> One by one all these things became free Science fiction, right there.
Guess what. In Tallinn, Estonia public transport is free for city residents.
It's not free. You pay it with your taxes.
It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)
71–80 of 267 posts
Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)
#72> It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much. All that becoming "free" (here meaning "at no cost") will never happen in a capitalisti…
What do you mean? That paragraph is already close to reality in some places in Europe, where public transport is ticket-less and free and the government provides housing and food at no cost to those who need it. Expand on that and you're at what the author is describing. I personally wouldn't bet money on "this will never happen", would you?
I am in Europe and I do not see anything close to what the author is describing.
Nothing is really at no cost. It is paid for with tax money or directly. The author is not specifying "for those who could not otherwise afford it", but describing it as at no cost for everyone. Most universities cost money to enrole and attend. Does your baker give out buns at no cost? Is the grocery store giving away all the food at no cost? Has it all become a service at no cost?
Nope, none of that has happened and it will not happen, as long as everything needs to be a good business in a capitalistic sense. The single person business or small business or any business cannot escape the reality in this system.
Show me that country or even that city please. Show me the social experiment, that tries to get people to work without pay, as long as they have access to "all the things we need in our daily lives". As far as I know, it has never been done. What if you have any extra wish? How will it be supplied, without tracking your every move in such a society? How would different needs be satisfied, everyone having slightly different needs?
So that's why I call it pure fiction. You are welcome to show me that model city, which self-sufficiently makes it happen. I might move there.
Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)
#73This reads like a description of a pretty awful dystopia. Or at least one where everything might seem great, until it isn't. And when it turns, turning it back is HARD / near impossible. Do people read this and think that is the sort of life they would want in the future?
Of course it's a scam. "You will own nothing and be happy". That is BS of the highest order. There will always be someone who owns and controls everything. It's just not going to be you. You will own nothing, you will be worthless. You won't even be able to have a girlfriend/boyfriend or friends for that matter; real human relationships are reserved for the elites. You will get as many VR friends as you want though.…
Will we at least get to rent out artificial affection from the OnlyPornFansHub sexbot of our choice?
Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)
#74Free like... Google Photo? ;-) Products or services are only free either because - you are the product or - temporarily to kill any other competitors, become a monopole and start charging a lot Because, you know... money has to get in...
> Products or services are only free either because - you are the product or - temporarily to kill any other competitors, become a monopole and start charging a lot
I try to be careful with this phrasing. Because I do believe it's true for most things.
But then look at open source software, which powers SO MUCH of our society. Much of the most essential software in the world was written for absolutely free. These days there's lots of open source that is written for corporate PR, but that wasn't always the case.
So, just be careful. Products and services really might be labors of love. We need to leave a tiny gap in our cynicism to allow for some goodness to come in. :)
Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
My going rule of thumb is that any "good" fictive dystopia always starts off as being someone else's utopia, only it becomes compulsory. This in turn leads to any deficiencies or problems in the utopia needing to be papered over, ignored, and so forth because it is compulsory. This causes yet more distortions and away we go. It's like all of those breathless journo articles about insect protein: they sound fine until…
I like the Brave New World approach to distopia. It's kind of hard to argue with the world as presented because the people in it are happy/content, it seems sustainable, safe, etc. Yet, as a present-day reader with a present-day moral lens, it seems horrific and unjust.
I'm starting to think that Brave New World is looking better than where we're actually headed. In BNW, the Alpha and Beta classes are chosen based on objectively desirable characteristics.
Where we're heading, our top castes will comprise mostly of people who are manipulative, short-term thinkers, vengeful, insecure, arrogant and psychopathic. Not great for society.
Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)
#76This reads like a description of a pretty awful dystopia. Or at least one where everything might seem great, until it isn't. And when it turns, turning it back is HARD / near impossible. Do people read this and think that is the sort of life they would want in the future?
I've read Brave New World the other day that sort of envisions this kind of utopia (although there's serious eugenics going on as well), where people "work" for a couple hours a day and spend most their time er, frolicking. I don't recall it being portrayed as a bad thing, other than a disdain of 'older' media like books and the like.
Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The very cynical counter argument is rarely spoken: Owning my things provides value even when I’m not using them, because I benefit from excluding other people (my competition) from using them. Example: The sports car locked in my garage helps keep sports cars away from other people, which maintains their benefit of conferring status. It provides utility even if I basically never drive it. This side of human nature i…
This is critical. As long as we operate in a highly competitive climate, private ownership and rights associated with it become a necessity. Ownership not only legally guarantees your rights but denies others rights (your competition). Even with a well optimized sharing economy inside a highly competitive environment, you'll look for ways to break the optimization process favorable to yourself. If everything schedule…
I feel that "post scarcity" requires some definition. In the west very few people go hungry and the vast majority of people have a mobile phone - something that was an expensive status item just a couple of decades ago. It feels like if we made everything "post scarcity" by today's standard, we would have a load more things that people would be striving to acquire. On the other hand maybe post scarcity is what some buddhist monks who give up everything are closer to achieving than anyone in the west.
Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)
#78>Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them. The main point of owning things is that you get to use them when you want to use them. People keep those things in cupboards because when they decide on a whim to make pasta they do just that. The same goes for all the rest - having cars, houses and so on. Unless there's some kind of Philip K Dick-style ma…
Also you can take pride in things, keep them maintained and tuned to your preferences. Or the opposite. In the case of my car I don't need to take care of the cosmetics. I can load a muddy mountain bike into it and scratch it without needing to pay through the nose as I would wit a rental car.
In my case it would be cheaper to rent a car than own one as I use it relatively infrequently, but every time I rent I need to wait in the queue picking it up and dropping it off. It probably uses two or three hours of my life every time I rented.
Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)
#79Personally, I think a future where AI can do most jobs is frightening. It will be run by a group of relatively few elites that are involved in power struggles for control of the AI and the rest of us that do stuff like pick fruit (assuming it's cheaper than having an AI do it) and serve as cannon fodder in the AI armies. I find people who believe that it will lead to some kind of Utopia horribly naive and they have n…
We went through a comparable transition from most people working in agriculture and farming to that being automated away and people doing stuff that hadn't been much worried about before. Given human nature hasn't changed I imagine it will be similar.
I think we are already at the point of saturation. Lots of people are working in the business of convincing you to buy things you don't need. On the other hand, the agricultural and industrial revolutions did give time for people to adapt. They happened in brief times considering human history, but they were enough for people to learn and become productive.
If you have automated cars tomorrow on the streets, most of the truck and taxi drivers are not ready. Heck, most of the oil countries in the middle-east are not ready for a post-oil economy.
Re: It's 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better (2016)
#80It's not like young generations could afford to own anything anyways anymore.
What nonsense. Maybe home ownership is out of reach for many young people, but they all seem to have a laptop, mobile phone and huge pair of headphones. Young people have always been the poorest section of society, but that makes complete sense as they haven't has the time to accumulate any wealth. Eventually they become old people.