Economic game changers: Replicators

A Setting depends on its technologies for what it looks like, ergo how Player Characters can adventure there. While the crux of this is based on an argument, it has repercussions for gaming that would be relevant here, and I could really use some thinktank assessments for future games.

I'm planning a Star Trek game, btw, and discussion of this would really help me out.


(ahem)

The Mrs and I were arguing heatedly in the car over what technologies would totally change the world, and how they'd do that. We like Star Trek as an ideal for futuristic development, so let's start there.

My argument: Transporters would change the world in terms of shipping and transport, and that's it. How we get goods from here to there. Bam, done. While there would be significant economic changes in the effect on labour force and transportation, life would eventually settle down. Transporters mean that I'd compete for jobs *everywhere* on the planet, and that means my degree would have to compete with smart people in places like Japan and Germany. Not only that, but places like Mexico could ship labour all over the world *instantly*. In theory meaning there would be ghettos for labour workers that would ship out to *anywhere*, build or manufacture whatever else needed doing, then ship back home at the end of the day. There would be massive migration of people to places like the Carribean, and with the influx of people to specific dense population centers for work, then out to suburbs perhaps. Offices could be *anywhere* on the planet that's cheap, as could houses: live in the Carribean, work in the Arctic, or a space station, wherever.

HOWEVER this isn't a "game changer" in the sense that it's merely increasing something that we already have (transportation) and changes would be social, but the economy wouldn't change per se. We'd maybe overwork some people, like inspectors, but the majority of workers would just go home at the end of the day; cities would change between residential places and work places, but we could chart this fairly easily.

REPLICATORS from Star Trek is where it gets different, because I wouldn't have to go to work EVER and could just sit at home making whatever I needed. This includes making a new home, all my food ever, and everything would be disposable: gold, fuel, rock, art, etc. I could download scans of actual objects and have whatever I wanted in my home. I could illegally download these scans, perhaps.
I could also go anywhere I wanted and live there by myself, forever. That means we could actually have every inch of the planet covered, because food and water and even luxuries would be INSTANTLY available EVERYWHERE. Manitoba, Canada, would be full.
The only things that couldn't be created would be people and power for generating this stuff. Maybe not the power, if we could just Replicate oil for lamps and candles for light, or the parts for a Wind-generator. Living stuff, no. Inorganic stuff, yes.


That's what I'm saying. Which is the game changer? Like, if a setting had one or the other, which would you pick, that sort of thing.

Honestly? The effects of a cornucopia machine based post scarcity economy far exceed what you've thought of (and a lot of what you brought up would likely be wrong).

In most cases, your plan of sitting home not doing anything would probably keep you fed, clothed, and entertained, but not much else. In some societies though, you might get shoved out the airlock for being an net loss in energy to the system.

Go read Diamond Age, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, or watch some more Star Trek. Eclipse Phase spends a lot of time on various forms of economies in a post scarcity world.

Similarly, Niven spent a lot of time on teleportation and it's effects in the seventies. "Flash Crowd", "The Last Days of the Permanent Floating Riot Club", and "Exercise in Speculation: The Theory and Practice of Teleportation" cover effects of the technology you overlook. Namely, the flash crowd.

I think the biggest game changer would be the discovery of an infinite power source. Of course it would also need to be 100% clean and easily extractable. With that, discovery of technologies such as replication and teleportation should be child's play.

Another huge game changer would be a discovery of some way to regenerate human cells on a massive magnitude. That would open the door to human immortality (from old age and disease anyway), as well as the ability to genetically modify yourself.

Star Trek DS9 spoiler:

They're both game changers.

The replicator gives us liesure time and virtually eliminates the menial manufacturing jobs. The fast food chain model goes belly up, and the restaurant becomes a fresh food entertainment experience.

The teleporter helps open up the cosmos. Chained mass teleporter stations are quite possibly faster than warp drives under certain circumstances.

Krensky said:

Honestly? The effects of a cornucopia machine based post scarcity economy far exceed what you've thought of (and a lot of what you brought up would likely be wrong).

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Which parts specifically?

In most cases, your plan of sitting home not doing anything would probably keep you fed, clothed, and entertained, but not much else. In some societies though, you might get shoved out the airlock for being an net loss in energy to the system.

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There are loads of people like this already. They're called old people and sick people. You try shoving them out an airlock and see how you do.


My experience of addictions, and people who have them, shows me that there are people who would be content to just sit in their room and replicate, for example, heroin or crack. Cocaine rats, with a button that dosed them with cocaine every time they pressed it, are an example from an actual series of experiments. Every time a button gets pressed, they dose themselves. Spread it out to randomly every few presses, and they'll keep pressing until they get it. They will press the button literally thousands of times until they get a hit. It's the reward mechanism.

Check out people addicted to slot machines: they will keep pulling that lever in order to get a "hit" from the occasional "win". They're like the cocaine rats mentioned above.

I'm not arguing that people will be able to do nothing all day in community, but that people will find ways to be alone with their resources and just dose themselves in some form or another via replicators. So folks will abandon communities with their replicator, FOR their replicator.



And yeah, the infinite power source would be nice.

Any word on how zero-point energy works, or should work?

Cheap teleportation ends or devastates many major industries, from hotels (home is just a flick away!) to ethnic cuisine ("Let's go out to eat Chinese" now means "let's go to China to eat"). Vehicles are still around but pretty much inclined towards short distance trips and leisure.

It revolutionizes resource extraction, democracy (suddenly there are FIVE MILLION people protesting in the capitol), social structures, etc.

I think it has HUGE implications.

Caveat: Star Trek is "science fantasy", as it's not really based on real world physics (as we know it today). That said, let's look at some of the implications if Star Trek tech were real and available.

Replicators:
Pros:
*No shortage of commodities. Rare earths, carbon nanotubes, whatever, you got it.
*Healthy food. I believe it was a first season STNG episode that had Troi saying the replicators could make any food you wanted, but it was really made up of some healthy mix of proteins, etc. You can eat pizza every day, but not get all the fat and such.
Cons:
*You need energy, lots of it. If you don't have an infinite power source, replicators won't do much.
*We'd destroy the world. Unless you have unbreakable safeguards (and there's no such thing as unbreakable safeguards), a handful of terrorists could have infinite amounts of plutonium, smallpox, or any other nightmare material you can think of.
*Would completely trash any economy. Virtually all economic theory assumes scarcity. Things that could not be replicated would still be limited, but anything the replicator can do (assuming we have the energy) becomes essentially free. Slowly phased in over time, the impact would be less, but still huge. (James Hogan wrote a sci-fi book on this decades ago, postulating a society with no scarcity. His optimistic conclusion was that most people would still work in some fashion, due to the human need to be useful. "Currency" would not be dollars and such, but respect.)

Transporters:
Pros:
*Signifcantly less time wasted on travel.
*Assuming Star Trek-like quality, far fewer deaths and injuries due to travel, especially by automobile.
*Far less pollution in the air.
*Significant amount of real estate currently used for roads and highways (primarily within cities) could be put to more productive use.
*If I understand correctly, Star Trek transporters convert matter into energy, then back again. It's a small step to then have any matter converted to energy, then transfer the energy to where it's needed. So long as more energy is created than is required to run the transporter, you have infinite energy from trash.
Cons:
*As with replicators, you need energy. Even if the total energy used for transporters was the same as what we use currently for real world transportation, we'd have to build a huge number of additional power plants, power lines, and so on.
*Still have need for some alternative transportation. Unless you assume there is a transporter on literally every street corner, in every building, on every farm in the world, some things will have to be carried by person or vehicle.
*Ultimate weapon. Just begin the transporter process on someone, then never reintegrate them. Dead person with no body as evidence.

Infinite Clean Power Sources:
Pros:
*Pretty much everything.
Cons:
*Depending on how the energy can be stored and moved around, potential for doomsday devices.

fireinthedust said:

Which parts specifically?

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Because a cornucopia machine needs input. A realistic form needs the molecules or elements. A magic form needs matter. Both need power. Both also need more of both then they output, even if only by a little bit. Even if those are functionally non-concerns, prioritizing the distribution of it may well be.

The most plausible form of post scarcity economy (that isn't a market or planned economy exploiting 'free' energy and automated manufacturing) is a reputation based gift economy. If you sit at home and do nothing and interact with nobody, you have no reputation, no social capital, no Whuffie, etc. You can only rely on whatever the bare minimum society has decided will be available. Now, from our perspective, that might well be unimaginable luxury. However, poverty in the G8 may well look luxurious to people from a developing world heckhole. It certainly would to some one in 1511. No matter how good that bare minimum point is to us, it will be poverty in the society it exists in and undesirable.

fireinthedust said:

There are loads of people like this already. They're called old people and sick people. You try shoving them out an airlock and see how you do.

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Various cultures have practiced senilicide, invalidicide, and infanticide. (You forgot the kids. ) Typically ones in harsh environments in desperate circumstances. The thing is, both those conditions have a certain measure of subjectivity to them. There's strong evidence that a certain amount of non-productivity by typical standards is good for society as a whole and results in the entire society being more productive both collectively and individually. It's a bit like red wine though, a little helps, a lot drags it all down.

It is also extremely likely in a post scarcity economy for things to go really bad, really fast as more and more people would would tragically die from lack of access to food, shelter, or medical care don't. Fortunately humanity seems to have some sort of limit or fertility or mating behavior that causes birthrates to drop as standard of living rises.

fireinthedust said:

My experience of addictions, and people who have them, shows me that there are people who would be content to just sit in their room and replicate, for example, heroin or crack. Cocaine rats, with a button that dosed them with cocaine every time they pressed it, are an example from an actual series of experiments. Every time a button gets pressed, they dose themselves. Spread it out to randomly every few presses, and they'll keep pressing until they get it. They will press the button literally thousands of times until they get a hit. It's the reward mechanism.

Check out people addicted to slot machines: they will keep pulling that lever in order to get a "hit" from the occasional "win". They're like the cocaine rats mentioned above.

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Unrelated to the topic at hand though. People with those tendencies will tend to kill themselves in a post scarcity economy.

fireinthedust said:

I'm not arguing that people will be able to do nothing all day in community, but that people will find ways to be alone with their resources and just dose themselves in some form or another via replicators. So folks will abandon communities with their replicator, FOR their replicator.

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And they live in isolated poverty because no one wants to associate with them. No one will do them any favors. The won't have any priority for the mass/energy distribution system. They may well find themselves the target of do-gooders looking to rehabilitate them.

Basically, they're the post scarcity equivalent to the habitually homeless.

fireinthedust said:

And yeah, the infinite power source would be nice.

Any word on how zero-point energy works, or should work?

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However you say it does.

Zero Point Energy is the lowest possible energy level of a system. Due to quantum uncertainty it is never zero. Schemes to use it rely on taking energy out of a system at it's zero point and hoping that the universe will replace it somehow so the laws of thermodynamics aren't splattered all over the room.

In science fiction it's really just a modern form handwave for free, unlimited, more or less consequentless energy.

Cheap teleportation ends or devastates many major industries, from hotels (home is just a flick away!) to ethnic cuisine ("Let's go out to eat Chinese" now means "let's go to China to eat").

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Not necessarily- there's more to ethnic cuisine than "authenticity."

Going to China via teleporter to eat still means dealing with a language you don't understand (making reading the menu or asking the waiter for suggestions difficult), ingredients that aren't necessarily the ones you expect (even if dog is authentic, you may be more accustomed to eating the dish with chicken instead), and in an environment that may not be to your liking (differing standards for air and water quality, smoking, and cleanliness).

...plus, according to those I know who actually own & run Chinese restaurants here in the USA, most of the best cooks flee the country as soon as they can. So unless/until China becomes a better place to live, the best available may not be there...

Croesus said:

Transporters:
Cons:
*Ultimate weapon. Just begin the transporter process on someone, then never reintegrate them. Dead person with no body as evidence.

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That was the basis of Asgardian weaponry in Stargate.

Also:

* Plague.
* Flash crowds/riots.

Croesus said:

Infinite Clean Power Sources:
Cons:
*Depending on how the energy can be stored and moved around, potential for doomsday devices.

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* Heat. Lots and lots of heat.