Yes, I realize we're a probably a long way from fusion, that bit was a bit out there. However, other sources of energy are readily available on the Moon, most notably solar power (as a bonus, there's no annoying atmosphere to scatter or attenuate it). Obviously, we'd need a huge amount of PV panels to power excavation equipment, but the technology is all there.
The main bit of technology that we'd really need to develop, before anything else, is the ability to set up manufacturing sites on the Moon, and to mine and refine ores on the Moon and use them for manufacturing there, rather than having to lift everything from the Earth's surface. TBMs for instance are huge, heavy pieces of equipment, but if we can product them on the Moon (mostly), rather than lifting all that iron from Earth, it makes the whole venture far more feasible.
We don't really need radiation shielding (not that it's hard to devise radiation shielding in the first place; it's called "lead"). All we have to do is tunnel below the Moon's surface. We already do this here on Earth for some scientific experiments that require low radiation (like neutrino detectors). Even better, it's hypothesized that there's already underground tunnels on the Moon, left over from its formation.
So, we have most of the technology we need; we just need to send a bunch of excavation equipment up there (modified to work with electric motors and batteries, of course, since we'll need to power it using solar power, unless we can find some other energy source on the Moon's surface, such as He3). Obviously, this isn't a cheap proposal, but the idea that we need to develop some kind of Star Trek shielding technology is flatly wrong; we have all the technology now, we just don't have the money or the political will to deploy it there.
Branching out from OS software to office software isn't that big a move. Branching out from oil drilling to capturing natural gas (which is produced from oil drilling anyway) is very natural, and branching out into other energy sources isn't such a huge leap either.
But WTF do mobile devices and cars have to do with each other? Not much. Sure, modern cars (esp. the Tesla) do have computers integrated to provide information to the driver, but there's a lot more to a car than just the driver-facing computer, including a lot of parts that are heavily regulated as they're safety-critical. Apple doesn't even manufacture anything last I checked (they outsource it all); how can they hope to run car factories?
Incredibles is fantasy/superhero, and it's animated.
Her is just bad sci-fi. The idea that people will give up display screens in the future and just have computers talk to them is idiotic in the extreme. I can read a LOT faster than listening to someone read to me.
Gravity is not sci-fi, any more than Apollo 13 was, or a movie about deep-sea diving is. Sci-fi has to involve future technologies. A movie about people going to the ISS is not futuristic; we already have the ISS and people are already going there.
"Rocket Raccoon"? WTF? Sounds like a kid's movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but an animated movie about anthropomorphized animals is not sci-fi. I seriously doubt any other Disney projects qualify as sci-fi either. The last sci-fi Disney did was "Flight of the Navigator", around 30 years ago, and "The Black Hole", around 40 years ago.
One of the problems with Terra Nova, IIRC, was that it was filmed on-location in Queensland, Australia. The weather there can be really bad at times (it's basically tropical, which of course is why they picked it), and they had lots of delays in filming because of the weather. Weeks of sitting around waiting for the rain to stop costs lots of money since you have to pay everyone to do nothing.
Shooting stuff on sound stages or other Hollywood sets is much cheaper usually, since you don't have to travel far away or pay people a ton to be there rain or shine. There's already lots of workers (prop/set builders, etc.) living there, and it rarely rains in southern California.
Game of Thrones probably has some of the same problems; it's shot at at least 3 different locations (Iceland IIRC, Malta, and (northern?) Ireland), and has a huge cast.
If we'd just go back to another Star Trek show, the costs wouldn't be too much. You'd only need to build a few sets (which can be reused in lots of episodes), and CGI effects are pretty cheap these days compared to what it cost to do the FX in ST:TNG. Then you'd only need to deal with the costs for the "away team" episodes (there was a reason at least half the episodes occurred entirely on the ship: it was almost free, since few/no new sets were needed; this was a cost-cutting measure).
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is obviously one way to help reduce climate change. But that doesn't answer how giving Obama $1B is going to help achieve that goal.
If we really wanted to reduce GHGs, we'd be making some serious changes, such as investing in SkyTran to try to get more people out of gas-powered cars and into a fast, highly efficient public transit system that doesn't use tons of energy like our 19th-century-style systems we currently use (buses and trains) and doesn't take forever to get people to their destination. Or we'd create better incentives for deploying solar technology, such as getting big-box stores and other large (and typically sprawling) buildings to cover their roofs and parking lots with them. Or we'd find ways to stop burning so much fossil fuel, such as by massively downsizing our military, which burns enormous amounts of diesel fuel so we can air-condition tents in the Afghanistan desert, not to mention all the other fuel burned by horrifically-inefficient military vehicles in our imperialistic pursuits around the world.
I've never seen much action from Obama towards actually improving things as far as energy consumption (or anything else for that matter, except maybe for marijuana enforcement which he's finally, after so many years of his strict DEA enforcement, relented on now that it's become such a popular issue with CO and WA legalizing it), so I really don't see how handing him $1B is going to make a damn bit of difference.
OK, I'll admit I'm not an expert on European labor laws, but I highly suspect that they don't fuck over low-paid service workers like we do here in the US. Here on Slashdot, we have a horrible habit, as you've shown here yourself, of applying white-collar job norms to society in general, and completely (or mostly) ignoring all the blue-collar, part-time, etc. jobs out there. "The US isn't that bad!! Our six-figure-earning white-collar workers get almost as good treatment as workers in Europe!" Yeah, I'm sure the janitor in your office really feels better now.
I'll also add that the other thing that people will want in the Star Trek future is experiences, rather than things. Things can be replicated, but experiences can't be (though, with "Strange Days" technology, you'd be able to record experiences and let other people relive them, but that's still not the same as actually being there and being in the "driver's seat"). So restaurants will still be in demand, surely; after all, one big reason people go to bars, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. is not just for the food, but also for the experience, the ambience, the company, etc. Sitting at home with a wonderful replicated salmon dish isn't the same as going to a quiet restaurant with a date and enjoying the same replicated dish. Having a wonderful latte from your home replicator isn't the same as having the same latte in a coffee shop, and listening to the music (or better yet watching a live band play), being around other people, etc.
There's no legislated amount of vacation for Americans. Maybe your job gives it to you as part of your compensation package, but your typical hourly fast-food worker doesn't get any at all. In France and other European countries, vacation time is mandated by law.
I would never give everyone the same gear; different people perform better with different gears. I'd just give them all reasonably-possible gears. But your point about the higher weight being disadvantageous to smaller cyclists is valid and insightful.
Exactly. People usually want fame, money, and power. If you render money more-or-less obsolete by eliminating scarcity (for the most part), that still leaves power and fame (aka prestige).
For instance, in cycling one major decision is which gears you put on your bike for a given race. Some people are better with bigger gears, and some smaller gears. Forcing everyone to use the same ones would put people at a disadvantage.
This isn't a problem: just give them all a multi-speed bike that has ALL the gears. The only reason you'd only put some gears on a bike for a given race is because you're trying to eliminate extra weight and streamline the bike for the conditions it'll see in that race (you're trying to optimize it). If everyone has the exact same bike, this isn't necessary. No, this bike won't be as optimal for any one person as a custom-built (and -geared) bike, but it'll have all the gearings that any of the athletes might want, and eliminate the machinery as a competitive advantage. Cyclists who prefer bigger gears will select those, while those who prefer small gears will select those. No, they won't record the record times they get with their ultra-custom bikes, but that's not the point of the Olympics or any competition between humans, it's to see which human is the best.
But if I suddenly come up with a new way of waxing that seems better, using the same tools and the same wax, do I suddenly have to tell everyone?
Yes! Is this supposed to be a competition to see who can ski better, or who can invent better skis and waxing methods? Some guy who's mediocre at skiing (due perhaps to genetic disadvantages; he isn't as tall and muscular as top skiiers for instance) might be really smart and invent better waxing methods, skis, etc. Then he doesn't compete with this knowledge, but he tells his Olympic skiier buddy, who uses it. New techniques and technologies are all well and good, but that's not what the competition is supposed to be about, it's supposed to be about who's the better athlete, not who has better technology. If we're looking for the best athlete, then we need to minimize or eliminate the equipment as a variable, and that means everyone has to use the exact same stuff, even if it means lower overall performance. Look at NASCAR; I hate to defend such low-tech stuff, but the idea they have is right, if your goal is to compare humans and not machines and technology. They even intentionally stunt the performance of cars in those races (using throttle restrictor plates for instance), just to make sure everyone's approximately equal and it comes down to who's a better driver, rather than who has superior technology.
The ancient Greek olympics happened in the summer, not the winter. The Winter olympics have only been around since 1924. Athletes would succumb to exposure in a short time if they competed naked.
Ok, how does Sotheby's know it's an original? Starry Night has been around for ages, and by the time we have replicators, it'll have been centuries. How do they verify that what they have is the original, and wasn't replaced by a copy at some point? And how do they know for sure that some rogue employee in Sotheby's didn't switch it out for a copy because some asshole wanted it for his private collection? Sotheby's might not be lying, but they themselves have no way to know for sure. Even today, as I think you pointed out before, places like Sotheby's have been fooled by forgeries. When too many cases of this come to light somehow, everyone's going to doubt the authenticity of anything these places sell (Sotheby's can never be rid of rogue employees, or have 100% perfect security systems) and the values will plummet.
No, we're talking about a post-scarcity future, where money is directly related to energy, and energy is cheap but not free. The energy needed to build a Dyson sphere is astronomical, but the energy needed to replicate a hamburger is probably not. In such a society, "money" would be directly related to energy. Small, simple things like food and drinks and iPads would be nearly worthless, as the energy needed to make them is tiny. Starships and orbital cities would likely be too expensive for any one person to afford.
Think of the "basic income" schemes being debated today: if everyone had a guaranteed annual income of $30k, and there was cheap and fast public transit (like SkyTran) so you didn't need to spend a giant chunk of your income on a car and insurance, and ghettos and poverty have been eliminated so inexpensive, decent, basic (and safe) housing is available most anywhere, most people wouldn't need any more money than that for their basic living costs. $30k is enough for all the food you need for a year, and medical care in countries with good healthcare systems (not the US). But it isn't going to buy you a megayacht or an original Picasso. Presumably, the Star Trek future is something like this: everyone gets a certain allowance, which will afford you all the basics, food (which is excellent since it's replicated, so you're not stuck with McDonald's shit), decent housing (but not exclusive Hawaiian beachfront property), some extra for inter-star-system travel now and then, but not enough to buy your own starship, secret base in a volcano of Io, etc.
As I said in another post here, I'm talking about products/goods, not services and performances. Sex isn't something you can replicate (until you make those human-like androids you speak of). I was addressing the idea that people would pay lots more for something made by humans, or for "originals" rather than copies; my point there is that they wouldn't when you can get an identical copy for next to nothing. This obviously doesn't apply to services, experiences, etc. But for physical products, it does. We're already seeing this with digital goods; who's going to pay more for an "original" copy of an MP3 song? No one; digital copies are all just that: identical copies. Same goes for physical goods. Who would pay more for an autographed book? Well if I take that book and stick it in a 3D scanner and replicate it at the molecular level, autograph ink and all, and upload it to the internet for everyone to make copies at will, then the value of that book becomes nothing, because any such book you see is probably just a copy. With services, there's no way to do this, since humans aren't inanimate objects that can be replicated at will (though this does bring up the question of: what happens when you can replicate people at will using a replicator? Even if it's illegal, this has some scary implications).
Your custom spaceship will only be a luxury until someone figures out how to make a copy cheaply. That's the whole point. After that point, when everyone is flying around in a clone of your spaceship, no one will care that yours was "custom", because it's identical to everyone else's. Maybe for a short time you'll have some increased social status because of your unique spaceship, but only as long as yours is unique.
See, there's this thing called provenance, tracked and managed from multiple redundant sources to ensure validity.
Maybe, but even today's art world has had a lot of trouble with that, as the other poster here has pointed out with instances of forgeries being sold as the real thing. If we have trouble with it now, how will anyone be able to tell in the future that some piece of valuable original art hasn't been stolen and replaced with an identical replicated copy? There have been multiple cases of very elaborate and well-planned thefts using very good (but not perfect) forgeries. If someone on the inside (an art gallery employee for instance) is in on it, how is anyone to know? All that provenance stuff isn't worth any more than the amount of trust you have in all the people involved. If even one person there can be bought off, or the security is imperfect, then the entire organization can't be trusted.
One of the issues I have with TFA is that the equating with Star Trek TOS simply means the same fundamental flaws exist. For example, if there's the whole "freed from want" thing, then the need to steal a starship wouldn't exist. However, it formed the basis of a number of episodes. In a post-scarcity world, there wouldn't be such a need as one can simply 3d print the starship, dilithium and all, along with the computers to run it and then simply download the software off the Uninet.
I think you might be reading things a little too literally. TOS wasn't all that great at elaborating on the backstory behind the society there anyway, but when they said "freed from want", they probably meant in the more basic sense: in that society, everything would only cost as much as the energy needed to make it. Energy would be cheap, but not completely free. The amount of energy needed to make a bowl of spaghetti or a cheeseburger would be pretty insignificant, and that society probably gives everyone a certain energy allowance, which would cover all your basic needs and wants. And in that society, a lot of things which we want here wouldn't be necessary. Want a meal? No problem. Want a car? You don't need one, because we don't have asphalt roads and instead use automated hovercars that we borrow at will. Want a house? You don't need one because everyone is assigned a dwelling (this one is pretty debateable how it works since real estate can't be replicated, unless we start talking about VR and stuff like that) and dwellings don't need to be constantly replaced. Want a computer? No problem, just print/replicate it. Want a chair? No problem. Want a starship? That's a problem: it requires far more energy than your allowance. So really big, energy-hogging things like starships remain the property of the State, just like we do now. But who knows, maybe some people save up their allowance and buy themselves small shuttlecraft so they don't have to take the larger transports other people usually use. It's all speculation of course, but in a society where all you need is energy to replicate things and energy is fairly cheap, small things just aren't going to cost much, unlike now where a high-quality meal will cost you a good fraction of a day's wages.
Then there are the issues around population, a key driver in scarcity. Star Trek TOS seems to ensure low populations by killing off significant amounts of population as colonies are wiped out by various means
I think you're reading too much into this too. These colonies probably exist because the main worlds are probably highly populated (people without the need to work to survive might have more time to procreate, esp. if medicine allows longer lifespans), though not ridiculously so (current trends already show educated, well-off people voluntarily limit their procreation without any oppressive measures), so people might be interested in becoming colonists to see someplace new, to go to a "frontier" (like early settlers in America) where there's no real existing society and they can start their own, maybe they wan
That's not "playing politics". When someone uses that phrase in regards to corporations, they're talking about the goings-on at the higher levels in the organization, between the layers of upper and middle management. The engineers at the bottom aren't involved in "playing politics"; it's about the managers above them fighting with each other and stabbing each other in the back to get more influence and power in the organization.
Yes, workers do need some kind of leadership that's able to best use their strengths and deal with their weaknesses to make the group most effective as a whole. But various business divisions fighting with each other does not further that goal; just look at Microsoft, which is infamous for its divisions backstabbing each other at every turn.
I'm talking about goods/products, not performances. Obviously, performances can't be replicated until we're either living in The Matrix or we have the technology from "Strange Days", or at least we have holograms. However, you bring up a good point: when we have holograms so good that you can't tell if you're watching live actors or holograms at a play, then why would anyone favor live actors? Sure, people will say they prefer live actors, but how do they know they're seeing live actors and the playhouse isn't just showing them holograms?
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I realize we're a probably a long way from fusion, that bit was a bit out there. However, other sources of energy are readily available on the Moon, most notably solar power (as a bonus, there's no annoying atmosphere to scatter or attenuate it). Obviously, we'd need a huge amount of PV panels to power excavation equipment, but the technology is all there.
The main bit of technology that we'd really need to develop, before anything else, is the ability to set up manufacturing sites on the Moon, and to mine and refine ores on the Moon and use them for manufacturing there, rather than having to lift everything from the Earth's surface. TBMs for instance are huge, heavy pieces of equipment, but if we can product them on the Moon (mostly), rather than lifting all that iron from Earth, it makes the whole venture far more feasible.
The UK government doesn't have any authority; it's just a lapdog for the US government.
Who cares about this stuff? Let's watch the news about the Kardashians and Honey Boo Boo!!!
Venus is about 90% of the mass of Earth; it's practically a sister planet.
We don't really need radiation shielding (not that it's hard to devise radiation shielding in the first place; it's called "lead"). All we have to do is tunnel below the Moon's surface. We already do this here on Earth for some scientific experiments that require low radiation (like neutrino detectors). Even better, it's hypothesized that there's already underground tunnels on the Moon, left over from its formation.
So, we have most of the technology we need; we just need to send a bunch of excavation equipment up there (modified to work with electric motors and batteries, of course, since we'll need to power it using solar power, unless we can find some other energy source on the Moon's surface, such as He3). Obviously, this isn't a cheap proposal, but the idea that we need to develop some kind of Star Trek shielding technology is flatly wrong; we have all the technology now, we just don't have the money or the political will to deploy it there.
I'd like to see both Apple and MS out of business, and Google severely downsized back to a search engine and not too much more.
Branching out from OS software to office software isn't that big a move. Branching out from oil drilling to capturing natural gas (which is produced from oil drilling anyway) is very natural, and branching out into other energy sources isn't such a huge leap either.
But WTF do mobile devices and cars have to do with each other? Not much. Sure, modern cars (esp. the Tesla) do have computers integrated to provide information to the driver, but there's a lot more to a car than just the driver-facing computer, including a lot of parts that are heavily regulated as they're safety-critical. Apple doesn't even manufacture anything last I checked (they outsource it all); how can they hope to run car factories?
You're listing a lot of stuff which isn't sci-fi.
Incredibles is fantasy/superhero, and it's animated.
Her is just bad sci-fi. The idea that people will give up display screens in the future and just have computers talk to them is idiotic in the extreme. I can read a LOT faster than listening to someone read to me.
Gravity is not sci-fi, any more than Apollo 13 was, or a movie about deep-sea diving is. Sci-fi has to involve future technologies. A movie about people going to the ISS is not futuristic; we already have the ISS and people are already going there.
"Rocket Raccoon"? WTF? Sounds like a kid's movie. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but an animated movie about anthropomorphized animals is not sci-fi. I seriously doubt any other Disney projects qualify as sci-fi either. The last sci-fi Disney did was "Flight of the Navigator", around 30 years ago, and "The Black Hole", around 40 years ago.
One of the problems with Terra Nova, IIRC, was that it was filmed on-location in Queensland, Australia. The weather there can be really bad at times (it's basically tropical, which of course is why they picked it), and they had lots of delays in filming because of the weather. Weeks of sitting around waiting for the rain to stop costs lots of money since you have to pay everyone to do nothing.
Shooting stuff on sound stages or other Hollywood sets is much cheaper usually, since you don't have to travel far away or pay people a ton to be there rain or shine. There's already lots of workers (prop/set builders, etc.) living there, and it rarely rains in southern California.
Game of Thrones probably has some of the same problems; it's shot at at least 3 different locations (Iceland IIRC, Malta, and (northern?) Ireland), and has a huge cast.
If we'd just go back to another Star Trek show, the costs wouldn't be too much. You'd only need to build a few sets (which can be reused in lots of episodes), and CGI effects are pretty cheap these days compared to what it cost to do the FX in ST:TNG. Then you'd only need to deal with the costs for the "away team" episodes (there was a reason at least half the episodes occurred entirely on the ship: it was almost free, since few/no new sets were needed; this was a cost-cutting measure).
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is obviously one way to help reduce climate change. But that doesn't answer how giving Obama $1B is going to help achieve that goal.
If we really wanted to reduce GHGs, we'd be making some serious changes, such as investing in SkyTran to try to get more people out of gas-powered cars and into a fast, highly efficient public transit system that doesn't use tons of energy like our 19th-century-style systems we currently use (buses and trains) and doesn't take forever to get people to their destination. Or we'd create better incentives for deploying solar technology, such as getting big-box stores and other large (and typically sprawling) buildings to cover their roofs and parking lots with them. Or we'd find ways to stop burning so much fossil fuel, such as by massively downsizing our military, which burns enormous amounts of diesel fuel so we can air-condition tents in the Afghanistan desert, not to mention all the other fuel burned by horrifically-inefficient military vehicles in our imperialistic pursuits around the world.
I've never seen much action from Obama towards actually improving things as far as energy consumption (or anything else for that matter, except maybe for marijuana enforcement which he's finally, after so many years of his strict DEA enforcement, relented on now that it's become such a popular issue with CO and WA legalizing it), so I really don't see how handing him $1B is going to make a damn bit of difference.
OK, I'll admit I'm not an expert on European labor laws, but I highly suspect that they don't fuck over low-paid service workers like we do here in the US. Here on Slashdot, we have a horrible habit, as you've shown here yourself, of applying white-collar job norms to society in general, and completely (or mostly) ignoring all the blue-collar, part-time, etc. jobs out there. "The US isn't that bad!! Our six-figure-earning white-collar workers get almost as good treatment as workers in Europe!" Yeah, I'm sure the janitor in your office really feels better now.
I'll also add that the other thing that people will want in the Star Trek future is experiences, rather than things. Things can be replicated, but experiences can't be (though, with "Strange Days" technology, you'd be able to record experiences and let other people relive them, but that's still not the same as actually being there and being in the "driver's seat"). So restaurants will still be in demand, surely; after all, one big reason people go to bars, restaurants, coffee shops, etc. is not just for the food, but also for the experience, the ambience, the company, etc. Sitting at home with a wonderful replicated salmon dish isn't the same as going to a quiet restaurant with a date and enjoying the same replicated dish. Having a wonderful latte from your home replicator isn't the same as having the same latte in a coffee shop, and listening to the music (or better yet watching a live band play), being around other people, etc.
There's no legislated amount of vacation for Americans. Maybe your job gives it to you as part of your compensation package, but your typical hourly fast-food worker doesn't get any at all. In France and other European countries, vacation time is mandated by law.
I would never give everyone the same gear; different people perform better with different gears. I'd just give them all reasonably-possible gears. But your point about the higher weight being disadvantageous to smaller cyclists is valid and insightful.
Exactly. People usually want fame, money, and power. If you render money more-or-less obsolete by eliminating scarcity (for the most part), that still leaves power and fame (aka prestige).
For instance, in cycling one major decision is which gears you put on your bike for a given race. Some people are better with bigger gears, and some smaller gears. Forcing everyone to use the same ones would put people at a disadvantage.
This isn't a problem: just give them all a multi-speed bike that has ALL the gears. The only reason you'd only put some gears on a bike for a given race is because you're trying to eliminate extra weight and streamline the bike for the conditions it'll see in that race (you're trying to optimize it). If everyone has the exact same bike, this isn't necessary. No, this bike won't be as optimal for any one person as a custom-built (and -geared) bike, but it'll have all the gearings that any of the athletes might want, and eliminate the machinery as a competitive advantage. Cyclists who prefer bigger gears will select those, while those who prefer small gears will select those. No, they won't record the record times they get with their ultra-custom bikes, but that's not the point of the Olympics or any competition between humans, it's to see which human is the best.
But if I suddenly come up with a new way of waxing that seems better, using the same tools and the same wax, do I suddenly have to tell everyone?
Yes! Is this supposed to be a competition to see who can ski better, or who can invent better skis and waxing methods? Some guy who's mediocre at skiing (due perhaps to genetic disadvantages; he isn't as tall and muscular as top skiiers for instance) might be really smart and invent better waxing methods, skis, etc. Then he doesn't compete with this knowledge, but he tells his Olympic skiier buddy, who uses it. New techniques and technologies are all well and good, but that's not what the competition is supposed to be about, it's supposed to be about who's the better athlete, not who has better technology. If we're looking for the best athlete, then we need to minimize or eliminate the equipment as a variable, and that means everyone has to use the exact same stuff, even if it means lower overall performance. Look at NASCAR; I hate to defend such low-tech stuff, but the idea they have is right, if your goal is to compare humans and not machines and technology. They even intentionally stunt the performance of cars in those races (using throttle restrictor plates for instance), just to make sure everyone's approximately equal and it comes down to who's a better driver, rather than who has superior technology.
The ancient Greek olympics happened in the summer, not the winter. The Winter olympics have only been around since 1924. Athletes would succumb to exposure in a short time if they competed naked.
Ok, how does Sotheby's know it's an original? Starry Night has been around for ages, and by the time we have replicators, it'll have been centuries. How do they verify that what they have is the original, and wasn't replaced by a copy at some point? And how do they know for sure that some rogue employee in Sotheby's didn't switch it out for a copy because some asshole wanted it for his private collection? Sotheby's might not be lying, but they themselves have no way to know for sure. Even today, as I think you pointed out before, places like Sotheby's have been fooled by forgeries. When too many cases of this come to light somehow, everyone's going to doubt the authenticity of anything these places sell (Sotheby's can never be rid of rogue employees, or have 100% perfect security systems) and the values will plummet.
Exactly!
No, we're talking about a post-scarcity future, where money is directly related to energy, and energy is cheap but not free. The energy needed to build a Dyson sphere is astronomical, but the energy needed to replicate a hamburger is probably not. In such a society, "money" would be directly related to energy. Small, simple things like food and drinks and iPads would be nearly worthless, as the energy needed to make them is tiny. Starships and orbital cities would likely be too expensive for any one person to afford.
Think of the "basic income" schemes being debated today: if everyone had a guaranteed annual income of $30k, and there was cheap and fast public transit (like SkyTran) so you didn't need to spend a giant chunk of your income on a car and insurance, and ghettos and poverty have been eliminated so inexpensive, decent, basic (and safe) housing is available most anywhere, most people wouldn't need any more money than that for their basic living costs. $30k is enough for all the food you need for a year, and medical care in countries with good healthcare systems (not the US). But it isn't going to buy you a megayacht or an original Picasso. Presumably, the Star Trek future is something like this: everyone gets a certain allowance, which will afford you all the basics, food (which is excellent since it's replicated, so you're not stuck with McDonald's shit), decent housing (but not exclusive Hawaiian beachfront property), some extra for inter-star-system travel now and then, but not enough to buy your own starship, secret base in a volcano of Io, etc.
As I said in another post here, I'm talking about products/goods, not services and performances. Sex isn't something you can replicate (until you make those human-like androids you speak of). I was addressing the idea that people would pay lots more for something made by humans, or for "originals" rather than copies; my point there is that they wouldn't when you can get an identical copy for next to nothing. This obviously doesn't apply to services, experiences, etc. But for physical products, it does. We're already seeing this with digital goods; who's going to pay more for an "original" copy of an MP3 song? No one; digital copies are all just that: identical copies. Same goes for physical goods. Who would pay more for an autographed book? Well if I take that book and stick it in a 3D scanner and replicate it at the molecular level, autograph ink and all, and upload it to the internet for everyone to make copies at will, then the value of that book becomes nothing, because any such book you see is probably just a copy. With services, there's no way to do this, since humans aren't inanimate objects that can be replicated at will (though this does bring up the question of: what happens when you can replicate people at will using a replicator? Even if it's illegal, this has some scary implications).
Your custom spaceship will only be a luxury until someone figures out how to make a copy cheaply. That's the whole point. After that point, when everyone is flying around in a clone of your spaceship, no one will care that yours was "custom", because it's identical to everyone else's. Maybe for a short time you'll have some increased social status because of your unique spaceship, but only as long as yours is unique.
See, there's this thing called provenance, tracked and managed from multiple redundant sources to ensure validity.
Maybe, but even today's art world has had a lot of trouble with that, as the other poster here has pointed out with instances of forgeries being sold as the real thing. If we have trouble with it now, how will anyone be able to tell in the future that some piece of valuable original art hasn't been stolen and replaced with an identical replicated copy? There have been multiple cases of very elaborate and well-planned thefts using very good (but not perfect) forgeries. If someone on the inside (an art gallery employee for instance) is in on it, how is anyone to know? All that provenance stuff isn't worth any more than the amount of trust you have in all the people involved. If even one person there can be bought off, or the security is imperfect, then the entire organization can't be trusted.
One of the issues I have with TFA is that the equating with Star Trek TOS simply means the same fundamental flaws exist. For example, if there's the whole "freed from want" thing, then the need to steal a starship wouldn't exist. However, it formed the basis of a number of episodes. In a post-scarcity world, there wouldn't be such a need as one can simply 3d print the starship, dilithium and all, along with the computers to run it and then simply download the software off the Uninet.
I think you might be reading things a little too literally. TOS wasn't all that great at elaborating on the backstory behind the society there anyway, but when they said "freed from want", they probably meant in the more basic sense: in that society, everything would only cost as much as the energy needed to make it. Energy would be cheap, but not completely free. The amount of energy needed to make a bowl of spaghetti or a cheeseburger would be pretty insignificant, and that society probably gives everyone a certain energy allowance, which would cover all your basic needs and wants. And in that society, a lot of things which we want here wouldn't be necessary. Want a meal? No problem. Want a car? You don't need one, because we don't have asphalt roads and instead use automated hovercars that we borrow at will. Want a house? You don't need one because everyone is assigned a dwelling (this one is pretty debateable how it works since real estate can't be replicated, unless we start talking about VR and stuff like that) and dwellings don't need to be constantly replaced. Want a computer? No problem, just print/replicate it. Want a chair? No problem. Want a starship? That's a problem: it requires far more energy than your allowance. So really big, energy-hogging things like starships remain the property of the State, just like we do now. But who knows, maybe some people save up their allowance and buy themselves small shuttlecraft so they don't have to take the larger transports other people usually use. It's all speculation of course, but in a society where all you need is energy to replicate things and energy is fairly cheap, small things just aren't going to cost much, unlike now where a high-quality meal will cost you a good fraction of a day's wages.
Then there are the issues around population, a key driver in scarcity. Star Trek TOS seems to ensure low populations by killing off significant amounts of population as colonies are wiped out by various means
I think you're reading too much into this too. These colonies probably exist because the main worlds are probably highly populated (people without the need to work to survive might have more time to procreate, esp. if medicine allows longer lifespans), though not ridiculously so (current trends already show educated, well-off people voluntarily limit their procreation without any oppressive measures), so people might be interested in becoming colonists to see someplace new, to go to a "frontier" (like early settlers in America) where there's no real existing society and they can start their own, maybe they wan
That's not "playing politics". When someone uses that phrase in regards to corporations, they're talking about the goings-on at the higher levels in the organization, between the layers of upper and middle management. The engineers at the bottom aren't involved in "playing politics"; it's about the managers above them fighting with each other and stabbing each other in the back to get more influence and power in the organization.
Yes, workers do need some kind of leadership that's able to best use their strengths and deal with their weaknesses to make the group most effective as a whole. But various business divisions fighting with each other does not further that goal; just look at Microsoft, which is infamous for its divisions backstabbing each other at every turn.
I'm talking about goods/products, not performances. Obviously, performances can't be replicated until we're either living in The Matrix or we have the technology from "Strange Days", or at least we have holograms. However, you bring up a good point: when we have holograms so good that you can't tell if you're watching live actors or holograms at a play, then why would anyone favor live actors? Sure, people will say they prefer live actors, but how do they know they're seeing live actors and the playhouse isn't just showing them holograms?