[Gortef]

Great, now I'm gonna go home and play Recettear

I should continue my game aswell one day. But I've kept Recettear as my laptop game so far. Meaning that when I'm somewhere with it (and not on my main pc) I play it then.

[The E]

So since Snuffy wins the poll by quite a margin, I have to conclude that we would prefer our economy to be run by hairy elephant things.

I, for one, welcome our hairy elephant thing-y overlords.

[Pred the Penguin]

What would that be like anyway?
Nomadic lifestyle where males are cast out the moment they hit adulthood?

[The E]

Also, more hair. And longer noses.

[Luis Dias]

I prefer a system where resources aren't scarce anymore...

Renewableism?

No. Post-Scarceism. It's the kind of feeling you sometimes have in the internetz when you first find out that you got your free email service upgraded from 2MB to more than a gigabyte. Or when you got your internet service upgraded for "free" from 640KB to 6MB. Imagine that kind of feeling for material needs.

[Grizzly]

I prefer a system where resources aren't scarce anymore...

Renewableism?

No. Post-Scarceism. It's the kind of feeling you sometimes have in the internetz when you first find out that you got your free email service upgraded from 2MB to more than a gigabyte. Or when you got your internet service upgraded for "free" from 640KB to 6MB. Imagine that kind of feeling for material needs.

Tthat would mean that resources can somehow grow with the technology.

[Luis Dias]

I prefer a system where resources aren't scarce anymore...

Renewableism?

No. Post-Scarceism. It's the kind of feeling you sometimes have in the internetz when you first find out that you got your free email service upgraded from 2MB to more than a gigabyte. Or when you got your internet service upgraded for "free" from 640KB to 6MB. Imagine that kind of feeling for material needs.

Tthat would mean that resources can somehow grow with the technology.

Think of resources as not being that fundamental at all. What are fundamental are needs. People do not need petroleum. They need mobility. People do not need agriculture. They need food, etc. Technology is basically what allows these needs to be answered with the minimum resources used. The better the tech, the less resources per "need" you need.

Technology is, by far, our best resource.

[The E]

A post-scarcity economy depends on having an unfailingly efficient, completely self-contained ressource delivery/production/product delivery/recycling pipeline, which isn't on the cards as long as humans are involved (sorry, humans!).

There's a reason why the Culture has its Minds.

[General Battuta]

You might be able to achieve post-scarcity by uploading everyone (and praying you don't have any lag issues).

[Mustang19]

Modern economic scarcity is more about status competition than bodily needs. You solve the problem of physical resources and people will find something else to compete over.

[The E]

Only in the western world, my friend, only there.

And given that poverty rates in the first world are nowhere near zero, it doesn't even apply there.

[Luis Dias]

A post-scarcity economy depends on having an unfailingly efficient, completely self-contained ressource delivery/production/product delivery/recycling pipeline, which isn't on the cards as long as humans are involved (sorry, humans!).

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but there exist a huge number of factories almost completely automated. And this didn't happen with culture's minds. This has been the whole technological process for a long time now, so unless very nasty stuff happens (ecological disasters, etc) we will eventually automate most products in the self-contained manner you describe. irrespective of mr. Ian Banks' fantasy comes to fruition or not.

[Luis Dias]

You might be able to achieve post-scarcity by uploading everyone (and praying you don't have any lag issues).

Who takes care of the machines then?

[Nuclear1]

You might be able to achieve post-scarcity by uploading everyone (and praying you don't have any lag issues).

Who takes care of the machines then?

[General Battuta]

You might be able to achieve post-scarcity by uploading everyone (and praying you don't have any lag issues).

Who takes care of the machines then?

The machines, natch

[Luis Dias]

You might be able to achieve post-scarcity by uploading everyone (and praying you don't have any lag issues).

Who takes care of the machines then?

The machines, natch

Ah I see. And what happens when they figure out they can save power if they disconnect these silly flamboyant and wasteful programs called homo sapiens in their hard drives?

[The E]

I guess you're in deep **** then.

Perhaps you haven't noticed, but there exist a huge number of factories almost completely automated. And this didn't happen with culture's minds. This has been the whole technological process for a long time now, so unless very nasty stuff happens (ecological disasters, etc) we will eventually automate most products in the self-contained manner you describe. irrespective of mr. Ian Banks' fantasy comes to fruition or not.

Well, but those factories exist in a system that is administrated by humans. Humans are involved everywhere, and that leads to inefficiency.

[General Battuta]

You might be able to achieve post-scarcity by uploading everyone (and praying you don't have any lag issues).

Who takes care of the machines then?

The machines, natch

Ah I see. And what happens when they figure out they can save power if they disconnect these silly flamboyant and wasteful programs called homo sapiens in their hard drives?

Well that depends on them wanting to save power as some kind of essential good. I'm not convinced the strongly alarmist view towards autonomous machines is necessarily any more valid than the strongly alarmist view towards human nature.

[Luis Dias]

Well, but those factories exist in a system that is administrated by humans. Humans are involved everywhere, and that leads to inefficiency.

There's an assumption there that systems where humans aren't involved are more efficient. But it's not the absence of humans that is the solution. It's the presence of an automated system, which is always invented by humans.

[Luis Dias]

Well that depends on them wanting to save power as some kind of essential good. I'm not convinced the strongly alarmist view towards autonomous machines is necessarily any more valid than the strongly alarmist view towards human nature.

If there's nothing stopping said machines to think that way, say in a crysis, why shouldn't we consider it beforehand?