or getting up early for stupid work.
EDIT: here ya go: http://www.cracked.com/article/181_the-6-creepiest-places-earth/
/derailment
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I agree that the world of media is a huge cloud of FARTS.
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Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of Debian GNU/Linux and all of its repos, not to mention all other open source software (including the only reason that this place even exists anymore :p).
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Open source is not the same as free.
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Great read, was awesome.
Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of Debian GNU/Linux and all of its repos, not to mention all other open source software (including the only reason that this place even exists anymore :p).
Not particularly what the article was about. Bottled water is a much better example. Or ebooks.
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Um, no. We still live in a world of scarcity. If energy really were limitless, then corporations wouldn't need our money because they could get whatever they wanted for free, same as us.
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Great read, was awesome.
Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of Debian GNU/Linux and all of its repos, not to mention all other open source software (including the only reason that this place even exists anymore :p).
Not particularly what the article was about. Bottled water is a much better example. Or ebooks.
Well of course it's not what the article was talking about because the article was fear mongering. It did mention Windows 7 and its arbitrarily limited functionality, I can confidently guess that no open source software suffers from the same issues. It's just that this doesn't solve the entire problem, just the ones with software. The difference is that you can always just not buy bottled water, and you can always just transplant ebooks to DRM free plaintext, or if you really want it jpegs.
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Great read, was awesome.
Sorry, I couldn't hear you over the sound of Debian GNU/Linux and all of its repos, not to mention all other open source software (including the only reason that this place even exists anymore :p).
Not particularly what the article was about. Bottled water is a much better example. Or ebooks.
Well of course it's not what the article was talking about because the article was fear mongering.
No, the article was on Cracked.
The argument being made is that while you may be able to not buy bottled water or transplant ebooks, eventually you will be rendered digitally redundant, and what happens then?
This was one of my gripes with Richard Morgan's otherwise excellent books. They can stack you, they can copy you (otherwise multiple sleeving wouldn't be possible), and yet there's still any kind of demand for individual labor? (His last book sort of tackled it.) Get one ideal worker and sleeve them in a bunch of synths.
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I call shenanigans. It's a world without motivation.
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No, the article was on Cracked.
The argument being made is that while you may be able to not buy bottled water or transplant ebooks, eventually you will be rendered digitally redundant, and what happens then?
This was one of my gripes with Richard Morgan's otherwise excellent books. They can stack you, they can copy you (otherwise multiple sleeving wouldn't be possible), and yet there's still any kind of demand for individual labor? (His last book sort of tackled it.) Get one ideal worker and sleeve them in a bunch of synths.
That won't happen. That's like saying "WHAT IF WE WERE FORCED TO USE BATTERIES FOR EVERYTHING?" This is why we also have government able to regulate things like tap water. The government, in theory, exists solely for our benefit. Why would it want to get rid of tap water and force us to pay x20000 more for water? It wouldn't, because we'd tell it that we don't want to. And you can always circumvent ebook DRM by taking a picture of the screen, whether a screen-shot or not. If you don't want it that badly, then you obviously don't care enough to complain, so there's no problem.
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No, the article was on Cracked.
The argument being made is that while you may be able to not buy bottled water or transplant ebooks, eventually you will be rendered digitally redundant, and what happens then?
This was one of my gripes with Richard Morgan's otherwise excellent books. They can stack you, they can copy you (otherwise multiple sleeving wouldn't be possible), and yet there's still any kind of demand for individual labor? (His last book sort of tackled it.) Get one ideal worker and sleeve them in a bunch of synths.
That won't happen. That's like saying "WHAT IF WE WERE FORCED TO USE BATTERIES FOR EVERYTHING?" This is why we also have government able to regulate things like tap water. The government, in theory, exists solely for our benefit. Why would it want to get rid of tap water and force us to pay x20000 more for water? It wouldn't, because we'd tell it that we don't want to.
This doesn't make any sense, except as some kind of roundabout argument that the government will regulate what Morgan calls DHF, digitized human freight. Is that what you're going for? If so, I envy your optimism, thinking that things won't happen because people don't want them to even if there's massive incentive to do so on an economic level. (Outsourcing, economic downturns...)
And you can always circumvent ebook DRM by taking a picture of the screen, whether a screen-shot or not. If you don't want it that badly, then you obviously don't care enough to complain, so there's no problem.
This has ****-all to do with anything I posted, but I agree with it, for what it's worth.
Unfortunately this post does not speak well to your ability to grasp and conduct a debate on this topic; you may want to read Morgan and then come back. It's a good time.
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No, the article was on Cracked.
The argument being made is that while you may be able to not buy bottled water or transplant ebooks, eventually you will be rendered digitally redundant, and what happens then?
This was one of my gripes with Richard Morgan's otherwise excellent books. They can stack you, they can copy you (otherwise multiple sleeving wouldn't be possible), and yet there's still any kind of demand for individual labor? (His last book sort of tackled it.) Get one ideal worker and sleeve them in a bunch of synths.
That won't happen. That's like saying "WHAT IF WE WERE FORCED TO USE BATTERIES FOR EVERYTHING?" This is why we also have government able to regulate things like tap water. The government, in theory, exists solely for our benefit. Why would it want to get rid of tap water and force us to pay x20000 more for water? It wouldn't, because we'd tell it that we don't want to.
This doesn't make any sense, except as some kind of roundabout argument that the government will regulate what Morgan calls DHF, digitized human freight. Is that what you're going for? If so, I envy your optimism, thinking that things won't happen because people don't want them to even if there's massive incentive to do so on an economic level. (Outsourcing, economic downturns...)
Well of course government isn't going to do its job if you don't expect them to and don't hold them accountable when they don't. It's not going to magically cater to our every whim when people actually think voting is the most they can get involved in the democratic process.
And you can always circumvent ebook DRM by taking a picture of the screen, whether a screen-shot or not. If you don't want it that badly, then you obviously don't care enough to complain, so there's no problem.
This has ****-all to do with anything I posted, but I agree with it, for what it's worth.
Unfortunately this post does not speak well to your ability to grasp and conduct a debate on this topic; you may want to read Morgan and then come back. It's a good time.
I'm not reading Morgan just to debate about it on the internet. :rolleyes: If what Morgan says is essential to your argument, I'm sorry. E-book, and for that matter any limitations on digital products won't work. By that, I mean that talking about the differences in the versions of Windows 7 and ebook self-deletion does not merit a meaningful argument supporting how FARTS will become unavoidable.
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I'd like to know how civilization would survive if you remove the motivation for basically doing anything of merit.
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I'd like to know how civilization would survive if you remove the motivation for basically doing anything of merit.
I'm a firm believer money is not the sole motivator in the world. People do all kinds of productive things on their own accord. When you have all the time in the world, you think every single person is just going to turn into a worthless slob?
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I call shenanigans. It's a world without motivation.
I'm a firm believer money is not the sole motivator in the world. People do all kinds of things one their own accord.
Hence HLP, unless there is some sort of evil conspiracy going on here.
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No, the article was on Cracked.
The argument being made is that while you may be able to not buy bottled water or transplant ebooks, eventually you will be rendered digitally redundant, and what happens then?
This was one of my gripes with Richard Morgan's otherwise excellent books. They can stack you, they can copy you (otherwise multiple sleeving wouldn't be possible), and yet there's still any kind of demand for individual labor? (His last book sort of tackled it.) Get one ideal worker and sleeve them in a bunch of synths.
That won't happen. That's like saying "WHAT IF WE WERE FORCED TO USE BATTERIES FOR EVERYTHING?" This is why we also have government able to regulate things like tap water. The government, in theory, exists solely for our benefit. Why would it want to get rid of tap water and force us to pay x20000 more for water? It wouldn't, because we'd tell it that we don't want to.
This doesn't make any sense, except as some kind of roundabout argument that the government will regulate what Morgan calls DHF, digitized human freight. Is that what you're going for? If so, I envy your optimism, thinking that things won't happen because people don't want them to even if there's massive incentive to do so on an economic level. (Outsourcing, economic downturns...)
Well of course government isn't going to do its job if you don't expect them to and don't hold them accountable when they don't. It's not going to magically cater to our every whim when people actually think voting is the most they can get involved in the democratic process.
Again, nothing to do with anything I've said.
And you can always circumvent ebook DRM by taking a picture of the screen, whether a screen-shot or not. If you don't want it that badly, then you obviously don't care enough to complain, so there's no problem.
This has ****-all to do with anything I posted, but I agree with it, for what it's worth.
Unfortunately this post does not speak well to your ability to grasp and conduct a debate on this topic; you may want to read Morgan and then come back. It's a good time.
I'm not reading Morgan just to debate about it on the internet. :rolleyes: If what Morgan says is essential to your argument, I'm sorry. E-book, and for that matter any limitations on digital products won't work. By that, I mean that talking about the differences in the versions of Windows 7 and ebook self-deletion does not merit a meaningful argument supporting how FARTS will become unavoidable.
I am not sure why you're talking about ebooks or limitations on digital products, they have nothing to do with anything I've said. You are tilting at windmills here. I don't think anything you've said in response to my posts has been in any way connected to anything I've said.
What I was talking about is the issue of digitized humans: how will the economy survive when downloadable workers become available?
But here, something you can talk about. I am a writer and would like to sell a novel in order to make money. Just an open question, not particularly advocating a given position: how can I do this without FARTs?
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No, the article was on Cracked.
The argument being made is that while you may be able to not buy bottled water or transplant ebooks, eventually you will be rendered digitally redundant, and what happens then?
This was one of my gripes with Richard Morgan's otherwise excellent books. They can stack you, they can copy you (otherwise multiple sleeving wouldn't be possible), and yet there's still any kind of demand for individual labor? (His last book sort of tackled it.) Get one ideal worker and sleeve them in a bunch of synths.
That won't happen. That's like saying "WHAT IF WE WERE FORCED TO USE BATTERIES FOR EVERYTHING?" This is why we also have government able to regulate things like tap water. The government, in theory, exists solely for our benefit. Why would it want to get rid of tap water and force us to pay x20000 more for water? It wouldn't, because we'd tell it that we don't want to.
This doesn't make any sense, except as some kind of roundabout argument that the government will regulate what Morgan calls DHF, digitized human freight. Is that what you're going for? If so, I envy your optimism, thinking that things won't happen because people don't want them to even if there's massive incentive to do so on an economic level. (Outsourcing, economic downturns...)
Well of course government isn't going to do its job if you don't expect them to and don't hold them accountable when they don't. It's not going to magically cater to our every whim when people actually think voting is the most they can get involved in the democratic process.
Again, nothing to do with anything I've said.
And you can always circumvent ebook DRM by taking a picture of the screen, whether a screen-shot or not. If you don't want it that badly, then you obviously don't care enough to complain, so there's no problem.
This has ****-all to do with anything I posted, but I agree with it, for what it's worth.
Unfortunately this post does not speak well to your ability to grasp and conduct a debate on this topic; you may want to read Morgan and then come back. It's a good time.
I'm not reading Morgan just to debate about it on the internet. :rolleyes: If what Morgan says is essential to your argument, I'm sorry. E-book, and for that matter any limitations on digital products won't work. By that, I mean that talking about the differences in the versions of Windows 7 and ebook self-deletion does not merit a meaningful argument supporting how FARTS will become unavoidable.
I am not sure why you're talking about ebooks or limitations on digital products, they have nothing to do with anything I've said. You are tilting at windmills here. I don't think anything you've said in response to my posts has been in any way connected to anything I've said.
What I was talking about is the issue of digitized humans: how will the economy survive when downloadable workers become available?
But here, something you can talk about. I am a writer and would like to sell a novel in order to make money. Just an open question, not particularly advocating a given position: how can I do this without FARTs?
Why did you start arguing about that? I never said anything about that and you replied to me; I'm talking about the article Karajorma posted. Simply put, I don't know. Robotic workers and robotic workers alone would only work if there's still enough people with jobs and money being circulated to let the companies still make a profit. If they introduce the robotic workers too soon or too suddenly, the economy would collapse because people would be out of work and not spending money on even the cheapened products the companies are selling. If I'm wrong, then the least that would happen is an incredible change in economy focus, and we'd see ourselves even farther along the way to a fully post industrial society.
If you don't want to use FARTs in publishing an ebook, then quite simply you don't. I think you're being a bit cynical with peoples willingness to not pay a few bucks to get a DRM free product. You wouldn't be able to live off of it, but I don't think you'd be able to do that WITH FARTs either. The obvious solution would be to write more so people have more things to buy from you.
EDIT: Oh I see what you did, a few posts back you quoted the first line from one of my posts and ignored the rest, introducing your morgan stuff. Silly me had assumed you meant to reply to the substance of my post. :p
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You said the article was fearmongering, I explained it wasn't given a long enough timespan, your responses had nothing to do with why I explained it wasn't.
As for the point about novels, we're now basically in agreement - for me to make any kind of living selling novels FARTs must be employed, otherwise every single novel can be distributed for free to anyone who wants one. FARTs is required for novels to exist as medium.
Novels are now, as the article argues, governed by bull****.
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Note that I'm talking about novels, period, i.e. all novels everywhere in any medium (making the assumption, mind, that people are paying for the content and not the medium; this won't always be true, granted), not ebooks specifically.
Also DHF is not robots.
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I'd like to know how civilization would survive if you remove the motivation for basically doing anything of merit.
I'm a firm believer money is not the sole motivator in the world. People do all kinds of productive things on their own accord. When you have all the time in the world, you think every single person is just going to turn into a worthless slob?
Based on what I've seen of people... they very well might. :) I don't think money is the issue here: we're talking about a "post-scarcity" society where everything is free and nobody has to work if they don't want to, because there is enough technology doing the working that everybody has everything they want. Could civilization still survive at this point? I'm not sure it could.
I don't think we're going to get a post-scarcity society where robots take care of all our labor and everything is essentially free (FARTS or not). I simply don't have that much faith in technology, and even if the technology did get that far and overcome all common sense and entropy...I don't really think that humans could handle it.
I think we're much more likely to see a big collapse and a loss of all the ultimately unnecessary cruft of modern civilization than to make it to a glorious utopia of post-scarcity.
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You said the article was fearmongering, I explained it wasn't given a long enough timespan, your responses had nothing to do with why I explained it wasn't.
I explained why FARTs wouldn't happen, you explained a point that the article made that was different altogether. Both points were made in the article, I just wasn't addressing that latter while it was assumed that I was.
As for the point about novels, we're now basically in agreement - for me to make any kind of living selling novels FARTs must be employed, otherwise every single novel can be distributed for free to anyone who wants one. FARTs is required for novels to exist as medium.
Novels are now, as the article argues, governed by bull****.
Well I'd certainly like to think otherwise. I can point out plenty of instances where people have made livings off of non FARTs software, and even donations from people that enjoy their free software. But those aren't indicative of the whole, so meh. Granted I don't know of very many people that have actually tried to make a living off of this stuff like you said in your example. And Like I did say, even with FARTs you're not going to be making a living off of a single book, but I don't know enough about, er, the current ebook market with regards to DRM vs. non DRM.
Note that I'm talking about novels, period, i.e. all novels everywhere in any medium (making the assumption, mind, that people are paying for the content and not the medium; this won't always be true, granted), not ebooks specifically.
Also DHF is not robots.
Unless you have your own printing press or enough money to use one, FARTs is not up to you. You're at the whim of a publishing company.
Robots or not, my point still stands if people are being laid off in favor of automation/digitization.
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Unless you have your own printing press or enough money to use one, FARTs is not up to you. You're at the whim of a publishing company.
I'm not sure you're grasping what FARTs is, here. It's the introduction of scarcity where there is no need for scarcity.
The moment I produce a novel - let's say it's the best novel of all time and will be read by every person on the planet - it is, today, immediately available to everyone, everywhere, for free. All I have to do is scan it. For that matter, all anyone has to do is scan it (or upload a PDF, or whatever). It's impossible to enforce scarcity because everyone has the means to render the product free for everyone else.
The only reason I can make any money off of the novel is because of bull****. Either people accept forced scarcity (printed copies of the book when they could have free digital copies, DRMed ebooks when they could have free digital copies) or they give me money because they like me (when they could have free digital copies.)
That's the entire publishing industry right now. It's an artifice. It's selling a product that is no longer scarce.
This is problematic because the talent required to produce a good novel is scarce, but there is no way to compensate that scarcity because the product of that talent no longer has any value without the help of bull****.
Robots or not, my point still stands if people are being laid off in favor of automation/digitization.
They're not. People are being laid off in favor of other people. It's just that those people are multiply sleeved DHFed optimal workers.
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Either people accept forced scarcity (printed copies of the book when they could have free digital copies)
Which, in this case, they will. Paper beats screen anytime anyday anywhere. Especially under an awfull lot of lightning conditions, not having to buy an extremely expensive carrier, not having to supply that carrier with a lot of energy, and that thing that a slightly ruined page isn't all that a big loss compared to a slightly ruined screen (Which can be a major annoyance).
Books are just that much more convenient. People used to say that offices would become paperless, but for some nondescript reason, everybody still loves printers.
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Either people accept forced scarcity (printed copies of the book when they could have free digital copies)
Which, in this case, they will. Paper beats screen anytime anyday anywhere. Especially under an awfull lot of lightning conditions, not having to buy an extremely expensive carrier, not having to supply that carrier with a lot of energy, and that thing that a slightly ruined page isn't all that a big loss compared to a slightly ruined screen (Which can be a major annoyance).
Books are just that much more convenient. People used to say that offices would become paperless, but for some nondescript reason, everybody still loves printers.
This is a discussion about trends moving into the future. Please see this post for my statement on that:
Note that I'm talking about novels, period, i.e. all novels everywhere in any medium (making the assumption, mind, that people are paying for the content and not the medium; this won't always be true, granted), not ebooks specifically.
Also DHF is not robots.
Paying for the media as opposed to paying for the information is not a firm basis for the continued growth of the publishing industry. It may secure its continued existence, but growth is another matter.
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I call shenanigans. It's a world without motivation.
I'm a firm believer money is not the sole motivator in the world. People do all kinds of things one their own accord.
Hence HLP, unless there is some sort of evil conspiracy going on here.
Would you want every piece of media you want to be developed in HLP time? You would now be dependent exclusively on people who are self motivated to produce art/media as a hobby limiting the pool and quality of potential producers. Their would be no overarching quality control, no scheduling to enforce deadlines. If novelist A decides they'd rather spend a week hooked up to a food tube playing WoW then no literature for you.
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what if I want a bigger house that the income redistribution system thinks I deserve? and how is that decision made to begin with?
[edit]actually ignore this unless you think you have a really good response, i just reacted to some general concepts, such as 'no more money' without reading the thread.
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income redistribution system
wat
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what if I want a bigger house that the income redistribution system thinks I deserve? and how is that decision made to begin with?
[edit]actually ignore this unless you think you have a really good response, i just reacted to some general concepts, such as 'no more money' without reading the thread.
:blah:
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ok, so there are certain aspects of the the process which have been rendered redundant, most notably the entire publishing industry, how ever as a whole, the process of media production is still scarce, there are only so many people who are good at faking emotion or behaving in a highly charismatic fashion, there are only so many people who have a particularly good knack for making interesting sounds, there are only so many people who can make the purdy pictures. but once there works have been done they can be perfectly replicated indefinitely, and effectively for free. well not quite free, it's a lot less than they want for it now, but the cost of watching a movie is not 100% free, if nothing else there is the cost in bandwidth for downloading it (if it comes off the Internet) the the cost of energy for running the TV, not to mention the cost of the materials and manufacturing of the hardware it all runs on. but without the media all of these costs would never be incurred for their usage. the resources used for the power bandwidth and hardware would not have been used without the 'free' media. and the media can not be created if the artists are not compensated, so it seems to me the best way for this whole situation to be fixed is for the ISPs, hardware manufacturers and power companies to pay artists to make media for there goods and services to be rendered usful enough for other people to pay for them. but before that can happen the old publishing industry must die as it's no longer competitive.
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...
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so I made an incoherent post that had nothing to do with the discussion, it's the Internet, it happens.
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Well, it did have something to do with the discussion, sort of. It brought the whole thing to a screeching halt. :p
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If everyone gets replaced by free labor, what's the incentive for companies to keep making stuff? Nobody has any money to buy it anymore.
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Eventually the incentive would have to be for fun and good will. I say great, but the transition to that kind of society will be hard.
EDIT: and fame, people seem to like that almost as much as money.
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So getting an illegal copy is what we should do? :confused:
I'll just stick to open code projects for now.
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How are you supposed to value anything if its all free? Say I want a motorcycle. I need to work so many hours to earn the money to buy it. That motorcycle now has the value of the effort I went into earning it plus whatever enjoyment I get out of using it. Because I have invested time an effort to attain it I'm going to respect and take care of it. You think it will have the same value if all I need to do is walk up to some replicator box in my living room and get a free motorcycle? No.
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well, in that situation it's value will have gone down dramatically, it would not simply be the perception of it's value.
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I suppose that's part of the problem though, we are conditioned to value things based on the 'price', be that physical effort or numerical loss of 'money'.
It's only partly corporatism that is to blame for that, the main factor, in my opinion, is human nature. We love to value things by how much it 'hurt' us to obtain it. Sometimes, that is perfectly understandable, family heirlooms 'hurt' as in they are a reminder of those who have gone and can never return, Privacy is a very difficult thing to deal with as well, if someone walked into your house and stole something, does it matter if you can replace it for free? Maybe, maybe not, but the invasion of Privacy is a thing that cannot be easily defined from the viewpoint of ownership.
We've had the concept of 'Right of Ownership' since we sat in trees and screamed at other monkeys, but the digital world changes that in some ways, all of a sudden, as the article states, we can make exact copies of certain things for practically no cost.
As Starslayer points out, something that is gained without effort is not respected, but is that a problem with society, or a problem with people?
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As Starslayer points out, something that is gained without effort is not respected, but is that a problem with society, or a problem with people?
:blah:
Society is people...
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Is it though? A society is made of people, it requires people to exist, but is society truly an amalgamation of everyone in it and nothing else?
It's an interesting question, because, in order for a society to be a society, it needs a set of values, rules and beliefs that are unique to that mindset. Do people shape societies, or do societies shape people (the truth is probably a little bit of both). I personally consider a society an environment, not a physical one, but a mental one.
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I dunno I tend to think working, excelling, and reaping the rewards of that effort is hardwired into our crotch. As you said we've been screaming at each other over trees since we've been monkeys, same as Stallions on the plains or wolves in a pack. I don't know how that biological imperative meshes in a world where their is no labor/reward system.
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How are you supposed to value anything if its all free? Say I want a motorcycle. I need to work so many hours to earn the money to buy it. That motorcycle now has the value of the effort I went into earning it plus whatever enjoyment I get out of using it. Because I have invested time an effort to attain it I'm going to respect and take care of it. You think it will have the same value if all I need to do is walk up to some replicator box in my living room and get a free motorcycle? No.
Really? I would value it based on its usefulness and how much I enjoy it, not based on what I had to do to get it. If that were true buying something overpriced would make you feel better than buying it for less.
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How about I just give you the first place ribbon in the Olympic hundred-yard dash and see how you like that? Not enjoyable? That's because it cost you nothing.
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I value things based on how little effort they take to get. :)
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I value things based on how little effort they take to get. :)
you must have an awfully high opinion of yourself
:nervous:
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something that is gained without effort is not respected, but is that a problem with society, or a problem with people?
or is it a problem at all?
If that were true buying something overpriced would make you feel better than buying it for less.
water.
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How about I just give you the first place ribbon in the Olympic hundred-yard dash and see how you like that? Not enjoyable? That's because it cost you nothing.
That's the thing, effort and reward has been the centre of human thinking for thousands of years. Even before we invented money, we had bartering, you surrendered one thing to gain something else. That's why it is extremely rare for someone, regardless of how wealthy they are, to simply turn around and say 'Well, that's enough money for me!'
There's also the extra human factor of infuence, money means influence, and that could even possibly be one of the main factors in our unwillingness to consider the idea of a world without it. Nowadays, the Alpha Male is not defined by physical strength, exterting influence through threat of violence is looked down upon these days, instead there is financial power, and those with it are highly unlikely to be willing to give up that power.
or is it a problem at all?
It's another interesting question isn't it? Those who gain something for nothing these days are often regarded as criminals, and we are still a very long way from a world where we can comfortably give stuff away for free, regardless of what that article states, it mostly talks of luxuries like books and software, but the true basis of any stable society are the essentials such as food, water and housing, and none of those seem likely to fall into the 'duplicable' category for some time yet.
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The reason people buy water when they could get for almost free is marketing and convenience. Not only is bottled water perceived as better than tap, its also more convenient than buying several reusable containers and filing them ourselves. Its stupid but we are lazy and just don't bother.
As for the Olympics, that is something completely different, its not a commodity and sure isn't productive labor.
Basically we would have to end up having a gift economy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gift_economy
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Things that come for free are not necessarily taken as non-valuable, the difference is whether you can get a replacement or not.
Also to consider:
The use we give to things makes it important, the effect time has over things also counts.
A new costly item bought recently is bound to be treated more delicately than some other item with the same price bought two years prior.
The replacement of said article will hurt, but we feel we've not been fooled with the price paid before.
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Guys, guys...you're all missing the real point of why the future will be bull****. We still won't have ****ing flying cars. The Jetsons lied to us. :mad:
I value things based on how little effort they take to get. :)
you must have an awfully high opinion of yourself
:nervous:
:lol:
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lurv you iamz
/me hugs zack
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I buy water because tap water here tastes like rot and poison. :<
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I buy water because tap water here tastes like rot and poison. :<
A water purifier might work, not sure as to what degree of water contamination are we talking about..
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I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that eventually people will directly patronize those who work in fields where the content and presentation costs virtually nothing to reproduce. Sure it will probably change the nature of the stuff that's produced, but the product has always been tailored to the means of payment when you're talking about commercial works. For novels, you could conceivably have a situation where an author writes one work to prove that he/she is a promising, up-and-coming artist, then asks people to support his/her work, on a chapter-by-chapter basis if necessary. The bottom line is that if there is a demand, people will be able to make the connection, and with more and more potential consumers and fewer and fewer intermediaries between the creator and consumer, even a minuscule offering from each of your patrons could be enough to get by on. "Support from viewers like you" seems to work pretty decently for public TV (in the US), though they do also get government funding and corporate support which are two other possibilities for future compensation.
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I buy water because tap water here tastes like rot and poison. :<
Come to Holland, because tap water here is actually more healthy then water in bottles :).
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I buy water because tap water here tastes like rot and poison. :<
A water purifier might work, not sure as to what degree of water contamination are we talking about..
I don't drink water often enough to make it worth it.
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Is it though? A society is made of people, it requires people to exist, but is society truly an amalgamation of everyone in it and nothing else?
It's an interesting question, because, in order for a society to be a society, it needs a set of values, rules and beliefs that are unique to that mindset. Do people shape societies, or do societies shape people (the truth is probably a little bit of both). I personally consider a society an environment, not a physical one, but a mental one.
My point was that they can't really be separated, but your point that society means more than just a sum of people is well taken.
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How are you supposed to value anything if its all free? Say I want a motorcycle. I need to work so many hours to earn the money to buy it. That motorcycle now has the value of the effort I went into earning it plus whatever enjoyment I get out of using it. Because I have invested time an effort to attain it I'm going to respect and take care of it. You think it will have the same value if all I need to do is walk up to some replicator box in my living room and get a free motorcycle? No.
This doesn't quite work, because you completely gloss over why you would have wanted a motorcycle in the first place. You value it for that; ultimately all other value placed on motorcycles or anything else is value assigned of one's desire to have it. (Even things that you technically need to survive you still got because you want to survive.)
The system isn't going anywhere new, it's regressing to basic terms.
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How are you supposed to value anything if its all free? Say I want a motorcycle. I need to work so many hours to earn the money to buy it. That motorcycle now has the value of the effort I went into earning it plus whatever enjoyment I get out of using it. Because I have invested time an effort to attain it I'm going to respect and take care of it. You think it will have the same value if all I need to do is walk up to some replicator box in my living room and get a free motorcycle? No.
This doesn't quite work, because you completely gloss over why you would have wanted a motorcycle in the first place. You value it for that; ultimately all other value placed on motorcycles or anything else is value assigned of one's desire to have it. (Even things that you technically need to survive you still got because you want to survive.)
The system isn't going anywhere new, it's regressing to basic terms.
Huh? The base want is the same in both cases. The difference is in the effort to attain it. If you bust your ass to earn something its going to represent a greater value. You've achieved something. In some cases that satisfaction is going to not even be relative to the items actually value. You think Paris Hilton values her trust fund Bentley as much as 'Average Joe' who had to work to earn funds for a Toyota Camry? If you completely remove the sense of accomplishment what's the point in life?
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That's my point. If you remove the artificial value that you've added to it via what it required to obtain, you're simply left with the value it has to you as practical. (Or in the case of the motorcycle, not-practical) object. We're back to pre-currency value measurements.
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But we're not though, in a pre-currency system you are still trading value for value. The Farmer barters grain to the Blacksmith for a new plow. Now you're getting everything for free putting no effort into earning it. How do you even understand the concept of value without effort?
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Some of you may recall a topic in which I simplified and explained the basics of Marxist theory and the fundamentals of theoretical Communism...
...ahem...
...IT'S HERE, *****ES! =)
Seriously now, Marx quite radically proposed that people labour in order to reproduce themselves (psychologically) through that labour in order to give meaning to their lives. In it's depth, it's a theory that explains everything from labouring for your basic needs to the highest forms of art and science. And it has nothing to do with currency. In a Communist society, people labour for that very purpose having overturned the materialistic shackles of capitalism. People still find value in the work of others because it has meaning rather than a finite value. Forced artificial scarcity is a new term for a concept that's nearly 150 years old. In a weirdly ironic way, paying for things that are - in a monetary sense - worthless is the very core ideal behind true Communism.
Required reading: Grundrisse, Wage Labour and Capital
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I'd like to know how civilization would survive if you remove the motivation for basically doing anything of merit.
Ummm, why are we making Diaspora again? :D
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Maybe people who need an incentive to do anything would just die and those who don't would continue to improve themselves until they are all who are left?
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I tend to disagree with money being the biggest incentive anyway. Good old sex is still a bigger one in many many ways.
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Its more fundamental then just a monetary value. If you remove the cost of everything by making it free then I don't think that the concept of the commodity's value would exist and more importantly your personal value at being able to attain it. To me the idea of earning something through personal effort seems intrinsic to the human experience. On the other hand if their is no scarcity any effort you put into improving yourself is fundamentally a futile struggle because its never going to improve your station in life. If you spend your days picking your nose instead of applying yourself in the end everything is going to be handed to you on a silver platter anyway. Funny you should mention sex, I'd almost argue that this would go against the biological imperative. Granted I'll admit my knowledge on the subject is layman's but if you go for the idea that we strive to succeed to ensure we reproduce and pass our genes. If you remove the ability to achieve and stand apart from your other competition that goes against what's hard wired into your crotch.
Remember we are looking at this from the outside looking in. We understand the effort it takes to earn something, so yeah getting it for free sounds snazzy. I think it might be a different matter to exist in such an environment and never actually understood the cost required nor the reward for actually earning it.
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So if food became free, you'd get bored of it and stop eating?
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So if your shelter became free, you'd get bored of it and stop using it?
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Funny you should mention sex, I'd almost argue that this would go against the biological imperative. Granted I'll admit my knowledge on the subject is layman's but if you go for the idea that we strive to succeed to ensure we reproduce and pass our genes. If you remove the ability to achieve and stand apart from your other competition that goes against what's hard wired into your crotch.
But who says we have removed the ability to achieve? I can think of many ways you can achieve in a world where property has no monetary value.
1) Physical beauty - A good looking woman is still a good looking woman in a world without money, people will still value the way she looks. Women who aren't as beautiful will still wish they were as good looking.
2) Physical abilities - This one goes hand in hand with the above. It will be a while before we don't value a good football player or dancer.
3) Artistic ability - You might not pay for their work but that doesn't mean that you don't value the artist whose mp3s you download.
And that's just off the top of my head. The value of something becomes less due to the difficulty in producing it and more down the beauty of the item. In your example of the motorbike what would make your bike valuable is not the cost of the bike but how you riced it up. :D
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No, the article was on Cracked.
The argument being made is that while you may be able to not buy bottled water or transplant ebooks, eventually you will be rendered digitally redundant, and what happens then?
This was one of my gripes with Richard Morgan's otherwise excellent books. They can stack you, they can copy you (otherwise multiple sleeving wouldn't be possible), and yet there's still any kind of demand for individual labor? (His last book sort of tackled it.) Get one ideal worker and sleeve them in a bunch of synths.
That won't happen. That's like saying "WHAT IF WE WERE FORCED TO USE BATTERIES FOR EVERYTHING?" This is why we also have government able to regulate things like tap water. The government, in theory, exists solely for our benefit. Why would it want to get rid of tap water and force us to pay x20000 more for water? It wouldn't, because we'd tell it that we don't want to. And you can always circumvent ebook DRM by taking a picture of the screen, whether a screen-shot or not. If you don't want it that badly, then you obviously don't care enough to complain, so there's no problem.
"Don't care enough to complain" is very dangerous line of thinking ... ; You can justify anything with it... and if you look at history and especially at totalitarian regimes for just a moment, then i guess all these oppressed people just didn't care for their freedom all that much? :coughs: Any amount of unhappyness and even outright rebellion hits a brickwall if the government or whatever instituation is the culprit has an adequate amount of "control".
In the case of DRM... why do you think company execs are having wet dreams about unique IDs on CPU's (which we already have - Intel anyways) coupled with a mandatory registration of your real life ID as a requirement to access the internet?
Funny you should mention sex, I'd almost argue that this would go against the biological imperative. Granted I'll admit my knowledge on the subject is layman's but if you go for the idea that we strive to succeed to ensure we reproduce and pass our genes. If you remove the ability to achieve and stand apart from your other competition that goes against what's hard wired into your crotch.
But who says we have removed the ability to achieve? I can think of many ways you can achieve in a world where property has no monetary value.
1) Physical beauty - A good looking woman is still a good looking woman in a world without money, people will still value the way she looks. Women who aren't as beautiful will still wish they were as good looking.
2) Physical abilities - This one goes hand in hand with the above. It will be a while before we don't value a good football player or dancer.
3) Artistic ability - You might not pay for their work but that doesn't mean that you don't value the artist whose mp3s you download.
And that's just off the top of my head. The value of something becomes less due to the difficulty in producing it and more down the beauty of the item. In your example of the motorbike what would make your bike valuable is not the cost of the bike but how you riced it up. :D
Exactly... furthermore... i would even argue that it is monetary value that dilutes and distorts actual achievement. We only use it as value measurement because it's easy and convenient... but that leaves the fact that it is in no way accurate. The tragedy of the status quo is that we have become so used to valuing everything with money that we started to value other people by their monetary value as well... or worse, even our own achievements.
Why is money value not accurate? Because it's a binary equation. A "yes" "no" question. Can it be valued in money OR not. One should easily see how simply by valuing everything with money... you are easily overlooking or at least depreciating everything else that might matter: You know, like, environment, human rights, family, Happiness, healthcare, nutrition... or some weak worthless concepts known as "moral values" and "integrity".
For anyone interested in the symbolic and diabolic nature of "money" and the effect the "binary" choice it presents us with has on your society i would highly recommend "Niklas Luhmann: Social Systems".
The irony of it all being that the basis of "economical rational thought"... the model of the "homo oeconomicus" is statistically proven rather the exception than the rule.
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Guys, guys...you're all missing the real point of why the future will be bull****. We still won't have ****ing flying cars. The Jetsons lied to us. :mad:
http://www.terrafugia.com/
Jetsons no, flying car yes ;7
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I'm looking forward to 2015. Imaging how cool it is to go to work with a Hover-Board and being eaten by a virtual white shark and getting brought home by hot female police officers with digital emblems on their head. Oh, and flying cars of course! :nod:
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So if food became free, you'd get bored of it and stop eating?
So if your shelter became free, you'd get bored of it and stop using it?
Methinks Starslayer wasn't including basic needs in his example. Unless jewelry, sports cars, and pens that can write in zero-G are basic needs? :rolleyes:
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Food and shelter can both be luxury items depending on which food and which shelter. If all food were free you'd still eat the tastiest. You wouldn't get bored and simply eat the bare minimum amount of nutrients required to keep you alive.
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Funny you should mention sex, I'd almost argue that this would go against the biological imperative. Granted I'll admit my knowledge on the subject is layman's but if you go for the idea that we strive to succeed to ensure we reproduce and pass our genes. If you remove the ability to achieve and stand apart from your other competition that goes against what's hard wired into your crotch.
But who says we have removed the ability to achieve? I can think of many ways you can achieve in a world where property has no monetary value.
1) Physical beauty - A good looking woman is still a good looking woman in a world without money, people will still value the way she looks. Women who aren't as beautiful will still wish they were as good looking.
2) Physical abilities - This one goes hand in hand with the above. It will be a while before we don't value a good football player or dancer.
3) Artistic ability - You might not pay for their work but that doesn't mean that you don't value the artist whose mp3s you download.
And that's just off the top of my head. The value of something becomes less due to the difficulty in producing it and more down the beauty of the item. In your example of the motorbike what would make your bike valuable is not the cost of the bike but how you riced it up. :D
Some people are born **** ugly.
Some people don't have a shred of athletic talent
Not many people have artistic ability.
I'd argue all three are tied to skills and attributes you are born with.
Anyone can be appreciated and respected for working hard and doing a good job. In zero scarcity you eliminated the outlets for a lot of the population to achieve. I'd figure the portion of the population who's skills would still be useful in a post scarcity society is less then those who can.
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I use linux, I love it, value it over every other OS, yet I paid nothing for it. explain.
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I think Starslayer's point was you would no longer value them, you would take them for granted, like the air. and that this would be bad because you would no longer have a sense of accomplishment in the things you do, because you don't every think highly of yourself for breathing.
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I use linux, I love it, value it over every other OS, yet I paid nothing for it. explain.
Because you understand value. You know that you would have forked out over a hundred dollars for windows.
Listen, this isn't saying free stuff is bad. rather if whatever mercurial want that popped into your noggin could instantly be satisfied without the least effort I don't think humanity could handle it properly. I think it runs counter to basic human needs to find value in themselves and the things they want. To me the entire process of gaining something is important not just the end result I think its fundamental to life. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe we can all live in ivory towers and be "philosopher kings" freed from the base needs of life.
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Our species has dealt with scarcity through every single step of its evolution. It is surely hard-wired at this point.
Even if we create a society where all basic needs are met in abundance, we will create artificial scarcity for centuries to come.
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btw I love this topic. Isn't it fun to have a philosophical debate on something that everyone does not have a dyed in the wool personal stake in like religion, guns or gov't?
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I think the more interesting question is not "would we be bored?" but "would we still be able to be well-adjusted human beings?" What happens to us psychologically if we have no need to do anything except that we feel like it?
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btw I love this topic. Isn't it fun to have a philosophical debate on something that everyone does not have a dyed in the wool personal stake in like religion, guns or gov't?
yes, very refreshing.
I think the more interesting question is not "would we be bored?" but "would we still be able to be well-adjusted human beings?" What happens to us psychologically if we have no need to do anything except that we feel like it?
I don't think we can get bored, just because everything is or almost free doesn't mean it won't need to be made. And don't forget about art, science, and philosophy, we will always have those to waste our time with.
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btw I love this topic. Isn't it fun to have a philosophical debate on something that everyone does not have a dyed in the wool personal stake in like religion, guns or gov't?
Why do you think I posted it? :D I figured this was an interesting topic that would make people think rather than simply reciting what they actually already believed. :D
EDIT : Got some time to answer the rest.
Some people are born **** ugly.
And how many of them simply decide to give up on any attempt at making themselves look better?
Some people don't have a shred of athletic talent
And how many of them refuse to ever play any kind of game?
Not many people have artistic ability.
And yet how many attempt to sing or dance?
Working hard is not the only way to rise above your peers. In fact it's a piss poor way to do it, the vast majority will fail. Yet you seem to believe that there is value it trying. So why should that only apply to work? Why not the examples I gave above?
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The list of things i want to do when i have freetime, sadly, keeps growing larger every year.
Well, let me tell you about my totally subjective viewpooint: If all i wanted to do was to earn a lot of money, then i would have gone straight into business after university.
Yet I went the teacher route - which involved quite a bit more studying before earning any money- because that is what I wanted to do. So my situation is the following: I like what i do and i also earn more than enough to get what i fancy...
Concerning "entertainment"... money is a complete non-issue for me.
... I simply do not care, not one bit, whether a 2-hour movie costs 5 or 40 bucks.
I do not care at all whether a computer game is free or costs 50 bucks.
What i care about is having a blast in my limited freetime.
Just like i care about getting work done efficiently and properly in my worktime.
I really don't care all that much about wasting money... but there's nothing that pisses me off more than wasting time.
... and before someone brings up that notion that "time equals money" ... you couldn't be more wrong.
That's merely the credo of the workaholic who wastes his time on nothing else but making money. ;)
Now what would really happen if we had not to worry about basic needs and even scarcity of luxury goods anymore?
Scarcity merely shifts into scarcity of time. We only have a limited amount of time on this earth.
The diabolic side of "money" is that it acts as a "wish" multiplier. Money is "need satisfaction" in "indefinite" form.... and therefore, by definition, ... you can never have enough of it. Because you can satisfy any kind of "need" with it... be it basic, cultural, or luxury.... and by definition, "needs" are an unlimited factor, you simply can never have enough money. (Going with mainstream economic theory or rationality.)
Enter the tragedy of the successful businessman who has spent all his life working in an office accumulating Millions of Dollars... only to realize... that in the very end... he did nothing else but waste his precious time.
I don't know about you... but even - or especially rather - in a "post scarcity" environment... the list of things I want to do, would keep growing every day... and quite some of that time would be spent working/teaching. Why? Because that's what i want to do.
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I think you've hit the nail on the head there. If I didn't have to work I know I could find interesting things to fill my time with.
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Mikes: What you said, buddy.