Tim O'Reilly: The Biggest Ponzi Scheme of Them All

> I'm fairly hopeful that global population growth will peak within our life times.

2075, at <10 billion, according to a study that I can't find at the moment...

You don't have to be a full-blown singulatarian to see that technology still has a number of game-changing tricks up its sleeve. Robotics is getting to the point that I think we could see a fully robotic factory of some significance in the next five to ten years, where "significance" means something like a car factory or something, not just a demo product.

Computer AI doesn't seem to be on the verge of a breakthrough on the strong-AI front, but there really seems to have been a qualitative change in the past few years in computer vision, brought on by having more computer power available.

Nanotechnology is continuing to advance, primarily in materials science right now, but it will also continue to make progress in other areas. Even without full-on molecular nano-constructors (which there is no obvious physical reason we can't build, but let's leave that to the "full-on singulatarians"), we will continue to improve our abilities to manipulate matter on a fine scale in a large way (no contradiction), much like life does. Look for garbage dumps to go from a blight upon the environment to awesome materials resource sometime in the next 10 to 15 years. (Future investment opportunity! There will be a period of time when it becomes obvious that this will be true, but it is not generally recognized, and an interested individual will be able to pick up old dumps for a song, relative to what they will be worth.)

(As a side-note, any actually indefinitely-sustainable economy will require this technology, be it biologically derived or otherwise. Any proposal that involves freezing our current tech level in a mis-guided attempt to be "sustainable" is simply a death sentence.)

The primary reason we can't go strolling through space isn't material or technological, it's energy, and if any of the fusion proposals go through (ITER, Polywell, any of them at all), the energy problem is significantly mitigated. Especially if it's not ITER; I don't know if we could practically loft an ITER into space, but a Polywell fusion device certainly could be, and a fusion-powered space ship would be quite capable, unlike today's models. Even just growing a pair and getting into fission could significantly mitigate our energy problems for a very long time. (I wonder when the fear of nuclear will be exceeded by the fear of not having energy. My guess is one big blackout in the US and you can kiss anti-power-plant sentiment goodbye.)

And there's more stuff coming up.

Yes. We're in a recession. We may even be in a depression. Fucking stop crying about it. Sheesh. It is not the end of humanity just because you're not as rich as you think you should be. (What a selfish model of the future!)

He's wrong, there is no Ponzi scheme at all. Let me explain...

First of all, we have limited resources. The resources we absolutely need, for example, food and water, however, exist in enough quantity for all the people that currently exist (otherwise they would die).

The second layer of resources, for example, metal to build cars, crude oil for energy, also exist in enough quantity for now.

The exchange between basic needs and not-so-basic needs is irrelevant of the price that we are actually paying for them, because there is enough for everyone.

So the economy is built on the most important part of all - human labour. When I program, I expend labour, and though nothing gets added or removed from the world, I can still exchange the time I spent for a basic need like food.

This debt he is talking about is debt of human labour, and even if you wipe it out completely, the worst that has happened is that people wasted their time, and they will not get paid for it. There is no real destruction of the most basic needs.

If for example, we were destroying farmland to produce in excess right now, and we know this will make the farmland completely useless in the future, then this is a scheme that will collapse. But we're not doing that in any significant quantity.

Furthemore, we don't need to conserve things that are not finished yet. For example, let's imagine that we are going to run out of iron in 100 years. Obviously, this will be problematic, but 10 years before it happens, the price of iron is going to skyrocket, because we know of the impending scarcity. And there are lots of materials we can use to replace iron. Same with oil.

There is no ponzi scheme. People are paying for an easier life, and they are paying other people to make life easier for them.

I liked the one where Ponzi jumped over the shark on his waterskis.

I'll be the bookie (or broker) for you two.