Abundance In the Future

Causes and Results of Future Abundance

Virtualized and digitized items are currently being made abundant. Once an item or act has been virtualized and digitized it can be copied and reproduced at essentially no cost and therefore should and will become abundant so everyone will be able to use and enjoy digital goods at virtually no cost.

We know that digitized goods and services will become abundant but what will happen to material goods, energy and work in the future? Human work will become obsolete and humans will be prohibited from doing work. The same factors will produce an undreamed of abundance of services, physical goods and clean energy.

• Computer power and other information technology is increasing in a geometric fashion. Each year computers double their performance per dollar of cost. We all have seen how quickly very huge quantities result from repeated doublings.


• This doubling will continue and it will be possible to buy computers with computational power equivalent to or surpassing the human brain in about 10 years. Soon afterward, the computers could have the reasoning power and functional ability equal to or greater than humans. (See the Wikipedia article about the trends determined by Ray Kurzweil.)


• As this progresses it will be much faster, cheaper and better to use a robot to do all the work of a human. (See the Wikipedia article on the Future of Robotics.) or the Wikia article.


• The instructions for building and programming robots are digital and therefore could be abundant so robots will be as abundant as needed. Cheap and abundant robots can be used to build more cheap and abundant robots.


• Soon afterward, it will be realized that humans not only do not need to work but must not be allowed to work because:
  
  
  • Humans are too slow and too weak compared to robots, they get in the way.
  
  
  • Humans are error prone, wasting time and resources and causing liability lawsuits
  
  
  • Humans take time to learn new skills and products. Once one robot is "trained" in a new skill or job, other robots can be trained in seconds at virtually no cost. Humans require many years of education whereas a robot only needs a few minutes to become "educated" by copying the training of a previously trained robot
  
  
  • Humans need massive amounts of rest while robots can work 24 hours per day and 365 days per year.
  
  
  • Humans require a heated, lighted and safe workspace.
  
  
  • Humans are free to leave and take their experience and knowledge to another employer.
  
  
  • Humans are somewhat inconsistent and slightly unpredictable which disrupts the supply chain.
  
  
  • Humans are not totally dedicated to or focused on work every second of the day.
  
  
  • Humans often need to be located in expensive offices and factories rather than cheap warehouses.
  
  
  • It is hard and slow to transfer humans where they are actually needed.
  
  
  • Robots will not require any managers to hire, train, motivate, encourage, or discipline them.
  
  
  • Robots need no wages, promotions, vacations, sick leave, bathroom and lunch breaks, pensions, or health and workman's compensation insurance.
  
  
  • No complaints or lawsuits will result from victimized, disgruntled or injured robots.
  
  
  • Robots will be able to work in extremely dangerous and noxious environments
  
  
  • Complete sanitation can be insured in critical areas such as food handling, personal and medical care and high precision manufacturing clean rooms.
  
  
  • Robots are predictable so precise planning and scheduling required by just-in-time manufacturing can occur which conserves resources and lowers costs.
  
  
  • Quality processes can be automated and problems elimated which will drastically reduce product flaws.
  
  
  • Precise refurbishing, redistribution and recycling will be a conservation measure that robots can achieve.
  
  For these reasons, Labor and physical goods and services can become abundant.


• Robots will be able to construct and maintain clean energy gathering appliances such as solar panels, windmills, tidal and wave power generators and energy conservation products so clean energy can become abundanct.


• When things progress to this point where digital goods, labor, energy, physical goods and services are all abundant, there must be massive change in the economic rules of society. Economics is the study of methods of distributing scarce resources among competing uses. If nearly all items and services are abundant, then economics as we now know it will come to an end. It will not be one form of economy such as capitalism replacing another form such as communism or socialism, it will be an elimination of economics because scarcity will have been eliminated. What will replace it or does it need to be replaced? Almost nobody will have a job or any income at the same time that it will be possible to have virtually unlimited abundance. If money is still needed to obtain items, then nobody will buy anything because they will have no jobs to earn money and so businesses will not sell anything. Clearly, this is not acceptable and another method of distribution of goods and services must be developed.


• There will be a number of very complex questions that will emerge? What will humans do to fill their time and to find value in their lives? Should we ever let robots progress to where they are conscious. Would conscious robots ever think that humans were unnecessary? How would you punish a conscious robot that misbehaved? How could humans defend against a conspiracy of conscious robots?


• If we maintain the economics of greed and scarcity a small number of individuals and corporations will quickly own and control everything. If we wish to maintain a decent lifestyle, we must change from our current economic system of scarcity and greed to an "economy" of abundance.


• We must above all defend our system of open and free government which promotes equality and the protection and welfare of all citizens and guards against a few powerful individuals or corporations starving, killing or otherwise harming people either directly or through neglect so that they can have a little more power.