you make a painting for taht guy, and you make the gouverment a smaller one?

Xeno, you haven't answered a single thing I've said... in this entire thread.

I'm going to go smash my head against a wall a few times.

> V.Kemp wrote:

> lol. I think he's brilliant. He proposes giving everyone everything they need without taxing anyone. How awesome is that!>

I know, it really is brilliant!

And people like him can indulge in slave labor to guarantee that I have everything I need!

why is resource based economy better then monetary?

yeah, because when people no longer feel the need to work, the world is going to be such a better place...... not

what is and isnt a good job is what society tells us is and isnt a good job. society tells everyone the noblest job is to be a machine mechanic and there would be plenty that would want to do it.

but a world where no one has to work isnt my idea of progress. i also, would prefer the idiots, the masses, to be kept busy with work rather then reading conspiracy theories on the web all day or playing an mmorpg.

no, he's talking about what we should strive for. he wants to strive for no one having to work ever. everyone just reads conspiracy theories on the web and plays mmorpg's all day and grows super fat.

You'll have to get your own robots. But that'll be hard. Because you won't have money. And anything you produce will go toward the hive. I mean nanny NGO. And they will provide you with all that you need. Which will be rice.

I do not think we should strive for the impossible. Investment in t he impossible is waste. Waste is stupidity. Costly stupidity.

You probably believe we're going to have nanites in your lifetime so small they are invisible to the eye yet somehow packed with microprocessors, memory, a wireless modem, power source, and some sort of motorized means of movement/manipulating their environment. Keep dreaming. But wake and act in the real world.

avogadro, you do make a good point. Now that I read your whole post, I do acknowledge the inherent honor in reading and talking about conspiracy theories and playing mmorpgs all day and growing fat. I love mmorpgs over strategy games because you can succeed just as well if you're stupid as a smart person. The more of your valuable time you invest in the productive game, the more you succeed. That's how life should be!

Back it up? I'm the one siding with science, technological development, and common sense. I have nature and science against me? No. You're the one making stuff up.

Please give us ANY indication that leads you to believe that all of those necessary components will EVER be developed on a microscopic scale. If science is with you, you'll surely have some research or achievements that suggest ANY of this is on its way, to ANY extent.

What is magical about a fully-automated rice farm?  The technology to have it is already available.  Why don't we have robots freeing rice-pickers to do some other form of labor?  We have used robots to free welders.

Why haven't we freed starving subsistence farmers with robot technology?

I think the answer is because of our vision of how the economy should run.  Our vision is that in order for our economy to function, we need to have a large portion of the population living in poverty.  The economic system we have developed depends on there being poverty.

However, this is a fallacy.  Our way of life needs not be supported by exploitation of subsistence workers; our way of life needs not depend on human slavery.

Where did we get this idea, I wonder?

I'd just like to see a change in trend to free the subsistence laborers of the world with robots, freeing them to pursue a better life.

>I'd just like to see a change in trend to free the subsistence laborers of the world with robots, freeing them to pursue a better life

Say that somehow what you call a resource economy is created and sustainable (At least for a few generations). Would the free time people gained from no longer having to work to sustain themselves be spent making improvements to society? With no driving need to secure sustinance for themselves people wouldn't feel a need to improve society or advance technology. Inovation is sparked by negative feedback. What is life with no need or reason to work or improve upon your situation.

This would lead to crime. If life is driven to improve it's situation and there is no legal way to improve your surroundings then that life is going to resort to illegal methods to gain an advantage over someone else through stealling.

Under the current economic system people are considered assets. People are valuable because of what they are able to accomplish. With nothing left to accomplish people no longer become assets. They become drag on the system. Human life then becomes undesirable. This would be worsened by the definate population explosion (After all, what are you going to do with all that free time?).

My primary source backing up the feasibility of nano-scale machines would be a book called "The Age of Spiritual Machines," by Ray Kurzweil.  It goes extensively into the feasibility of nanotechnology.

Two other authors would be Eric Drexler (one of the first scientists in the field) and Richard Smalley (although he is much more conservative about his views of the technology's future).

Obviously, I can't give you the exact pages.  I'm looking online to see if I can find some online sources, although I know a couple websites that take very liberal views of nanotechnology's future.  Kurzweilai.net (Ray Kurzweil's website) and crnano.org (a policy research institute on nanotechnology).

Essentially, it's a simple issue: Nanotechnology is simply an extension of nature.  Cells are constructed one atom at a time.  Amino acids are essentially complex atomic machines.  Nanotechnology simply attempts to recreate what nature has proven true.

I'm not claiming we'll be seeing (figuratively speaking) nanobots running around in the next week.  It would probably take a decade at the bare minimum, assuming very impressive research over the next few years.  But ruling out nanotechnology as "magic" either means you don't know what the issue is, or you simply don't accept the possibility of extremely advanced technologies being a possible reality.

Here's a random quote:

http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?m=18

"Nanotechnology derives its name from the nanometer, or a billionth of a meter, and refers to the manipulation of matter at the atomic and molecular level. The ideas behind nanotechnology are simple ones: every substance on Earth is made up of molecules composed of one or more atoms (the smallest particles of elements). To describe the molecules that constitute a physical object and how they interrelate is to say nearly everything important about the object. It follows, then, that if you can manipulate individual atoms and molecules and put them together in certain configurations, you should be able to create just about anything you desire. And if technologies like computers and the Internet have empowered individuals by giving them drastically more control over the organization of information, the impact of nanotechnology