I seem to remember this being done, but couldn’t find the thread. But (as a person who HATES the waste of time that is commuting to work), I have always been curious about this.
I’m talking about a transporter, ala Star Trek, where transporting to another location is pretty much instantaneous. For the sake of the thread, all bugs have been worked out, and it’s perfectly safe.
To keep it as simple as possible, keep the rules and regs for this as country specific as possible. That is, immigration, labors laws, and so on will still apply, so you can’t say…live someplace tropical and dirt cheap, claim residency there, and yet still work and draw American range wages without paying American taxes on it.
Wouldn’t this make desirable places to live (Hawaii for instance) practically unattainable because suddenly everyone would have the means to live there? An attorney living in NYC could suddenly have the ability to live on Kaui, and yet still draw NYC attorney wages. What other variables would apply here?
Larry Niven dealt with some of these issues in his Known World series.
“Flash Crowd” is a short story that posits the spontaneous convergence of spectators at any newsworthy story via instantaneous teleportation.
I kind of think it would increase housing in less desirable areas. If I can zap myself anywhere, then I don’t need to live close to work, friends or entertainment. If I start jonesing for a lovely mountain view, I’ll just hop over to a public hub in Montana and take in the vista. Then back home in time for Modern Family or whatever.
Right off the bat shipping would change drastically. We wouldn’t need to have Ships,trucks,trains.or planes. We also wouldn’t have the jobs associated with all these outdated forms of transport. I think crime would be much different if say you could jump in and out of bank vaults and escape to anywhere in the world instantly. I know there will be plenty of other things I’m not thinking of right now.
There would have to be some form of shipping. Think of how many packages/piles of freight/finished factory products move every day. Someone has to place each package in the transporter, key in the destination and operate the controls.
Factories would have transporters managed by a computer system. Product would roll straight off the line into a transporter that deposits it in a storehouse set up to retrieve and manage it. Depending on the popularity of the item and the speed with which a transporter could swap end locations, it could go straight from the factory to the end-user.
Much would depend on the cost associated with transport. Is it affordable enough that every middle-class home could have its own transporter? Or would people need to travel by ‘normal’ means to “Transporter Hubs” (analogous to airports or train stations) first? The same would apply to shipping. If Amazon can beam my PS4 directly into my entertainment unit, that’s great. But if they can only send it to the local Post Office or FedEx Center, then someone still needs to deliver it to my house.
Why would you want to live in Kaui, when you can teleport there on a moment’s notice?
Maybe the wages in NYC would go down, since you don’t necessarily have to live in Manhattan to commute to/from work in a timely fashion. You could live in Zap, North Dakota, and teleport wherever you want to whenever you want to. Want to spend some time on the beach? Fine, teleport to Kaui for a few hours. Teleport home at the end of the day, screw those expensive hotels in Kaui. Teleport to/from work. Teleport anywhere in the goddam world on a moment’s notice.
Take the effect of any other mode of transportation, and teleportation would have the same effect amplified to a far greater degree. Cars have driven urban sprawl; teleportation, with zero-time commutes, would enable even greater sprawl. Jet aircraft have made long-distance travel popular - fly across the country for a long weekend, or overseas for a couple of weeks. Teleportation would promote even more of this, especially if it removes the physical duress and logistical pain-in-the-ass of air travel.
I think real estate prices would flatten a whole lot.
It really depends on how expensive the transporters are. Does it require dilithium crystals that cost a bajillion dollars each, and require enough electricity to power a small country? Even if the country is Luxembourg that’s a pretty expensive proposition. It seems even on Star Trek transporters weren’t something to use casually, you used them when you needed to but the required a certain amount of care and expense and trouble.
On the other hand in some settings teleportation is as simple as setting up a gate and you walk from one side to the other.
How easy is it to block transporter signals? Can people just beam into your house? What stops them from locking a transporter onto your TV and beaming it into their primered van? On the other hand, stealing stuff via transporter is kind of silly if your transporter is also a replicator, which in Star Trek it totally is. Why steal a TV when you can just make a copy of the TV? And why make a copy of the TV when everyone else can make a copy of a TV, you can’t sell it. The only reason to actually replicate the TV is if you want to watch TV right now and don’t already have one set up.
That would explain it. I was more looking for humble opinions (I never dare set foot in GD, I am at least smart enough to know I don’t have even a smidgeon of what it takes for that forum). And the word “teleporter” was escaping me for the moment. But I’m curious as to why you think it would increase housing costs in LESS desirable areas? I mean, even if I can go anywhere cool at a moment’s notice, I still don’t want to live in a dive.
Well, as to the “can you just beam into anyone’s house”. Good point. I’m thinking that there would be the need for a set up more like that of “the Fly” where there would have to be two transporter type devices. And it would be something that would have to gradually be “built up” so to speak, as a system. Cars, ships, planes and so on would have to be slowly decreased in population. I think that there would still be a need for cars, I mean I don’t think everyone is going to have one in their house at least not during the first 10-20 years until the price has gone down. In the first years, it will be more like public transportation is nowadays. That is, you have to first get TO the light rail or bus station. Similar to that, you’d still need to have transport to the transporter.
And I don’t think things like boats would ever go completely away, who doesn’t love a cruise, or an afternoon of sailing, water skiing and so on? Cars? Same kind of thing I think, there are still going to be car lovers, Route 66, Nascar and the like.
Yes, but there are millions of acres of unspoiled mountains and forests and grasslands and hill country and oceanfront out there, with no houses for miles and miles. And why is that? No one lives there because there are no jobs out in the middle of nowhere. If you work at a particular job you have to live within commuting distance of that job. And so lots of people live in shitty little apartments that cost a fortune because they have to get to their shitty job on time every day. And lots more people live in suburban houses with small backyards and drive every day to work at their middleclass job.
But what if you could live in a little village out in the country, and every day commute to your job in downtown Manhattan in five minutes via teleporter? Housing in Manhattan is incredibly expensive because if you work in Manhattan you have to be able to get to your job and back home every day.
So yes, if there is a particular spot that is considered extremely desirable then land prices in that particular spot can be bid through the roof by millionaires and billionaires from around the globe. But there are thousands of tropical and subtropical islands out there. Right now land on those islands is not always very expensive, because even though they are beautiful you can’t live and work there. So palaces of billionaires in prime locations is going to be hugely expensive.
But for middle income people, why would you live in a shitty rat infested tenement in Brooklyn when you could live in a decent house in some little farming village in the Ohio or South Carolina?
So you would see both flattening and intensification of property values. Areas deemed extremely desirable can be bid up to astronomical levels by global elites. But everywhere else is flattened. Why is this particular piece of land in Manhattan so expensive that people pay thousands of dollars a month just for a tiny room in a high rise, while out in Montana there are miles and miles of miles and miles? Who cares where you house is located if you can teleport to work every day? Who cares where the office or factory is located if workers and finished goods can teleport to and from the worksite every day? If transcontinental teleportation is as cheap as a bus ride then people can live in Antarctica cheaper than they could in San Francisco, but still have the same income.
There are two primary models of teleportation, each with its own implications. There’s the “punch a hole through space and time, and walk through” model, and there’s the “break you down to your component atoms and hurl you at your destination” model.
The hole-punch would have different effects, depending on how expensive it is. Is it so expensive that it only makes sense to institute it on a municipal scale, where everyone goes to a teleportal station to travel, much like we might go to a subway station, or airport? Or is it so cheap that you can build a house where every window is a portal on to a different location?
The latter would put an interesting twist on the housing question, as it would be possible to live at the bottom of a mineshaft, and still have a view of the beach at Kuai.
The second model, however, has the really interesting implications. Because if its possible to break something down to its component atoms, and reassemble them, it should also be possible to take a block of inanimate carbon, and reassemble its atoms into a flatscreen TV. That sort of technology, commonly available, is a fundamental social change so massive we can scarcely conceive of it. Poverty, as we understand it, would no longer exist. So would whole categories of crimes. Why steal a TV, when you can make one for practically nothing? If someone does take your TV, who cares? You can make a new one in five minutes. What would society value, in those circumstances? Would money still exist? What would we spend it on, and why? Would we still even have jobs? What would be the point of work, if we no longer have the concept of money?
IIRC, in canon you needed the power generation of a starship, i.e., a matter-antimatter drive, in order to make them work. I think that level of power generation would have a much more profound effect on the economy. Remember how we all saw personal transports & shuttlecraft flying everywhere in the movies…
Transporters are traditionally not capable of beaming through a starship’s shield, but anything short of that probably wouldn’t stop it–this has been bent pretty seriously in the movies and later in STNG, for example.
Why steal anything if you’re living in an idyllic society with limitless power & free wifi?
But I’m curious as to why you think it would increase housing costs in LESS desirable areas? I mean, even if I can go anywhere cool at a moment’s notice, I still don’t want to live in a dive.