Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
Let me have all of you think about the following Star Trek, The Next Generation background prop, the matter converter. The person goes up to the machine, tells it what kind of food the person wants, and the machine create the food out of energy (or something like that). Think about it. As long as there's plenty of energy, there's no shortage of food for anybody. Should they pay a royalty? To whom, for how long? Public domain receipes?
It's an example of the digital world encroaching upon the analog world. It hasn't gotten there yet, but look at the idea of a 3-D printer. They aren't very useful yet, and very expensive, but someday it'll get much better. The digital world is slowy encroaching upon the analog world, which in the long term makes us all richer. It the hybrid period, though, there are winner and losers.
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I agree. We have basically reached the technological level where
post-scarcity is possible in the digital world, yet people are trying to impose
artificial scarcity in order to make this new world economically similar to the old one. I can only hope one day we will reach post-scarcity for physical items as well, as depicted in current works of science fiction.