The day we can convert simple human good will into a currency will be the day we run out of money, goods, governments, armies, gangs, bullets, knives, clubs, and sharp sticks. Meaning never, plus two weeks.
Yes, support would definitely be undercut in the handful of people who bother to try to undermine the whole system (and have the skill and expertise to pull it off to any noticeable degree). And probably their families too. What a groundwell of public opposition!
People would play along because it’s just as easy to - and that weak but still present in most people not to wage war with society for the heck of it would do the rest.
Sounds like the 1950s.
Yeah, but I don’t understand the purpose of heavy-handed DRM on everything useful. Most people are on welfare, right? So the Megacorp pays taxes to the Government, the Government uses those taxes to pay for the dole, and the people on the dole use the money to buy DRM’d goods, which is how the Megacorp makes money, which it uses to pay taxes…
At some point the Megacorp executives are going to look at each other and wonder why they’re bothering. Why bother ruthlessly limiting every fabricator, all so that people on welfare don’t make more stuff? How does it benefit the elites to keep the proles from making more stuff? What do they get out of it?
What your scenario imagines is a post-scarcity world where the elites have re-imposed artificial scarcity–for the fun of it, apparently. It’s too scary to live in a real post-scarcity world, so they don’t allow it to actually happen.
People don’t rob and steal today because it’s too dangerous, and the people who are stolen from hate it.
But people pirate software all the time. They watch bootleg movies, they make copies of music. People pay for scarce goods. When goods aren’t scarce, why should people be forced to pay for them? And HOW do they pay for them? You have to postulate a ruthless tyranny that nevertheless gives generous welfare payments to the destitute proles, but not too generous. What’s the difference between generous welfare payments that allow the proles to buy DRM’d copies of almost anything they like, and a system where the proles can manufacture almost anything they like with no restrictions? What’s in it for the tyrants to ruthlessly enforce copyright infringement on the pain of death, when they don’t actually get anything out of it in the first place since they had to give the proles the money to buy the stuff in the first place?
What makes you think it would take any skill ? Unles you postulate that the entire world is under the heel of these DRM-fanatics, there’ll be hundreds of millions of DRM-less replicators floating around.
Except in this case, society is already waging war on them. You are describing a very oppressive, intrusive system. Not to mention outright murderous.
Isn’t that pretty much the situation right now?
You’re assuming an awful lot about something that doesn’t even exist. Who says that a fab has to be the size of a microwave? Who says that the hacked fab needs to be any larger than a nanobot that’s programmed to replicate a hack in all the fabs it finds? What makes you think that the fab hardware is so perfectly designed that there’s no way to exploit it in software?
It only needs to break once to require an incredibly strong regime to squash it, if it’s even possible to stop.
You are proposing a government-enforced monopoly on most production, in which competition and innovation without government approval is a crime. The sooner such a government is overthrown or simply exterminated, the better.
Just to point out a real-world example, mod-chips in consoles do exactly that - generally, it’s a smallish bit of hardware that convinces the console that it’s receiving the authentic signal from its sensors.
Between people claiming they’re meant for home-brew, not piracy, grey-market imports from countries with different copyright laws, and regular ol’ black market, they’ve proven impossible to eliminate entirely.
Frankly, it’s just not practical to prevent crimes which don’t have immediate, tangible victims, and which can be performed in the privacy of one’s home. The risk of getting caught is just too low a deterrent to stop people from doing what they like.
One thing I don’t see anyone addressed - as I pointed out in the OP, currently, the people leading the self-fabbing fabber effort are already doing it Open Source. So you have to postulate that the megacorps will steal a march on an ongoing effort that they don’t currently seem all that inclined to do to date.
[hijack]Have you tried ModX? I found it a lot easier than Joomla.[/hj]
Bolding mine.
I actually think that in such a society people would be much more innovative than they are now. Currently, just about everyone is stuck in a job that leaves little room for creativity, and once they get home they’re too tired and/or busy with other menial tasks to invent things or write books or whatever. If none of that is true anymore, sure, lots of people will sit on their asses all day and produce nothing of value, just as they do now, but lots of people will find their passion, too, and I’d bet that the things they end up producing would be amazing, whether they make money on their creations or not.
Not to sidetrack too much, but the idea of amateurs replacing professionals is an intriguing one. I know I’ve read at least one SF story (Asimov, maybe?) that mentioned this offhand - basically, the amount of time amateurs could put into things made being a professional kind of silly. It’s something I’ve thought about in the past with regards to copyright - basically, whether or not it’s a boon. On the one hand, if there was no money in it, there are certainly things that wouldn’t be produced. I’m especially thinking of big-budget Hollywood, or really any big production - I doubt as many people would be willing to do all the menial little jobs it takes for large-scale productions if it wasn’t for the pay. If the only thing motivating you is a desire for reputation - well, let’s just say I’ve worked in community theater and egos bigger than paychecks tend to slow things down.
On the other hand, being passionate about something can get amazing results. Just speaking from experience, I get a hell of a lot more done when it’s on something I’m really excited about (why do you think I’m up at 5 am?), and if I didn’t have to go to work, I’d probably get more done hobby-wise. So, I think it’s a trade off. We’d probably lose some of the big coordinated-effort type inventions/artistic endeavors, but we’d get more and better amateurs doing good stuff. I’m not sure I can say a world with no Star Trek, but more Dr. Horrible, is a bad thing.
I also thing a lot of the service jobs would do just fine on a volunteer basis. Right now many, many communities have volunteer fire departments. Why not volunteer police forces? People like to be useful, they like to accomplish things, and not just for money. Sure, there are some jobs that it might be harder to fill on a volunteer basis, but probably not as many as you’d expect. Where I live now, the post office has volunteer workers. That has to be an incredibly boring and unrewarding job, but people do it for something to do.
What do you mean, no Star Trek? It’s already here. There’s like three-four fan series, some of which are pretty good.
That might not make as much difference as you think, since the rest of technology is advancing too. Computer imagery, AI, robots and such will be able to replace or fake a lot of the things we need people for. I wouldn’t be surprised if movies eventually turn into the video equivalent of novels, with a solitary or small number of creators making the whole thing.
I’m with Blake in questioning the value of discussing this. Is there really a prospect of the elimination of scarcity? I don’t see it. It’s like arguing over what Christmas would be like if Santa Claus were real.
The effective elimination of some kinds of scarcity should be quite possible. No, the ability to have whatever product you want within reason isn’t truly an “end to scarcity”, but it’s pretty close for practical purposes.
First of all, there is no such thing as a “post-scarity” society. Your RepRaps still require raw materials. Those are finite. You (I assume) can’t RepRap biological items like cows and grain. Intelectual property also has value. And where do people live?
Look how major innovations changed scarcity in the past - the industrial revolution, the computer, globalization. Many jobs disappeared forever, however that freed up labor to pursue other tasks and the standard of living increased for everyone overall. Technology also gives people the opportunity to pursue interests they might not have been able to pursue before because it was too expensive.
One thing I don’t think has been mentioned is that such technology would allow the creation of a sort of mechanical engineering YouTube. Combined with relatively cheap CAD/CAM design software regular people could tinker around with all sorts of ideas for stuff at almost no cost.
You are still going to have corporations. RepRapCo being one of the biggest, equivalent to Microsoft, WalMart or General Electric.
There would be other industries as well. Farming and agriculture wouldn’t disappear (can’t RepRap meat). Neither would service businesses that don’t sell physical products. Entertainment would be huge. And manufacturing design companies wouldn’t disappear any more than YouTube made movie studios go away. And what about healthcare? Or energy?
You would probably have more lawyers than ever. What sort of liability would I incur if I designed something that other people ended up injuring themselves on?
You would also have a huge underclass of low education, low skilled, uncreative people who don’t really bring much to the table. Kind of like today. They would have a much higher standard of living, but maybe a lot of there services are socialized. Maybe they have to rely on cheap government issued RepRaps using low-grade materials (which quickly identifies their status). Like today, they would bitch about losing their jobs in transportation or retail sales.
Neal Stepehson’s Diamond Age is one of the better attempts to describe such a society, where nanotech fabrication is commonplace. Societies were no longer based on race or geography (though these remained major factors) but on common interests. Thus a “nation” (in Stephenson’s parlance, a “clave”) could consist of individuals scattered around the world. The three largest were Han (China, more or less), Nippon (Japan, more or less) and New Atlantis (the U.K. and North America, more or less), with the latter group containing a particularly influential subculture called NeoVictorians, who embraced as much as possible the manners and dress of 19th-century Britons, or at least a rough approximation. What the NeoVictorians tended to value were handmade goods and strict social status. The former were crafted by hired tradesmen, with one example being a wooden chair that was far heavier (and presumably far weaker) than one that was “compiled”, but valued because of the expended labour and uniqueness of the item. The latter, social status, was far more tenous. Midlevel NeoVictorians, while striving to social-climb to the upper tiers, seemed in constant terror that the faintest hint of scandal would set them back.
If a valued item becomes commonplace, humans will always find ways to attach value to something else.
At one point in history this was not too far off the mark. However, only small communities have volunteer fire brigades, and importantly, they have limiteed training. It’s enough for that community.
Police are another matter. Firemen generally have very focused training. It’s tough, definitely, and in larger cities there’s more diversity to buildings so they need professionals. But in smaller towns, not so much.
Policemen need huge varied training, and have to do a lot more to keep up with things. They are also exposed to danger on a more common level, and generally undertake a variety of duties.
I’m not saying it’s a bad thought, just that practical reasons have overridden it.
Weeeeellll, I’ll give you AI, but until you get to that point, I don’t think any one person could manage all the small details of as many characters as are in large-scale productions. At least, not well. I do think we’d get Machinima-quality work, using a lot of shortcuts like built-in animation cycles and the like. Not that that’s necessarily bad - Red vs. Blue was freakin’ hilarious - but it’s not quite Lawrence of Arabia. Once you get good AI - well, then, you just have to figure out how to get them to work for free…