Alright, Xeno, that's it. I'm sick of this stupid ass debate, so it's time to poke more holes in your argument than swiss cheese.
The problem is called Dutch Disease (I'm not making this up. It's a real economic theory, proven time and again in history). When a nation is rich in natural resources, it neglects protecting other sectors of the economy, i.e.: the people. Here's a few perfect examples:
The Middle East. Oil rich nations subsidize their populations for living, rather than investing in an education system.
Africa. Blood diamonds? Rebel factions and warlords fight against one another to gain access to resources, pushing soldiers aside as expendable.
Now, what does this mean? A few things:
A: LOTS OF WARS! The government focus becomes in gaining access to resources to mine. Nations will work to access natural resources (farmland, mines, water reserves, etc). Where does that leave the person? As simply an expendable tool of the government. That justifies every resource war imaginable. Empirically, Africa proves me right.
Right now, if a nation wants to develop its wealth, it invests in infrastructure. Building school will allow people to make their own businesses, building roads will create commerce. Any resources that are needed are obtained in trade. There is no need for conquest.
Imagine China invading Afghanistan to access its farmland. The United States invading Canada to gain oil access. Europe forced into war with Russia to obtain natural gas. Or Japan forced into Southeast Asia to occupy and industrialize their farmland for better production. Any scenario could cause the military superpowers to conflict, causing full-scale wars in which the governments no longer care even about the welfare of their own soldiers.
You say the nations with natural resources will be more powerful and those without will be less powerful. I say you're full of shit because the nations that are more powerful will come in and devastate the resource-rich nations. Otherwise, militarily powerful nations wouldn't have the economy to back up their place in society, and would descend into oblivion.
B: You create huge amounts of economic inequality. If you think it's bad now, you're nuts. Here's the story:
Those zeros and ones that you call "fake," people in the real world call "credit." Loans. Without a banking system, there is no credit system.
What's so good about credit? It empowers the little guy.
Imagine a world with two people: person A has 10 million dollars sitting under his sofa and person B has 10 thousand dollars under his sofa. Person B gets an idea for a business, but that business would cost $100,000 to build. He doesn't have that money.
Under your system (assuming that when I say dollar values, I am referring to whatever resources in your society would equate to what we imagine as that value), the person with that idea would just have to sit on it. He couldn't build a business because there is no credit system. That means he's forced to retain his place in poverty.
The only people who could build infrastructure would be those who had the resources in the first place. They continually build wealth while others have zero chance of stepping up in the ladder.
(Oh, and by the way, if you say that there's no way to step up in the ladder today, you are a damn liar. Millions of people have used education to get from impoverishment to becoming great. Hell, Obama proves I'm right).
C: Massive poverty. Dutch disease creates another underlying assumption within societies: that the resources they rely on are there forever. Oil nations assume they can pump oil forever. Gold nations assume that there is infinite gold in the ground. Agricultural nations assume that major catastrophes won't hurt their production.
What happens? Bad shit. Oil is limited in supply. Farmland is susceptible to weather catastrophes.
Let's specifically talk about the farmer scenario. For a farmer, loss of one harvest year in your society means he's done. He no longer has the resources to prepare for next year's harvest. In modern society, we have a check against this. Your zeros and ones, that is. The farmer can collect insurance and prepare for next year.
Then you have the chain reaction. Loss of a region's farming sector means either government and industry swoop in to take over the business, pushing those farmers to die (oh, and using industrial agriculture techniques, such as monocropping and pesticides, that destroy the soil and make future production impossible), or the region becomes fallow, creating starvation in the planet at large.
D: There is no reason to live in your society because you, xeno, become a useless corpse with no purpose in life or no value other than that you can lift things.
Here's how this works: Governments create an a priori focus on improving their access to natural resources. Dutch disease, mentioned above, says the government will devalue the individual. That means there's no education system (why educate you? You may gain free will and realize that you can do something better than mine for diamonds), only a limited health care system (no education system means no health care, and besides, it's not like the government spent millions on investment in your development, making you a valuable asset. Any idiot can shovel dirt. We'll just grab a new slave to replace you in the next village we rape and pillage), and little self actualization at all (go back to Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Everyone in society is knocked back into trying to obtain security).
You create a society with no middle class. Only two classes: the servant and the master. The slave and the enslaver. The conqueror and the conquered. And if you're not in the upper class, you've only got two jobs: dig or kill (I would guess that a nation would have its own citizens be soldiers, because they're more likely to be loyal to the government). If you're lucky and show your loyalty to your society, you may be raised in rank from a soldier to a watchkeeper over the slaves, becoming the very evil which you despise as you force the citizenry to submit to the will of the state.
Regardless, your path is clear. You are not a free spirit, unbound from the government and set to move toward self actualization. You are no longer even human. You're dirt. Either you're dirt because society has framed you as dirt, or because you have become society's tool, destroying your own moral code just to survive.
Yeah, Xeno... that sounds beautiful, doesn't it?
What you call a great, resource-based economy went by twos different names long ago. It's a hybrid of two ideas: mercantilism and feudalism. Feudalism proved to be the end of scientific and intellectual growth in Europe during the dark ages.
Mercantilism is even worse. It was the justification for Britain and France to create global imperialism. It was the justification for the enslavement of Africans. It was the justification for most wars between the two nations, along with most nations throughout history.
Oh, and just in case you try to say that technology will operate within society to make it better than the old feudalism... you have multiple problems.
First, dutch disease and a lack of investment capital prevents the creation of an education system. Your society is left with uneducated people, and can't build technology anyway. I've empirically got the dark ages to back me up.
Second, the people with resources would be developing the technology, meaning they could utilize it for their will. Since there's no individual empowerment in your society, there is no way the lower and middle class can challenge the upper class.
Oh, and if you even say the words "artificial intelligence" in regards to providing all those basic tasks for society, then that makes your society even worse. Here's why:
Programmer programs the AI. The AI follows programming.
Nation raises the human. The human may follow the nation, but has the choice of abandoning the nation.
What does that mean? In a nation's eyes, the AI is preferrable over the human. You, xeno, are a liability to society, and the government would be both motivated and justified in executing you, along with every other petty human who may decide they don't like the new world order. In your place would be a mindless robot, serving the will of a few human overlords who just committed genocide against 99% of the human population in order to ensure only they will live. More than likely, the few that did survive would eventually mistrust each other, further limiting the human population. And that's the optimistic view!
And by the way, in case you say "well, do you have a better solution," I don't need a better solution. I am only saying that the society YOU advocate is uniquely worse than the current system.
Oh, then there's some substance issues with your argument:
Prices aren't uniformly global because production isn't uniform globally. If I buy corn in a country that produces corn, it will cost less than in a country that imports corn for one simple reason: Shipping.
A global uniform price would mean businesses lose money for selling abroad, or at least they make more money selling domestically. So they won't export.
Other factors, including production methods, apply here. No global trade. No global trade causes everything bad that I said above because there's no way to access resources other than to invade. In addition, it forces nations to produce inefficiently, because not exporting resources means nations must produce goods in inefficient manners. If a nation can't import rice, for example, it has to produce rice, even if it's bad at producing rice. That reduces overall production, causing global poverty.
And before you respond to this, know this: I am giving you a shot to defend against someone who is really arguing against your society, rather than more of V. Kemp's "that can't happen" crap. This is your shot, xeno. If you ignore something that I said, it means V. Kemp is justified in everything he said this entire thread. I don't want to admit V. Kemp is right, and I sure as hell know you don't want to admit he's right.
And I'll be gone for a few days, so I won't be responding immediately. Gives you plenty of time.
