Science and Technology are the solution

[I Am Hugh]

I believe Jehovah God is the solution to all of mankind's problems. But, temporarily, until that comes about, science and technology can solve most of mankind's problems. The first step is to remove all forms of money. Convince me I'm wrong.

 

[Daemon Sophic]

I believe Jehovah God is the solution to all of mankind's problems. But, temporarily, until that comes about, science and technology can solve most of mankind's problems. The first step is to remove all forms of money. Convince me I'm wrong.

Convince me that you have a functional system to replace money.
Take your time.

PS - I agree that only science & technology, along with a much higher level of knowledge among the general public than is currently present, are the only viable keys to saving humanity until whatever form of divine intervention you like to think about comes along.

 

[I Am Hugh]

Convince me that you have a functional system to replace money.
Take your time.

PS - I agree that only science & technology, along with a much higher level of knowledge among the general public than is currently present, are the only viable keys to saving humanity until whatever form of divine intervention you like to think about comes along.

Thanks for your response. I kind of didn't expect any. By functional system you mean some sort of barter exchange, monetary. That's not in my scenario. So, no money. There would be no replacement. No system, as it were. Simply science and technology providing the material needs of every man woman and child on the planet.

 

[Wandering Monk]

Thanks for your response. I kind of didn't expect any. By functional system you mean some sort of barter exchange, monetary. That's not in my scenario. So, no money. There would be no replacement. No system, as it were. Simply science and technology providing the material needs of every man woman and child on the planet.

Yeah, Star Trek Replicators are just around the corner.

 

[I Am Hugh]

Yeah, Star Trek Replicators are just around the corner.

You're not very convincing. A joke?

We have science and technology here. Now. We don't need Star Trek, per se. But I mean for entertainment some people like science fiction. I'm not really one of them. With the exception of Frank Herbert and Douglas Adams.

 

[Daemon Sophic]

You're not very convincing. A joke?

We have science and technology here. Now. We don't need Star Trek, per se. But I mean for entertainment some people like science fiction. I'm not really one of them. With the exception of Frank Herbert and Douglas Adams.

While I appreciate your taste in authors, @Wandering Monk has a very good point. What you are describing is a level of technology where food clothing, shelter, healthcare, and power are so readily available for every single human on the planet that they are effectively free.
only then, could you do away with any kind of system of trade using goods and services. Thus your suggesting that we start our utopian Society from what is effectively the alliance worlds inside the Star Trek Federation.

So, starting from there, you are probably correct. The only items of value to humanity, or individuals within humanity, would be items that are extremely rare to come by, or new inventions and new technologies that expand our borders, in whatever metaphorical sense you wish to defined the word “borders.”
Most scientist and inventors could devote their time and efforts to new theories and inventions as simply a hobby they choose to pursue, rather than a paying job.
I’ll have to think about that, since a struggle for survival (and in civilization, that usually means a struggle for money) has been a driving factor for innovation in its many forms. I.e. - Would anybody bother? If I can spend my entire life traveling the known inhabited planets and sipping margaritas on the beach without worrying about skin cancer, why would I bother spending all of the hours and hours and years and years devoted to finding new forms of matter/energy projection, or inventing a better mouse trap?

 

[Wandering Monk]

While I appreciate your taste in authors, @Wandering Monk has a very good point. What you are describing is a level of technology where food clothing, shelter, healthcare, and power are so readily available for every single human on the planet that they are effectively free.
only then, could you do away with any kind of system of trade using goods and services. Thus your suggesting that we start our utopian Society from what is effectively the alliance worlds inside the Star Trek Federation.

So, starting from there, you are probably correct. The only items of value to humanity, or individuals within humanity, would be items that are extremely rare to come by, or new inventions and new technologies that expand our borders, in whatever metaphorical sense you wish to defined the word “borders.”
Most scientist and inventors could devote their time and efforts to new theories and inventions as simply a hobby they choose to pursue, rather than a paying job.
I’ll have to think about that, since a struggle for survival (and in civilization, that usually means a struggle for money) has been a driving factor for innovation in its many forms. I.e. - Would anybody bother? If I can spend my entire life traveling the known inhabited planets and sipping margaritas on the beach without worrying about skin cancer, why would I bother spending all of the hours and hours and years and years devoted to finding new forms of matter/energy projection, or inventing a better mouse trap?

Yeah, but you do stuff with money. If you didn't need the money to do stuff....

 

[Daemon Sophic]

Yeah, but you do stuff with money. If you didn't need the money to do stuff....

Yeah, that occurred to me too. Everybody would have to have a high-functioning holodeck as well. No need for funding research labs, or going down to Home Depot to find and pay for just the right nut and bolt to put on the new invention. Once all material needs, as well as all material desires, were eliminated, then why would anybody search for things further than that?
I suppose there would be a boom of inventions and research into new and evermore comfortable recliner chairs, and more immersive entertainment technology.
“Necessity is the mother of invention.“. But if there are no necessities, then people would be doing whatever, just for kicks.

 

[Regiomontanus]

I believe Jehovah God is the solution to all of mankind's problems. But, temporarily, until that comes about, science and technology can solve most of mankind's problems. The first step is to remove all forms of money. Convince me I'm wrong.

All good but the one impediment is the fact that so many people are so indifferent to the problems we face (science denialism is a growing problem) that achieving that interim 'fix' will be very challenging.

 

[I Am Hugh]

All good but the one impediment is the fact that so many people are so indifferent to the problems we face (science denialism is a growing problem) that achieving that interim 'fix' will be very challenging.

Science denialism isn't a problem, it's an ideology. Science in the context I'm using isn't ideology. It's science. Like God denialism, i.e. Atheism isn't a problem, it's ideology. If people want to deny science and gods let them, what difference does it make?

 

[I Am Hugh]

While I appreciate your taste in authors, @Wandering Monk has a very good point. What you are describing is a level of technology where food clothing, shelter, healthcare, and power are so readily available for every single human on the planet that they are effectively free.
only then, could you do away with any kind of system of trade using goods and services. Thus your suggesting that we start our utopian Society from what is effectively the alliance worlds inside the Star Trek Federation.

I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with Star Trek. If you are suggesting that this so-called utopian society would need a capital foundation, I agree.

So, starting from there, you are probably correct. The only items of value to humanity, or individuals within humanity, would be items that are extremely rare to come by, or new inventions and new technologies that expand our borders, in whatever metaphorical sense you wish to defined the word “borders.”

I wouldn't. There would be no borders. There would be no value in the same way. No jobs, no money, everything built and done by robots. You want a refrigerator? Order it and it's delivered. That sort of thing. To put this into perspective at the risk of making it just another ideological balancing act, think like the Venus Project. Not Star Trek. Money is obsolete.

Now, say someone placed value upon working menial tasks for the movement of little pieces of paper? Fine. Their money would be unnecessary but they could have it without any real value if that were important to them.

Think this: how does money and profit suppress science? Publishing, funding, tenure, for example. New science is squashed for profitable business. Think of corruption in politics and religion. No more money those things would dry up probably overnight. You wouldn't have to wage some war on ideology - science, religion, politics - just do science. Make things and explore.

Most scientist and inventors could devote their time and efforts to new theories and inventions as simply a hobby they choose to pursue, rather than a paying job.
I’ll have to think about that, since a struggle for survival (and in civilization, that usually means a struggle for money) has been a driving factor for innovation in its many forms. I.e. - Would anybody bother? If I can spend my entire life traveling the known inhabited planets and sipping margaritas on the beach without worrying about skin cancer, why would I bother spending all of the hours and hours and years and years devoted to finding new forms of matter/energy projection, or inventing a better mouse trap?

Exactly! Especially when skin cancer is probably a result of something made, a profitable business both ways. Making skin cancer and making the cure - which do you think more profitable? Not the real cure, I promise you.

 

[I Am Hugh]

Yeah, but you do stuff with money. If you didn't need the money to do stuff....

That's the question. Do we need money to do stuff? In this system, yes, but this system is obsolete. If a robot can do anything people can do, manufacture, surgery, service, et cetera, then people performing work for money to sustain the system is obsolete. You would need money to begin the new system, to prime it, so to speak, but then it would be pointless.

 

[Wandering Monk]

That's the question. Do we need money to do stuff? In this system, yes, but this system is obsolete. If a robot can do anything people can do, manufacture, surgery, service, et cetera, then people performing work for money to sustain the system is obsolete. You would need money to begin the new system, to prime it, so to speak, but then it would be pointless.

Who builds the robots? How do they get the parts and resources?

 

[I Am Hugh]

Who builds the robots? How do they get the parts and resources?

That is what the necessary capital I mentioned is. Robots build robots, so how many do you need to start? One? Then we're off! Robots can mine can't they? Parts and resources. So, someone who has more capital than most nations kick it off until it can sustain itself. Keeping in mind I'm not talking about a society without humans, just money. We don't need it. It corrupts.

Really, such a scenario should require what sort of roles each science and technology would play and to what extent, how. That sort of thing. They, like anything, can be misused, abused, neglected - for money, but how could we properly use them if we didn't need money, and we don't. We haven't needed money since the mid 1970's I suspect, though that is certainly debatable. It doesn't matter. We don't need it now.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Thanks for your response. I kind of didn't expect any. By functional system you mean some sort of barter exchange, monetary. That's not in my scenario. So, no money. There would be no replacement. No system, as it were. Simply science and technology providing the material needs of every man woman and child on the planet.

You need to give a little study to human nature. Humans need far more than satisfying their material needs, and high on the list is that some need to have power over others, and there are even those who like to feel that others have power over them. And much more besides.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I believe Jehovah God is the solution to all of mankind's problems. But, temporarily, until that comes about, science and technology can solve most of mankind's problems. The first step is to remove all forms of money. Convince me I'm wrong.

I'm pretty sure at the end of things, mankind won't have to worry about lasting too long on the cosmic scale once the Sun goes red giant. Then the universe will do whatever it does next.

 

[Regiomontanus]

I'm pretty sure at the end of things, mankind won't have to worry about lasting too long on the cosmic scale once the Sun goes red giant. Then the universe will do whatever it does next.

It turns out that we will not have to exist that long! In 'only' 1.5-2 billion years from now - long before our sun actually leaves the main-sequence - our sun will have expanded and increased in luminosity enough to have boiled away the oceans and so killed off most of the life on our planet.

Fun stuff, enjoy the sunshine! We will be little more than dust by then.

 

[I Am Hugh]

You need to give a little study to human nature. Humans need far more than satisfying their material needs, and high on the list is that some need to have power over others, and there are even those who like to feel that others have power over them. And much more besides.

Right. My proposal removes that desire.

 

[I Am Hugh]

I'm pretty sure at the end of things, mankind won't have to worry about lasting too long on the cosmic scale once the Sun goes red giant. Then the universe will do whatever it does next.

It turns out that we will not have to exist that long! In 'only' 1.5-2 billion years from now - long before our sun actually leaves the main-sequence - our sun will have expanded and increased in luminosity enough to have boiled away the oceans and so killed off most of the life on our planet.

Fun stuff, enjoy the sunshine! We will be little more than dust by then.

From a Biblical perspective there is Isaiah 60:19-22 and Revelation 22:5. Although I've never studied the possible meaning in depth, whether to be taken literally or metaphorically is sort of irrelevant to the OP. Biblically planet Earth will last forever and mankind will live forever in peace on it. Science speculates what would happen in that regard, but what I'm talking about is here and now. Not billions of years from now.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Right. My proposal removes that desire.

Wrong. Human nature is the "built-in" stuff. That which is created by our genes and our environment, not our desires. Our desires are the result of our nature, not the other way around.