World Economy, Land Reform

[deejayoh]

[Alan]

What changes the curve? What's changing demand?

You are working under the assumption that the economy will continue to be based on scarcity. Robots will remove the scarcity constraint. Economics describes how to use supply and demand curves to arrive at a single market prices. Each additional unit of supply decreases the price by a marginal amount. If you have no bounds on supply then the price drops to zero. Prices do not go up with robots. Instead supply of goods goes up and demand goes down. There is a lot of unused land on Earth. Robots can build habitation in unused places. Supply of housing skyrockets. Price of housing goes down. We are going to have to make some fundamental changes in how we structure our economy in order for our society to survive that change. Also, robots kill people. That reduces demand.

Raw materials will be the biggest bottleneck. With all of the production available the biggest problem will be what to do with old product models and other unwanted goods. Recycling and disassembly and will be a tremendously huge component of our future economy. China is already way ahead of us on that front. Many obsolete electronic components already are shipped to China where the precious metals and other components are harvested from the high tech refuse. This process currently produces a lot of toxic waste and is polluting China, but they have a lot of land to pollute. Robots will be able to do this more cheaply and cleanly. And even if it isn't cleaner, the robots won't care about the toxic environment. Robots have also been know to disassemble humans -- but I've already covered that fact.

Space is too big to explore. Humans simply do not live long enough. We could send robots out to explore for us, but it will be many, many generations before we get any results back. Still, it is probably a good long term strategy. At some point, resource and space usage on Earth will have turned it something resembling a big ball of swiss cheese. At that point we will want to find a few other pieces of dirt to call home. The robots can prepare those new homes for us centuries in advance.

[davidlosh@davidlosh.com]

Damn you Alan! Technology, of course, plastic robots in space that are made in China. Perfect!
Of course I've had this discussion before, and the stickler is what technology will develop the schematics to get the Venture Capital? Will it be the auto industry that is bringing us bigger, better, and safer gas combustion engines on wheels? Will it be the space age technology that first strapped a monkey to a rocket and blasted it into space, or the same technology that made the rocket ship look more like an airplane? How about that Segway guy? He can make a robot on his own dime to be told the city of San Francisco won't let the robots on public streets or sidewalks.
I know what you're thinking; you're thinking computer technology can make all kinds of very pretty charts and graphs. The CAD programs brought us mass produced housing plans to be rubber stamped by our municipalities. I remember when that plan was going to bring down the price of housing. What happened with that?

[carlislematthew]

If robots are made of plastic, then they will be unable to self replicate fast enough due to the limitations of the raw materials on this planet. But if robots are not made of plastic the potential for a republican robot army are huge. World demand for conservative plastic robots is inversely proportional to the demand for non-plastic liberal alien robots, which makes sense if you consider that diamonds are going up in price along with gold and other raw materials. It's the curve, stupid!

We can all make four hundred and fifty nine million dollars three hundred and fourteen thousand five hundred dollars if we can capitalize on the trends in diamonds, real estate and plastic conservative robots. The changes in our demographics will ensure that we will self limit and ultimately destroy ourselves but not before we're all insanely wealthy from real estate and/or running a cleaning firm. You can call me crazy but at least I know what I'm talking about and are not going to work for the man forever and instead will have legions of plastic robots working for me.

(wow, it's tiring trying to be this insane)

[The Tim]

But what I think you fail to consider is the surprising reliance of the worlds petrol industry on silicone transistors. With so many billions of transistors, constantly getting faster and faster, it is only a matter of time before the keyboards of the world overheat, throwing the platform oil rigs into chaos and turning society back to the feudal era. With all of the heat generated from the silicone and the keyboards, we will at least be able to heat our homes however. That is to say, those of us that own homes.
For the rest of the slobs, the permanent renters among you, the transistor crisis will result in a resurgence of roofing materials, which consequently will bring down the price of the basic food stock, so you will be able to feed yourselves, but under substandard (the new standard) shelter.
All of this means that without a new cooling technology, the conservation of bodily fluids will ultimately be pointless, since children or no, the amount of food will be limited by the number of keystrokes the oil drill foreman is able to type on his under siliconed computer.

Thank you.

[davidlosh@davidlosh.com]

[carlislematthew]

[davidlosh@davidlosh.com]

Wrong answer.
Gary Locke and his dad's tireless campaign to bring business people from China here would be my number one pick.

[carlislematthew]

[davidlosh@davidlosh.com]

[Alan]

[perfectfire]

You see, the problem with plastics is that they're made with oil. Oil comes out of the ground and they aren't making anymore land so there will be less and less oil available to make plastics.

However, there are other sources of oil. Anybody that has ever been a teenager has experienced a phase in life where your face produces oil non-stop. This could help mitigate the oil problem, but since more and more people using condoms to preserve precious bodily fluids there are fewer and fewer children being born which means fewer teenagers.

Even robots need oil to generate the electricity they run on.

So what will be our future savior? The same as always, the sun.

Solar cells will provide all of the energy we'll need to power robots and plastics recycling centers. While they aren't making any more land, they are constantly making more sunlight. The dissapointing thing is that a solar world economy won't change the balance of power at all. Right now we are dependent on terrorist countries for their oil. And which regions get tons of sunlight (just ask any Iraq war vet)? That's right, the middle east.

[davidlosh@davidlosh.com]

You see you guys, you got nothing. Nothing. Tell me about the Bears and Stearn thing again. That was funny.
We're here in the United States of America. We have food, water, and shelter, by the thousands of units to hear you all tell it, and the United States government is keeping it all safe and secure just for you.
You guys are the last hold outs of renters who are so smart you didn't buy a house. Now when prices are crashing you can step in and save the day.
I got news for ya, there's a much bigger picture. There are millions of people who want to come here and buy a house no matter what it costs. There are millions of people in the world that would just like to eat out of your garbage can.
These same people have multiple degrees from Universities that make your education look like high school. They study hard for just a chance at having more than one meal a day. You guys are talking about not having a house like it's a badge of courage. Come on show me some guts here. Show me where my theories are wrong.

[deejayoh]

[davidlosh@davidlosh.com]