Theo R Cwithin
I cast "Baconstorm!"
Given all the human failures you noted, the $64k question is "How do the police robots feel about all this?"
D&D and the rising pandemic
MarkB
Legend
It's not really much different than the "we work to better ourselves" explanation that Picard gives in First Contact.
I am perhaps overstating one particular thing, it is more likely to be a suite of things. But not something one can make a living at. Something that also take some effort. A but like being a "gentleman" in the ninetieth century. There one had to be rich but that was not sufficient, one had to know how to dress for dinner, what fork to use, order your wine in French and understand classical phrases and allusions in conversation.
I also think that there will be multiple cultures and they may have different standards.
Except... they totally aren't. Not in the show, not in our real world. Some folks have this idea that robots will be better at things that entail human experience or creativity. I don't view that as a foregone conclusion. And, even if it is possible, we achieve effective post-scarcity long before that.
And that's a big point. The approach to post-scarcity is driven by simple profit motive... but that motive disappears once you've achieved the goal, by definition. Today, you'd build a songwriting robot because it would free you from having to pay a songwriter. But... post-scarcity, you already don't have to pay the songwriter. There is no need for the robot to exist!
I think we can look at youtube today, specifically during this pandemic, and realize that Picard was largely correct.
There's a notion that, if you give people a living for no work, they will sit back and... do nothing, produce nothing, learn nothing. Surely, some will, but looking at artists whose work is applicable on social media, and you see a whole lot of artists continuing to make art and give it away for free, because their paid channels for expression are closed. They just go on to create anyway.
Patrick Stewart starts reading Shakespeare's sonnets one a day, just because he thinks it's helpful - living the thing that Picard was talking about! School musicians record their parts at home, and have them edited together. John Krazinski starts up the "Some Good News" series on youtube, again, just because people can use good news right now.
There are many issues with the scenario above but the biggest is that the elite all control the same kind of assets and their wealth is interchangeable. in reality some people a the top have wealth that depends on feeding the masses. The Walton family that own Walmart for instance. Remove the masses and their wealth disappears.
That is one issue.
Now, suppose that you have an initial population of 1 million and 75% of the wealth is owned by 10,000. 100 of that 10,000 owns 50%. Now remove the million and then what? Does the 100 of the new elite remove the 9,900 new poor? 100 is not a viable breeding population. If not, what happens when that 10k breeds out to a million with a similar wealth distribution as before the great cull.
One is only elite in the current order, remove or change that order and ones elite status might come into question.
This reminds of comments by players of MMO type games like World of Tanks where people whine about matchmaking and how they would be better off if they were playing only against similarly skilled players never seeming to realise that if there are so few of this class of players that it would not be viable for the company to run a separate server for the elite and if they were only playing elite players they might not be as elite as they think.
I didn't say it was long-term viable. I simply placed power, declared incentives, and watched it all burn.
"Elites" have led their own society down a path that makes it burn many, many times in history.
The automation revolution is going to be interesting, because in past collapses the middle-class was required to keep the masses of productive people producing.
Ie 4 classes: Ruler, Middle, Worker and Under. The Middle is defined as the class that enforces the Ruler's economic rules on the Worker, and the Underclass are the "undesirables" who don't produce wealth for the Ruler class. Automation, in theory, can expand the Underclass to be everyone outside of the Ruler class. Pacifying the underclass with goods is a decent short-term strategy, but in the medium term isn't stable.
We could in theory expand to "everyone is a Ruler-class, and robots form the Worker class, and no Middle class need exist." That is the traditional utopia.
"Elites" have led their own society down a path that makes it burn many, many times in history.
The automation revolution is going to be interesting, because in past collapses the middle-class was required to keep the masses of productive people producing.
Ie 4 classes: Ruler, Middle, Worker and Under. The Middle is defined as the class that enforces the Ruler's economic rules on the Worker, and the Underclass are the "undesirables" who don't produce wealth for the Ruler class. Automation, in theory, can expand the Underclass to be everyone outside of the Ruler class. Pacifying the underclass with goods is a decent short-term strategy, but in the medium term isn't stable.
We could in theory expand to "everyone is a Ruler-class, and robots form the Worker class, and no Middle class need exist." That is the traditional utopia.
In most cases where the elites have crashed their society, that has resulted in a wholesale replacement of the elite. Mostly be external invaders but occasionally by internal revolution. Crashing their society was not part of the plan.
As for eliminating the underclass, that is not how humans work. If you have no-one below you, your not elite. You are now a pleb. There is a reason that a lot of revolutionary leaders come from the lower echelons of the elite.
As for eliminating the underclass, that is not how humans work. If you have no-one below you, your not elite. You are now a pleb. There is a reason that a lot of revolutionary leaders come from the lower echelons of the elite.
Zardnaar
Legend
I used to play that game. When I joined an elite clan that was number 1 in the US server I got a heap of abuse.
Just loaded my clan gold and shot them. Our clan was getting around 20k gold per day.
The pubbies would moan but there was a huge skill disparity.
ad_hoc
(they/them)
Remember this site with the projected deaths in the USA at 60k (now 69k)?
www.worldometers.info
They give a range of possible death rates that is very large and yet there are results that are still happening outside of that range.
France was predicted to have its highest death toll 11 days ago at 941.
Today was predicted to be 355 with a range of 129-929.
The actual total was 1438. 50% more than their highest guess.
1438 isn't just an anomaly brought about by a lag of reporting. This is the 6th day they've had above 1k deaths. The site only had 3 days total that had a range of deaths as high as 1k+.
France COVID - Coronavirus Statistics - Worldometer
France Coronavirus update with statistics and graphs: total and new cases, deaths per day, mortality and recovery rates, current active cases, recoveries, trends and timeline.
www.worldometers.info
They give a range of possible death rates that is very large and yet there are results that are still happening outside of that range.
France was predicted to have its highest death toll 11 days ago at 941.
Today was predicted to be 355 with a range of 129-929.
The actual total was 1438. 50% more than their highest guess.
1438 isn't just an anomaly brought about by a lag of reporting. This is the 6th day they've had above 1k deaths. The site only had 3 days total that had a range of deaths as high as 1k+.
