It never really ever had "relevant" market share. Hypervisors only have been in the market for roughly ten years, and its not like they have been running nuclear power plants. Its closest relative, the microkernel, has in QNX, and other proprietary products.
Most likely, the authors are envisioning a future Mars mission being propelled by chemical rockets. And that would requires oxygen (or water as the storage medium). But that's all wrong. The true rational approach would be to develop ION propulsion, which does not require oxygen, and does not require a lot of propellant. So assuming the future manned Mars mission is attempted, it wouldn't be using chemical rockets, which means not a lot of propellant mass needs to be moved into space from Earth.
If there are metal deposits to be mined from the Moon, that would save a lot of mass if the superstructures could be manufactured from space. Right now, no one believes there are such deposits readily available, so that is wishful thinking.
Really, the only integral material that could be produced from the Moon would be water, which would be indispensable for sustaining the crew, making available an emergency supply for oxygen, and being a component of a radiation shield.
As I see it, there are only two critical aspects of developing a Mars mission. First would be that ION drive, so that the mission can be completed in less than a year, which requires better propulsion than chemical rockets. Second would be the scheme used to shield the crew from radiation. If they can't survive a solar flare, there's no point in even trying to go to Mars. Then it makes sense to figure out just how much mass is required.
If lots of water is needed for a Mars mission, then the design of a robot factory to produce water on the Moon makes sense. If not, then may as well eat the cost of a Mars mission launching water from Earth, rather than designing a robot factory for the Moon.
The flaw to your rationale is that a fetus has the same value as a human life. Who's is protecting the life of human spermatozoa from the debauched actions of males?
Linux doesn't lack brainpower & talent. Cite an actual schism which has drawn off participants from the linux kernel to a competing, redundant kernel. You have no clue of what you're talking about.
The only schism that I'm aware of in FOSS that actually had consequences was gcc/ecgs. Two competing groups with differing visions, which eventually led to a much more capable compiler and reunification.
Why not Dubai? 1) Lack of infrastructure to support the venture. 2) Volatile region; what happens when you have to ditch in the Gulf of Oman, Yemen, or Iran? 3) You can buy off local gov't, but you can't buy off the ruler of Dubai. 4) Technology embargo issues.
Why New Mexico? 1) Its in the US. Los Alamos is located in the state. 2) Its relatively close to the equator while in the US. Florida is closer, but its going to be underwater within the century; also hurricanes. 3) Desert. Tons of cheap, open, unpopulated space.
Its disgraceful that money is being pissed away on a lightly used, space center gamble, but would the money be "available" for the local budget otherwise?
But its still bull pucky. Amazon doesn't make a huge profit on their hardware devices. They're trying to make (some) money from collecting customer information and creating consumer "lock in" on their services. They can easily create that consumer "lock in" by requiring information transfer on the software/API end, rather than in the hardware. Let Google use their hardware products on their services platform, as long as the firmware conforms with the API. This is that stupid lockin/exclusivity that Microsoft tried to do with their OS back two decades ago. Its utterly unnecessary, and it will only alienate customers.
Then again, the cable companies haven't learned either. The difference is that if Amazon became successful with their version of lock in, they'll just spend the a fortune and a decade fighting the FCC and DOJ and losing.
There will finally be a gummint shutdown, freak out & piss off every indifferent voter dependent on gummint checks, freak out the commercial sector that depends on the gummint and banks to deliver a quarterly profit, JUST IN TIME for national elections in November!
Launching heavy stuff from Earth, like radiation shielding, is a non starter.
I'm thinking more like building robots to send to the moon, create automated factories to synthesize H2O, and using that H2O as the "radiation shielding".
Hell, in my pipedreams, we send the robot factories to Mars to synthesize crucial raw materials (on some form of nuclear pulse or ion rocket), and then send the human crew to hog the spotlight.
If you only work with chemical rocket technology, it takes humans one to two years to reachMars. You build the VASMIRs &/or nuclear propulsion in LEO (or GEO), and it will probably allow a crew to reach Mars in 6 months. That would make a 1 year Mars mission feasible (and give you a propulsion system to get you to the asteroid belts & outer planets).
Chemical rockets are probably the only way in technical/political terms to move humans & machinery into LEO.
You forget, a self sustaining colony on Mars means humanity survives a big asteroid strike, solar flare, loss of the Van Allen radiation belts, exceptionally narrow & unlucky cosmic ray event, nuclear warfare, etc. etc.
(Plus, I'm not sure if I want to live in a Fascist America that has the 1% keeping the 99% in thrall with surveillance and computer threat modelling.)
Believe it or not, I think its a step that should be skipped, in order to save money. Most of the astronauts time will be spent in zero-gravity, not partial gravity. Living on the Moon doesn't accomplish anything, other than spending money.
we should be building a radio telescope array on the far side of the moon.
As I've already explained elsewhere, this step should be skipped. Robotic repair will remove the need to place a moon base on the moon to maintain a telescope.
First, man has to prove they can get to Mars, and sustain life for roughly 1 year, mostly in space. Right there, that means shelling out tax dollars now. Every journey begins with the first step. (Yeah, I know, you can't get yourself out of bed...)
Then more enterprising people can work on ways to make a permanent self-sustaining habitats. Once you complete that phase, it becomes possible to move to Mars. Making it affordable and finding a motivation to get people to move is the easiest last step.
Spending tax dollars specifically to "mine" the "asteroid belt" has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Where did I say anything about "spending tax dollars"? Like all colonization in human history, colonization only works if there is some economic incentive for it. There is no economic incentive going to Mars, no matter how many tax dollars you spend.
If you only depend on economic investment to drive basic science, then scientific advancement would come to a dead stop. You can only obtain that money via national investment; through politicians that can sell to their taxpaying voters its money worth spending on something that may not give a certain return on profit.
The Apollo program was not pursued primarily for scientific advancement. It was a gov't subsidization program for the aerospace industry, so they could attract more talented minds to an industry primarily there to develop more accurate, reliable nuclear weapon delivery systems. Apollo was the snowjob sold to the American people, to convince them to spend 10% of the GNP towards sending SPAM to the Moon, in the name of science. (See how the real world works?)
The lesson here is to sell the taxpayer to spend their tax dollars to send Man to Mars. Then spend even more money to colonize Mars. The payoff? A nicer place to live (after 10 billion people living in civilization's metabolic waste make Earth a lot less nicer place to live), and the guarantee that humanity can survive a cosmic catastrophe.
There is an economic incentive to mine asteroids.
Its only a pipedream for government bureaucrats with a science background. There's nothing out in the asteroid belts which we can't mine on Earth (or Mars). Even if it were, the cost to use rockets & maintain miners in space long enough to extract the minerals would cost more than the rare minerals mined. And even if it were the case, I'd still not have any interest in paying money so the Koch Brothers can get richer. Let them spend the billions of dollars to develop the technology. They're the ones profiting from it.
Well, if you believe that, then going to Mars is the wrong thing to do. Mars is a dead end, just like the moon was.
Mars is anything but a dead end.
1) Its far away enough from Earth to survive a disaster that ends life on Earth.
2) Mars probably has enough gravity to avoid the debilitating physical deterioration caused by long term zero gravity.
3) Mars has H2O and probably enough O2 to make a colony self sustaining (not so with the Moon).
4) Mars is big enough to have something worth mining.
5) If you can make it on Mars, you can make it anywhere in space.
No, that science can only be properly pursued by the rich. There are all sorts of engineering and science challenges, but they all require money. Space exploration costs so much money, it can only be pursued by the nation state (unless Musk can demonstrate otherwise). So now, every scientific pursuit requires a cost/reward analysis. Guess what doesn't get done, if you can't get enough taxpayers behind it?
Lets say China decides to establish a "permanent" moon base. It costs a hundred million dollars per rocket launch (LEO). It would cost even more to build a "safe" Saturn V type rocket that could push machinery to reach the Moon. Lets say that level rocket costs 4x as much. Now say you need 1200 Saturn V launches to send enough machinery to the Moon to establish a "permanent" base. Its serious national wealth needed to put up a cursory moon base, with machines to bake or hydrolyze enough O2 and H2O to survive there, without daily shipments from Earth. You'll still need to send food & manufactured parts. And scientists and astronauts are trained specialists; they do not work for free. It would probably cost hundreds of millions per day to maintain a functioning moon base. What do you think happens once humans figure out that gravity is more conducive to physiology on Mars? Science has advanced to the point that habitats can be established in space, with access to the right raw materials? Then what's the reason to keep a moonbase working? There's nothing to mine on the Moon, you can do the same space research in LEO or on Mars, and its probably easier to build survivable, self-sustaining habitats on Mars. Now you're just bleeding a hundred million dollars per day for very expensive gov't workers. Live in the real world.
I'm not so certain that Mars can be colonized with today's technology. But mankind certainly has the technology to visit it today. And man will need to develop space propulsion to get to Mars quickly enough to ensure a survivable expedition. So, in order to colonize Mars, you first have to develop technology to send man to Mars and survive the trip. For that reason, I'm all for taxpayers shelling out money to attempt to send a crew to Mars, and letting a small percentage of poor people somewhere on Earth to die from starvation and not have a happier life.
A bigger reason not to colonize Mars is that there are far better things to do in space.
There is nothing more important that man can do in space than ensure its survival from a random galactic event. Spending tax dollars specifically to "mine" the "asteroid belt" has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
> Earth is our one and only hope in the long-term.
Then by your mentality, the only conclusion to make is that the human race is doomed. The technology to colonize Mars is probably within a century to grasp. Frankly, a Mars expedition could be accomplished now, with yet undeveloped nuclear rocket technology. Its just a matter of national/corporate will.
If there's no mineral wealth to exploit on the Moon, then there is almost no point in colonizing it.
The only "advantage" the Moon has over Mars is that its only a 3 day trip using obsolete chemical rocket technology. But the Moon has no value advantage over Mars as a colonization point.
There's almost no technical point to colonizing the Moon. As far as we know, there's no mineral wealth to be mined from the Moon. (He3 could be harvested if some form of fusion power could be commercially utilized.) The ONLY advantage to colonizing the Moon is that access to the Moon can be accommodated by primitive chemical rockets with a 3 day transit time. Any Moonbase that requires support from Earth is basically doomed.
Any real attempt at putting Man on Mars requires developing a new form of space propulsion. There are cutting edge nuclear pulse rockets technology which could reduce a 2+ year transit time to 5 months. We know that humans can survive over a year in space with no permanent deleterious effects. This would make a Mars expedition (& eventual colonization) feasible.
on getting Millennials focused on the "nuclear weapon proliferation" problem. A lot of good it will do them while their world becomes a devastated chaos from man made "climate change".
How many more nations this century will develop nuclear weapons? Obtaining the raw material and then refining it is still an intractable problem which only can be attempted at a nation state level. Its not even realistically implementable by a multinational corporation. Even if there are small "rogue" nations that develop the capability to implement such weapons, the first world has developed technologically to the point it can shutdown most delivery systems.
On the other hand, once the global warming effect kicks in, most of the developed real estate in the world will be under water, the weather will inflict damage equivalent to small nuclear fission devices, and desertification will devastate most food producing nations. That's going to have way more impact on "first world problems" than a "rogue" nuclear state.
Actually, I was thinking about the income tax regime that got installed after the 16th amendment was ratified. By 1918, there was a graduated surtax which set the top rate to 77% for people making over $1M/yr (to help payoff WW I). Even though it was eventually removed, it was restored in 1932 to help manage federal finances during the Great Depression. The key thing to keep in mind was that there was a ridiculous disparity in wealth between the 1% and the 99%. That disparity did not get reduced until the 1960's. Having a 90% income tax may seem ridiculously unfair to the top bracket, but when you realize they still net more income than the lower brackets and still possess most of the nation's wealth, it becomes a matter of taxing people who "actually" have disposable income.
In a BI regime, still trying to maintain a capitalist style market economy, "someone" has to be subsidizing the people who don't make any money, and that weight will have to be carried by the 0.01% (top income). The unemployable class has to explode in size as technology eliminates driving related industries, and robotics eliminates other menial labor. Even jobs like programming will be eliminated by pre-sentient systems, and doctors' salaries will be driven to the ground by similar "expert" systems. The only entry jobs left in 2-3 decades will be occupations that cannot be replaced by a computer.
There will still be attempts at cheating; in some cases, downright white collar theft. There is little "efficiencies" to be gained by consolidation of grants.
> I am not sure how to deal with the case of people having a whole lot of babies early on and then accepting the offer.
Society is stuck supporting the babies, which effectively grandfather's in those babies. Its a trivial detail, considering the economic manipulation that will be coming about.
Slashdot Mirror
It never really ever had "relevant" market share. Hypervisors only have been in the market for roughly ten years, and its not like they have been running nuclear power plants. Its closest relative, the microkernel, has in QNX, and other proprietary products.
Most likely, the authors are envisioning a future Mars mission being propelled by chemical rockets. And that would requires oxygen (or water as the storage medium). But that's all wrong. The true rational approach would be to develop ION propulsion, which does not require oxygen, and does not require a lot of propellant. So assuming the future manned Mars mission is attempted, it wouldn't be using chemical rockets, which means not a lot of propellant mass needs to be moved into space from Earth.
If there are metal deposits to be mined from the Moon, that would save a lot of mass if the superstructures could be manufactured from space. Right now, no one believes there are such deposits readily available, so that is wishful thinking.
Really, the only integral material that could be produced from the Moon would be water, which would be indispensable for sustaining the crew, making available an emergency supply for oxygen, and being a component of a radiation shield.
As I see it, there are only two critical aspects of developing a Mars mission. First would be that ION drive, so that the mission can be completed in less than a year, which requires better propulsion than chemical rockets. Second would be the scheme used to shield the crew from radiation. If they can't survive a solar flare, there's no point in even trying to go to Mars. Then it makes sense to figure out just how much mass is required.
If lots of water is needed for a Mars mission, then the design of a robot factory to produce water on the Moon makes sense. If not, then may as well eat the cost of a Mars mission launching water from Earth, rather than designing a robot factory for the Moon.
The flaw to your rationale is that a fetus has the same value as a human life. Who's is protecting the life of human spermatozoa from the debauched actions of males?
This is why Linux will NEVER WIN
Win what? The X-prize? A T-Shirt?
Linux doesn't lack brainpower & talent. Cite an actual schism which has drawn off participants from the linux kernel to a competing, redundant kernel. You have no clue of what you're talking about.
The only schism that I'm aware of in FOSS that actually had consequences was gcc/ecgs. Two competing groups with differing visions, which eventually led to a much more capable compiler and reunification.
Why not Dubai?
1) Lack of infrastructure to support the venture.
2) Volatile region; what happens when you have to ditch in the Gulf of Oman, Yemen, or Iran?
3) You can buy off local gov't, but you can't buy off the ruler of Dubai.
4) Technology embargo issues.
Why New Mexico?
1) Its in the US. Los Alamos is located in the state.
2) Its relatively close to the equator while in the US. Florida is closer, but its going to be underwater within the century; also hurricanes.
3) Desert. Tons of cheap, open, unpopulated space.
Its disgraceful that money is being pissed away on a lightly used, space center gamble, but would the money be "available" for the local budget otherwise?
We're not sending a manned mission to Mars to explore Mars. We want to send human guinea pigs to Mars and back, to see if they'll survive the trip.
But its still bull pucky. Amazon doesn't make a huge profit on their hardware devices. They're trying to make (some) money from collecting customer information and creating consumer "lock in" on their services. They can easily create that consumer "lock in" by requiring information transfer on the software/API end, rather than in the hardware. Let Google use their hardware products on their services platform, as long as the firmware conforms with the API. This is that stupid lockin/exclusivity that Microsoft tried to do with their OS back two decades ago. Its utterly unnecessary, and it will only alienate customers.
Then again, the cable companies haven't learned either. The difference is that if Amazon became successful with their version of lock in, they'll just spend the a fortune and a decade fighting the FCC and DOJ and losing.
There will finally be a gummint shutdown, freak out & piss off every indifferent voter dependent on gummint checks, freak out the commercial sector that depends on the gummint and banks to deliver a quarterly profit, JUST IN TIME for national elections in November!
Go Tea Party!
Moving to Mars one day may be a possible way to address the situation.
Launching heavy stuff from Earth, like radiation shielding, is a non starter.
I'm thinking more like building robots to send to the moon, create automated factories to synthesize H2O, and using that H2O as the "radiation shielding".
Hell, in my pipedreams, we send the robot factories to Mars to synthesize crucial raw materials (on some form of nuclear pulse or ion rocket), and then send the human crew to hog the spotlight.
If you only work with chemical rocket technology, it takes humans one to two years to reachMars. You build the VASMIRs &/or nuclear propulsion in LEO (or GEO), and it will probably allow a crew to reach Mars in 6 months. That would make a 1 year Mars mission feasible (and give you a propulsion system to get you to the asteroid belts & outer planets).
Chemical rockets are probably the only way in technical/political terms to move humans & machinery into LEO.
You forget, a self sustaining colony on Mars means humanity survives a big asteroid strike, solar flare, loss of the Van Allen radiation belts, exceptionally narrow & unlucky cosmic ray event, nuclear warfare, etc. etc.
(Plus, I'm not sure if I want to live in a Fascist America that has the 1% keeping the 99% in thrall with surveillance and computer threat modelling.)
It's just practice for Mars.
Believe it or not, I think its a step that should be skipped, in order to save money. Most of the astronauts time will be spent in zero-gravity, not partial gravity. Living on the Moon doesn't accomplish anything, other than spending money.
we should be building a radio telescope array on the far side of the moon.
As I've already explained elsewhere, this step should be skipped. Robotic repair will remove the need to place a moon base on the moon to maintain a telescope.
First, man has to prove they can get to Mars, and sustain life for roughly 1 year, mostly in space. Right there, that means shelling out tax dollars now. Every journey begins with the first step. (Yeah, I know, you can't get yourself out of bed...)
Then more enterprising people can work on ways to make a permanent self-sustaining habitats. Once you complete that phase, it becomes possible to move to Mars. Making it affordable and finding a motivation to get people to move is the easiest last step.
Spending tax dollars specifically to "mine" the "asteroid belt" has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Where did I say anything about "spending tax dollars"? Like all colonization in human history, colonization only works if there is some economic incentive for it. There is no economic incentive going to Mars, no matter how many tax dollars you spend.
If you only depend on economic investment to drive basic science, then scientific advancement would come to a dead stop. You can only obtain that money via national investment; through politicians that can sell to their taxpaying voters its money worth spending on something that may not give a certain return on profit.
The Apollo program was not pursued primarily for scientific advancement. It was a gov't subsidization program for the aerospace industry, so they could attract more talented minds to an industry primarily there to develop more accurate, reliable nuclear weapon delivery systems. Apollo was the snowjob sold to the American people, to convince them to spend 10% of the GNP towards sending SPAM to the Moon, in the name of science. (See how the real world works?)
The lesson here is to sell the taxpayer to spend their tax dollars to send Man to Mars. Then spend even more money to colonize Mars. The payoff? A nicer place to live (after 10 billion people living in civilization's metabolic waste make Earth a lot less nicer place to live), and the guarantee that humanity can survive a cosmic catastrophe.
There is an economic incentive to mine asteroids.
Its only a pipedream for government bureaucrats with a science background. There's nothing out in the asteroid belts which we can't mine on Earth (or Mars). Even if it were, the cost to use rockets & maintain miners in space long enough to extract the minerals would cost more than the rare minerals mined. And even if it were the case, I'd still not have any interest in paying money so the Koch Brothers can get richer. Let them spend the billions of dollars to develop the technology. They're the ones profiting from it.
Well, if you believe that, then going to Mars is the wrong thing to do. Mars is a dead end, just like the moon was.
Mars is anything but a dead end.
1) Its far away enough from Earth to survive a disaster that ends life on Earth.
2) Mars probably has enough gravity to avoid the debilitating physical deterioration caused by long term zero gravity.
3) Mars has H2O and probably enough O2 to make a colony self sustaining (not so with the Moon).
4) Mars is big enough to have something worth mining.
5) If you can make it on Mars, you can make it anywhere in space.
No, that science can only be properly pursued by the rich. There are all sorts of engineering and science challenges, but they all require money. Space exploration costs so much money, it can only be pursued by the nation state (unless Musk can demonstrate otherwise). So now, every scientific pursuit requires a cost/reward analysis. Guess what doesn't get done, if you can't get enough taxpayers behind it?
Lets say China decides to establish a "permanent" moon base. It costs a hundred million dollars per rocket launch (LEO). It would cost even more to build a "safe" Saturn V type rocket that could push machinery to reach the Moon. Lets say that level rocket costs 4x as much. Now say you need 1200 Saturn V launches to send enough machinery to the Moon to establish a "permanent" base. Its serious national wealth needed to put up a cursory moon base, with machines to bake or hydrolyze enough O2 and H2O to survive there, without daily shipments from Earth. You'll still need to send food & manufactured parts. And scientists and astronauts are trained specialists; they do not work for free. It would probably cost hundreds of millions per day to maintain a functioning moon base. What do you think happens once humans figure out that gravity is more conducive to physiology on Mars? Science has advanced to the point that habitats can be established in space, with access to the right raw materials? Then what's the reason to keep a moonbase working? There's nothing to mine on the Moon, you can do the same space research in LEO or on Mars, and its probably easier to build survivable, self-sustaining habitats on Mars. Now you're just bleeding a hundred million dollars per day for very expensive gov't workers. Live in the real world.
I'm not so certain that Mars can be colonized with today's technology. But mankind certainly has the technology to visit it today. And man will need to develop space propulsion to get to Mars quickly enough to ensure a survivable expedition. So, in order to colonize Mars, you first have to develop technology to send man to Mars and survive the trip. For that reason, I'm all for taxpayers shelling out money to attempt to send a crew to Mars, and letting a small percentage of poor people somewhere on Earth to die from starvation and not have a happier life.
A bigger reason not to colonize Mars is that there are far better things to do in space.
There is nothing more important that man can do in space than ensure its survival from a random galactic event. Spending tax dollars specifically to "mine" the "asteroid belt" has got to be the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
> Earth is our one and only hope in the long-term.
Then by your mentality, the only conclusion to make is that the human race is doomed. The technology to colonize Mars is probably within a century to grasp. Frankly, a Mars expedition could be accomplished now, with yet undeveloped nuclear rocket technology. Its just a matter of national/corporate will.
If there's no mineral wealth to exploit on the Moon, then there is almost no point in colonizing it.
The only "advantage" the Moon has over Mars is that its only a 3 day trip using obsolete chemical rocket technology. But the Moon has no value advantage over Mars as a colonization point.
There's almost no technical point to colonizing the Moon. As far as we know, there's no mineral wealth to be mined from the Moon. (He3 could be harvested if some form of fusion power could be commercially utilized.) The ONLY advantage to colonizing the Moon is that access to the Moon can be accommodated by primitive chemical rockets with a 3 day transit time. Any Moonbase that requires support from Earth is basically doomed.
Any real attempt at putting Man on Mars requires developing a new form of space propulsion. There are cutting edge nuclear pulse rockets technology which could reduce a 2+ year transit time to 5 months. We know that humans can survive over a year in space with no permanent deleterious effects. This would make a Mars expedition (& eventual colonization) feasible.
OpenGL is obviously unacceptable in a commercial market enviroment. If it was any good, more games would be based on that graphics engine.
on getting Millennials focused on the "nuclear weapon proliferation" problem. A lot of good it will do them while their world becomes a devastated chaos from man made "climate change".
How many more nations this century will develop nuclear weapons? Obtaining the raw material and then refining it is still an intractable problem which only can be attempted at a nation state level. Its not even realistically implementable by a multinational corporation. Even if there are small "rogue" nations that develop the capability to implement such weapons, the first world has developed technologically to the point it can shutdown most delivery systems.
On the other hand, once the global warming effect kicks in, most of the developed real estate in the world will be under water, the weather will inflict damage equivalent to small nuclear fission devices, and desertification will devastate most food producing nations. That's going to have way more impact on "first world problems" than a "rogue" nuclear state.
Actually, I was thinking about the income tax regime that got installed after the 16th amendment was ratified. By 1918, there was a graduated surtax which set the top rate to 77% for people making over $1M/yr (to help payoff WW I). Even though it was eventually removed, it was restored in 1932 to help manage federal finances during the Great Depression. The key thing to keep in mind was that there was a ridiculous disparity in wealth between the 1% and the 99%. That disparity did not get reduced until the 1960's. Having a 90% income tax may seem ridiculously unfair to the top bracket, but when you realize they still net more income than the lower brackets and still possess most of the nation's wealth, it becomes a matter of taxing people who "actually" have disposable income.
In a BI regime, still trying to maintain a capitalist style market economy, "someone" has to be subsidizing the people who don't make any money, and that weight will have to be carried by the 0.01% (top income). The unemployable class has to explode in size as technology eliminates driving related industries, and robotics eliminates other menial labor. Even jobs like programming will be eliminated by pre-sentient systems, and doctors' salaries will be driven to the ground by similar "expert" systems. The only entry jobs left in 2-3 decades will be occupations that cannot be replaced by a computer.
> (and chances to cheat)
There will still be attempts at cheating; in some cases, downright white collar theft. There is little "efficiencies" to be gained by consolidation of grants.
> I am not sure how to deal with the case of people having a whole lot of babies early on and then accepting the offer.
Society is stuck supporting the babies, which effectively grandfather's in those babies. Its a trivial detail, considering the economic manipulation that will be coming about.