I remember being taught in college that processes were being developed to turn coal, shale, and other stuff into oil; that the world has ($loads of coal; and that these processes were, environmentally speaking, very dirty.
So I suppose I agree with SCSimmons that you can’t rule out the possibility of synthesizing oil.
I’d like to hear from a certain expert though.
You know who I’m talking about.
Why would you want to sell anything your replicator makes? For money? (The duplicator would be the perfect conterfeiting machine.) And what would you use the money for? To buy stuff? But your duplicator can make anything you could ever want. Unless what you’re really after isn’t material wealth per se, but to gain control of the world by manipulating it’s economy. Now in theory, a duplicator could make people, so replicate a few million totally obedient servants… the mind boggles.
Unless the duplicator had some limitations, like how much resources it requires for it’s own operation and maintanence, it would annihilate the very concept of wealth.
There has been a method to turn coal into oil for decades, discoverde by one Mr Bergius in 1913 (at least my cemistry book says so). Coal molecules consist of very long chains of C atoms, whereas oil hydrocarbon chains are much shorter. If you heat it up to very high temperatures, the vibrations of the molecules will cause them to break, so one long chain turns into two short ones. Now you can bring H atoms at the free ends of your two molecules, and voilà, you get oil.
It was done widely by the Nazis whose oil supply was pretty short during WWII, but nowadays’ giant oil production has made this synthesized oil too expensive.
I’m with Lumpy. Why bother with the middle steps – your machine can produce anything you want.
Or, you can go one step between and have the machine churn out cash, stocks and bonds, pink slips (or keys) for expensive cars, Malcom Forbes’s ATM card, checks from Michael Jordan, refunds from the IRS, contracts showing you are owed 25% of all Microsoft profits, etc. etc…
The Mad Scientist could synthesize some perfect diamonds, then threaten to flood the diamond market. DeBeers pays Mad Scientist to keep those perfect diamonds off the market, thus maintaining their control.
If you scale present production costs, it takes about $10[sup]14[/sup] to make a gram of antimatter.
-P
peace
It’s got to be the most expensive “stuff” around. Haven’t seen, heard, or read about anyone that can afford to by “it”.
Can it make things that don’t exist anymore? I bet you could make some serious money creating unique-in-the-world-of-today items:
Dinosaurs
Atlantis Relics
Egyptian Pyramid blueprint parchments
Missing reel from “The Magnificent Ambersons”
etc
Windows XP?
oil would be a good choice, and maintainable at monopoly prices if Mr. Mad did the only reasonable and Evil thing to do; synthesize nanites that disable the functioning of natural oil. they use a certain waste compound present in natural crude (but not in his synthesase!) as the nexus of a massive non-burning molecule containing all essential products of oil: gasoline, deisel, kerosene, propane, asphalt essentials, and anything i cant think of at the moment. then he can, after dominating the market with low cost oil, introduce these when noone is tapping natural stocks. he then waits a few years to allow the oil reserves to be completley disabled, and then gouges prices to the sky. when people turn back to the natural oil resivoirs, they discover that it is worthless nonburning and unrefineable goo. all possible competition is eliminated, and you rule all, due to your control of the base economy of the world.
of course, the ECO-FRIENDLY Evil Mad Scientist would never use this method permanently- once all natural oil was destroyed, he would stop making it.
to maintain his hold on the world’s economy through energy, he would build fusion installations for local power and start producing fusion or fuelcell powered cars (to sell at a massivly reduced price, of course!) to replace the inoperable gasoline using ones. when the other car makers are put out of buisiness, either by an inability to shift their market share or simply by Evil Mad Scientist Inc. severly undercutting them, you would use you control of the world market to take physical control of the world’s governments, closely followed by crowning yourself emperor of the world.
alternatively, if Mr. Evil Mad Scientist just wants to make some neat stuff to sell, he should make two things.
(A) solid crystal processors. namley, a big chunk of diamond with a processor imprinted into it during fabrication, with the ability to run at over a terahertz.
(B) cybernetics! make lots of things like neural interfaces, Cyborg bodies (for the old and frail and espcially, the rich!), and artificial limbs that act like living ones (aside from the fact that they are made of titanium and have plasma cannons concealed inside.).
of course, if Mr. Evil wants to jump straight to the ‘crown yourself emeperor’ bit, he should make warbots and force fields and Obliterator-class matter degenerator cannons.
[sub]do you think i should add Damn, am i Evil! to my .Sig?[/sub]
According to Dirac, Magnetic monopoles could be use to prove conservation of charge,but what else would they be good for?
By negatic matter do you mean exotic matter with a negative energy density or are you referring to anti matter?
The whole concept of needing “money” after you’ve made your universal replicator is laughable. Why would you synthesize oil and sell it? What is the purpose of money? To buy stuff. Why buy stuff when you can make anything you want?
Oil is just silly. Your mad scientist is going to set up a business producing a commodity product? Why not set up a business selling cars for $100.00? And what’s with this nonsense of jacking up the price when all your competitors are out of business? Why would you do that? If it costs you nothing to produce anything, why bother?
All you have to do is start producing everything, then give it all away for free. You don’t have to charge for it, why bother? After a while, you are the sole source of production on planet Earth, you make every manufactured item in existance and give it all away. Now you are the ruler of Earth, since everyone will do what you say or they lose their free stuff.
You don’t want money, why bother since you can literally make as much money as you desire. You want power. Well, that’s easy.
The biggest problem will be keeping the specs for your universal replicator secret. If you could do it by yourself working in secret for only 40 years or so, then it couldn’t be that big of a problem for a well funded RD lab to whip together with a few billion dollars in funding. A patent on the thing would be useless, since someone could just set up a pirate replicator and start churning out replicators with it. What are you going to do, sue them? OK, you sue them, but any one of those replicators can make more replicators. Pretty soon everyone on earth who wants one has one.
The biggest problem is that once the mad scientist has a replicator, then he has no need to control the world. The only use for the thing would be to impress chicks.
I’ve always heard that saffron is one of the most expensive commodities on earth, in some markets costing as much as $8.00 for one tenth of a gram, or $80,000/kg.
Dr. X should make a bunch of nuclear weapons and hold the largest cities in the world for ransom. That would make him rich pretty damn fast.
Actually, I am not exactly sure why this hasn’t been done yet…
Maybe it happens all the time? Pay careful attention to the number of times Big Ben rings and report back, ok?
Actually maybe I should just more more damn attention to the OP.
Duh.
Dr. X has fusion generators. Why make oil to control the energy market? If that’s what he want’s to do, he could just sell the electricity. Since he could undercut all other prices, he’d put all other generating technologies out of business quickly. I think that would put the world safely in the palm of his hand.
Especially if he also came up with a practical storage technology to run high-performance electric cars.
What? This alone isn’t sufficient reason to do it? 
Mad Scientist X should hire this guy. If money is all you’re after, eliminating competition is key. In a sense, the most expensive (and financially worthwhile) thing is a nice cartel. Product is of minor importance.
Place your people at head of competitive organizations. (CIA et al. model)
Using “gentleman’s agreements”, split up your own turf. Everyone from the pharmaceutical industry to environmental groups do this, Sherman be darned. (Cosa Nostra model)
Use the media to trash the competition, electrocute horses if you have to. (Edison model)
Kill people who aren’t on board. (Human Nature model)
If he is reduced to making real-world items, hydrogen would be the answer.
[ul]