Quote:
Originally Posted by Ralph Sir Edward
Glad to have stretched you mind. It won't take that level of technology to cause the questions of abundance. We're doing it right now, right here, at MR. It's the endless debate on copyright in the digital world. After all, when you can make copies of digital files for basically nothing, is that not the same, in the limited world of digital files, as the Universal Provider?
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In the world of
digital files, yes. Material objects are still a different matter.
But the level of technology Hamilton postulates would make the basis of much of the discussions here obsolete as well. The questions revolve around how you insure creators can get paid for their work in a digital world where copies can be easily made and passed around.
In the post-scarcity economy Hamilton proposes, it's not a concern, because money and payment are obsolete. If you can have anything you want by asking a replicator to produce it, why do you need money? The same goes for services: Hamilton's beings had highly advanced devices to perform them. I suspect they still had an economy, but decisions would be made at a higher level over really
huge amounts of resources like "We have a research effort that will require a truly enormous replicator, and we'll need to feed it a planetary volume of mass to give it the raw material to make what we need..." That would be more than an impulse, "Replicator, make me one of these..." decision, even for them.
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Dennis