Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I’d love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
Constructing an Orbital ring and then using that to get a form of space elevator built.
Totally possible to build with our current technology but the cost if we do it pre space elevator or similar is pretty insane.
Building a ring let’s us basically have a stable space side anchor at low earth orbit instead of geo sync ish like you need for a normal space elevator to match ground speed.
Even more fun is cost for additional rings drops massively and you can build them in different orientations you can get space elevators to rings without having to be on the equator.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E
Last and my favorite part is the possibility of having literally trains that go up to a ring cross an ocean and go back down. Wouldn’t be faster than planes but massively better cargo capacity and efficiency as well as comfortable for passengers.
From what I’ve seen about a space elevator, is that the we don’t have the means to do it without creating a massive material shortage in the world.
The most plausible idea I’ve seen is using the centrifugal force of the earth spinning to keep a mass at LEO. But without a futuristic material like long carbon nanotubes, we would have essentially a ten mile thick metal cord tapering to something a few feet thick, and you would be limited in payload to like a few hundred pounds.
Just curious, why do you think a ring would predate the elevator?
As AAA said in a comment beside me it isn’t so much that I expect it would predate a space elevator. Simply that it is possible with current tech rather than still waiting on additional moderately likely breakthroughs like long chain carbon nanotube tether.
Also there are plenty of options to have the vast majority of the material be from space and not the surface since the core idea is a metal like copper being spun above orbital speed after being made into a full loop then used for the mag lev to keep at ground speed. There are absolutely a lot of astroids that might allow for that.
Just curious, why do you think a ring would predate the elevator?
(Not OP) Because simply from a construction-point-of-view it’s achievable now. Unlike a space elevator, a ring could actually be built and used with today’s materials.
Maybe I’m just a pessimist, but I don’t see us launching enough space raw material from ground level to build it. Not trying to sound rude, I’ve just been in the logistics game(even helped put a small satellite into orbit) and I just don’t see the millions of tons of material needed being launched from the ground. Again, not trying to sound rude, this is just my observation from being “in the game”.
I think a moon colony was possible at minimum the mid 90’s. I only think bureaucracy got in the way along with a very stunted space shuttle.
Agreed, a lot of sci-fi infastructure is technically feasable its just the logistics and our lack of organisation as a species that gets in the way. We could also technically start on a dyson swarm and a lunar space elevator (not an earth one though) with modern technology and materials.
There is also the cost.
The American program to go to the Moon cost several percentage points of American GDP over several years to get there. The USA could have physically had a moon base up there, but it would have been wildly expensive.
I will agree there. But the mining and manufacturing potential is rather insane. We could make money back rather quickly.
I’m going to go against the trend here and say that libertarian corporate city-states actually sound pretty cool. They’re generally not portrayed positively in fiction but I think they might work well in practice. I’m a lot less optimistic about cooperating with all my fellow Americans in order to govern the whole country democratically than I used to be. Choosing to move to an independent city-state with a government that I agree with (albeit one I don’t elect) might work better.
You’ll get more interest in an anarcho-syndicalist zone.
The problem is capitalism and corporations. We don’t need fiction to see those two don’t work, they don’t work in real life.
yeah, being blacklisted and exiled from modern society all because I called great leader “Fuckerberg” in 2010.
so fucking cool /s
Gonna be hard to move to Amazonia if all you’ve got in terms of money are Zuckbucks.
Found Peter Thiel’s account
Look at the companies that are really successful. Telecoms, Amazon, Nestle… the big ones. Note the trend of every single one of them doing the absolute most unethical shit they possibly can to make a quick buck. Do you really want to hand them things like a military/police force, or authority over your civil liberties?
Not to say that existing governments aren’t also abusing those powers, but do you seriously think your life would improve if you gave that power over to fucking Comcast or something??
Corporations are predictable - they try to make money. If their profit motive aligns with my own interests, then what they do will be good for me. Amazon, for example, sells me all sorts of things for low prices and with great customer support. My interests and corporate interests won’t necessarily align and that’s why exit rights are so important, but at least I will still be dealing with an entity acting more-or-less rationally.
If their profit motive aligns with my own interests
Their profit motive does not align with your interests - not by choice. Their hand was forced by labor and consumer protection laws. Take off the legal constraints, and suddenly their business model includes things like slavery, child labor, unsafe work conditions, insane hours, monopolies… these aren’t crazy-extreme hypotheticals, they’re things we’ve had to actively step in and say “no!” before because they were actually happening.
Companies are not your friend. They’re not even a symbiotic parasite: they’re a barely contained cancer.
Plenty of other people’s interests don’t align with mine either - these days, it seems like most people’s interests don’t. What makes a corporation less reliable than my fellow Americans?
Divisions of power. Notice how shit things are getting under the Trump administration due to his (successful) attacks on our checks and balances.
Handing the reigns over to a corporation would be a similar situation, except that a corporation doesn’t waste half its time playing golf or shitposting on twitter.
Imagine a Trump that doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, isn’t stupid, and doesn’t have any legal framework to tell him ‘no’ …and can’t just be assassinated by a fed up civilian. Literally no checks and balances, including vigilante justice.
…also did you see the bit about slavery and monopolies and such? Kinda seems like we’re glossing over that to address relative alignment of interests, which is moot as fuck when things like slavery and monopolies are on the table.
Socialized healthcare. A living minimum wage. UBI.
A permanent base on the moon. We should have had that 40 years ago, minimum.
Madness!!
The moon base (and/or moon orbit base) isn’t just cool, it would facilitate building ships in space that don’t have to escape the gravity well. That and asteroid mining (to get materials for ship building) would be such a huge step to having a real presence off-planet.
Mine materials on asteroids, send them to the moon refinery and manufacturing facility, send parts up to lunar orbital ship building facility, send ships to Europa, Ganymede, etc.
THAT’S COMMUNISM
Socialism technically, but I get your sarcasm. I hope it is sarcasm.
Well they did say Sci-Fi and we all know how likely that stuff is. So I think we’re “safe” with Late Stage Capitalism.
The technology has never been what is holding us back.
we’re commies on the moon, we carry a…
UBI. Not only is it viable but it works in improving everyone’s lives, not just the people receiving it.
UBI would be amazing for the economy. It’s basically Trickle UP economics. The money will still eventually end up in the pocket of some rich guy, but at least it will grease the gears of the economy on the way up.
UBI would be amazing for the economy.
Citation needed
Sure, but have you considered that this would loosen the hold capitalism has on the wage slaves? Won’t someone think of the shareholders‽
At best it would prop up capitalism until we can replace it with something better.
It’s literally just giving people more money to shove into the capitalist system. You don’t change a system by feeding it.
I won’t say it’s a bad thing… but it’s not a solution. It’s a stop gap.
It’s probably a necessary step towards dismantling the monetary system entirely, though.
In the Star Trek future, they couldn’t accomplish that until they perfected Replicator technology.
There were no replicators in TOS
TOS was just the dress rehearsal for the real Star Trek universe.
Is there a specific mention of that, or just something people assume? I googled a single reddit thread, which clearly makes me an expert (/s), and it seemed as though money was really just kind of a fuzzy concept up until they declared they didn’t use money sometime around Star Trek 4.
UBI will be necessary when the combination of AI and robotics creates a permanent 35+% unemployment rate. We will have to institute UBI, or reduce the population by that much. Which objective will each party choose to support, and how will they accomplish it?
Which objective will each party choose to support, and how will they accomplish it?
One leading party often seems willing to accept war as a means to ends they care about.
In a total lack of contrast, the other leading party seems roughly equally willing to accept war as a means to ends they care about.
The bigger question that bothers me is how much war exactly will they feel is needed for any population reduction they feel is necessary?
And will it be more war than the amount of war I would have otherwise participated in, in my lifetime?
War is a useful tool to reduce populations, but fairly inefficient until they start throwing bombs around. It can’t be the only strategy.
Another good strategy is to restrict access to medical care. Make it incredibly expensive, so costly that many people will choose to die, rather then burden their families with the cost.
Another good one is to end childhood vaccines. A good pandemic can wipe out millions. Of course, this is only happening in America, so the wealthy will be able to afford vaccines from foreign countries, and survive any strategic pandemics. I wouldn’t be surprised if Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller released a deadly virus on purpose, something like Ebola, just to speed the process along.
Then there is Climate Change, which is wreaking havoc on our environment, and causing far worst storms and floods. Restrict or even end FEMA, and our annual natural disasters can claim victims with much more efficiency.
Criminalize EVERYTHING, and throw more people in prison, where the mortality rate is much higher. Allow the military/ law enforcement to fire on protesters. Allow police to kill without consequences.
Prohibit Birthright Citizenship, allowing the deportation of millions of American citizens. Don Jr, Ivanka, and Eric are all Birthright Citizens, so they should be deported as well, but we all know that Aristocrats won’t be included.
And if doing all this, and more, doesn’t reduce the population fast enough, we can always go down the proven path of Death Camps.
Exactly, what are those useless sociopaths supposed to be doing now? Actual labor? Come on…!
Why not just distribute the resources themselves, rather than tokens to exchange for resources? If we have post scarcity, we won’t need money
There’s a few reasons. Firstly greed is a motivator, and people work hard if they believe they’ll receive more for more effort. This gets people to go out and generate the resources that need to be distributed. Second, fungible tokens allow people to trade on the open market instead of having to find a particular person who is willing to trade say, a worm gear for a bale or two of cotton. The token is the middle man that allows someone trying to sell something sell to someone who doesn’t have what the seller plans to finally trade for. That’s why money started to exist in the first place.
Even in a communist system, there needs to be a way to transfer the results of labor into the things a person needs. Money is that way. Even if it means everyone gets the same amount of money to buy what they need. Everyone’s resource needs are different. You can’t just say everyone gets the exact same everything.
Finally, we’re not post-scarcity. Not really. Until resource manufacture is so automated that it doesn’t require people to do labor to acquire it, we either pay people to do the labor or we force them to via slavery. For that reason alone, we need money.
As I said to the other person, there can be a donation and request system to make sure everyone gets what they need, without tying money into it and having this weird limit of the amount of stuff people can get, and tying the idea of value to it all.
Because distributing resources equally is a bad idea since people are individuals. You’re giving 1 chicken to the guy that loves chicken and the same amount to the vegetarian. If instead you give h both the money for 1 chicken they can decide whether they want the chicken or something else.
You don’t need currency for that. You just need a request system. And ideally some form of moral rejection mechanism that refuses to distribute sentient beings as resources. I didn’t say it had to be distributed equally just because there’s no money.
Chicken and vegetarian was just an example, also the chicken was implicitly dead in my example so it was no longer sentient, also also there might be non moral reasons, which paint color do we give people for their walls? How often? Etc etc etc.
In the request system you propose there needs to be some sort of pointing or valuation, requesting a car should not be equivalent to requesting an apple. Whatever form of valuation you use for that, there’s your currency. Not to mention that for the requesting system to be able to work the government would need to own all products so it can redistribute them according to requests, and what would it do if 100 people requested something that only 50 were made? It’s a nice idea but it becomes very complicated very fast, whereas using currency takes away all of that complication and gives you something tangible that could be implemented tomorrow instead of in 20 years being very generous.
Just because something is easier to implement doesn’t mean it will work better.
Honestly, that’s the biggest hurdle our current economic systems are facing. People go for the easy option that seems like it should work instead of the longer term plan that has more flexibility and chance for success.
The problem with your suggestion is that it still hinges on the capitalist system to provide for people. And thus is far easier to exploit.
Yeah sure, but you have got to be realistic, you’re talking about a 20/50 year plan even if you get everyone to agree with it. Yes, Capitalism is bad, yes there are problems with UBI, but the thing you’re proposing is impossible, whereas UBI is something that could be implemented tomorrow, and would set a good foundation to move things in the right direction. Don’t let perfection be the enemy of good.
Oh, is that all
Yes, but if you do it in the form of currency without changing the system in which the currency is used, it’s just feeding that system. Are capitalists suddenly going to be less greedy, and more likely to care about their compatriots instead of eager to exploit them because we give them more power and more money?
No. They won’t. They’ll just find better ways to exploit this sudden surge of basically free money.
I find it funny who ubi proponents say we need UBI because capitalism failed to have wages match cost of living and simultaneously say UBI will fix it with capitalism.
Housing is expensive because there isn’t enough. If capitalism could fix it, then housing would have at a minimum matched inflation and should have decreased in price because of technology improvements. So giving people more money absolutely cannot fix the housing crisis. UBI would be a handout for landlords.
When demand is the problem in a supply/demand economy, you can’t fix it with more demand (cash).
Capitalism fails to meet housing demand because it is constrained by regulations about things like single family zoning, setbacks, parking minimums, or minimum floor areas; and because the perverse incentives of current taxation schemes regarding the inelastic supply of land don’t incentivize land owners to put their land to its highest and best use.
Housing is a bad example of capitalism failing because the problems developers face are extremely well known and understood. Remove the frivolous regulations, adopt a georgist tax policy, and build good public infrastructure, and you’ll get far more housing than you currently have far faster than you are currently building it. Could government do better? Maybe… but I have yet to see that evidence.
Capitalism fails to meet housing demand because it is constrained by regulations about things like single family zoning,
That’s not true because when given an opportunity to build housing, developers always choose to build higher margin premium housing. Capitalism incentivizes profit and there’s no profit in cheap housing.
There is plenty of profit to be made in cheap housing, just like there is plenty of profit to be made in cheap food. You can go to the grocery store right now and buy a tomato for not very much money, and the store that sold it, and trucker who transported it, and the farmer that grew it will all make money - despite food’s famously slim margins.
The situation with housing is more like this: the government has dictated that only 5 acres of land in the country can be used to grow tomatos. And each tomato plant can only grow a maximum of 10 tomatos. If you are a tomato farmer, what do you do? Well, since you can’t grow as many tomatos as you want, you start looking for ways to increase your margin on each tomato you sell - selling the most appealing, perfect, organic tomatos you can.
So it is with housing. When the government finally approves the development of some denser housing in a desireable part of town, the developer wants to build the highest margin housing that they can, since they won’t be able to build 50 more apartment buildings. So they build luxury apartments. However, if the government said “you can build as much and as densly as you like on any plot of land here”, then developers would probably start with more luxury housing, but would likely run out of luxury renters quite quickly. But then they would simply seek out more profit with the slimmer margins available in affordable housing development.
Capitalism means that they stop building before the price dips below wildly profitable, because capital is risk adverse. Capitalism won’t, not can’t, fix these problems.
A large institution may be risk averse. But a smaller firm trying to gain ground in the market would likely be more than happy to take on the risk and slimmer margins. After all, if capitalism wasn’t okay with slim margins, then restaurants and grocery stores wouldn’t exist.
Yes, and then that smaller firm fails because they take too many risks that have little chance of success. They end up being bought up by the larger firms, and all their assets put towards those higher value investments.
Given that capitalism is a system, not an individual with intention, “won’t” is the wrong word.
Along with UBI, there also needs to be UBH, and other basic needs.
Sure, other stuff needs to change as well, but using currency for an UBI is the easiest and fastest way to implement it.
I mean… yeah… that’s what UBI is.
I was criticizing UBI as a concept, not how it’s implemented.
I don’t forking understand why in 2025, taking pills is still the only way for me to get better for some illness. As someone who gets pretty bad anxiety about taking pills and who sometimes almost chokes on them, I seriously can’t understand how we have pocket PCs but we don’t have a way to just treat things without pills. Hell, I’ll drink something that tastes horrible if it means I don’t gotta test my gag reflex.
This whole thread is just Americans saying things that they don’t have that is common elsewhere. And that isn’t answering the question at all. It’s the ever present thing of 'Murican idiocy thinking only about the US and acting like anything else doesn’t exist.
Terraforming.
The formerly-water deserts can be terraformed by just digging holes at specific angles so the shadow protects plants from drying up.
It’s sci-fi not like a “future robot” thing but more of a “hey we know the math we can do this reliably well” type of thing.
Also those expensive EEG headbands that track your brain during sleep and give you stats can be modified to change TV channel at specific brainwave values.
I’ve got good news for you! We’ve been terraforming the planet to be more like Arrakis for a couple decades already!
Ah, the chapterhouse: Dune strategy
I don’t know why I haven’t thought about terraforming earth until I read it in a sci Fi book and it seemed like the simplest and best thing to do, over terraforming mars or Venus. We have the tech for bioengineering, cloud seeding (I think), chemicals to help stimulate growth of natural plants (at least for the ocean).
Library economy.
Hemp as a replacement for plastics and synthetic materials. Food packaging shouldn’t have a longer shelf life than it’s contents.
Sunchips was using PLA, which is a step in the rougher direction.
Ah yes … The Thunderbags™… You were not sneaking any snacks around those things.
I never stopped dreaming about flying cars, I just think it’s not gonna happen because a crash would easily kill people just sitting in their homes.
Helicopters exist, they are expensive, loud, require pilot training and skill, and still crash sometimes.
Compared to aviation, road vehicles have virtually no structured regulations.
Even road rules are considered optional by many drivers. Lots of people drive without a licence.
I am grateful everyday that cars cannot fly.
Medical Biofoam from halo, we have prototypes already
A moonbase.
Here is something we don’t have that I think we could: Automated vegetable farming.
I’ve seen these watering gantries that are fixed at the center of a circular field and then rotate radially around that point to water the field. Could you use that as a rail with an effector arm on it that can plant, weed, tend, fertilize and harvest the field, such that in goes seeds and out comes vegetables? Without the liability of free roaming robotic tractors and combine harvesters. Surely the issue here would be software.
I’m into hydroponics as a hobby grower and there are certain techniques for veggie growing that are set and forget. You plant and harvest only, no weeding, no watering. As far as I understand, traditional techniques are still cheaper though
Those are called pivots, and what you are saying seems plausible: there are vision algorithms to recognize and selectively spray weeds (see Bilberry ), recent prototypes with light-pressure grabbers to gather fruits and soft vegetables.
Even for harvesters, there are projects to automate harvesting and swapping the grain trucks (see Outrun ). GPS-guided (or assisted) tractors are already a thing.
Agriculture has some interesting innovations, but it often gets bogged down in corporate acquisitions and monetization.
I’ve seen a project for adapting Reprap 3D printer technology to a raised bed garden, with a multi-function tool head that can individually plant seeds, it weeds by poking weeds deep into the soil, it waters individual plants according to that plant’s need…so I thought why not scale that up to multiple acres in size?
Post scarcity society
As long as shareholder value is the number one thing it just cant happen.
OP says, “with our current current level of technology.”
We have the technology to overcome any logistics issue pertaining to eliminating scarcity (and by extension, poverty). What we lack is the societal structure.
so kill the shareholders, then they won’t care about their value.
Technically, you don’t know that. /s
This is what frustrates me because in theory yes, you’re right. But in reality those shareholders are not who you think they are. Many of them are your relatives through 401k and RRSP managed funds.
What I’m getting at is it would be great to Luigi a bunch of billionaires but the reality is the problem is systemic and no amount of murder is going to solve that.
We go back to the Levellers and the Diggers. My gut tells me we are going to everyone screaming for change ultimately get what they want which is someone will be beheaded but then in the aftermath you all have no fucking plan and guess what? In a few years we are going to be right back here again.
I hope I’m wrong, but history has a way of repeating the same beats over and over again.
