Automation Tech - Force Majeure?

[Littlefish]

Today's automation technology is capable of eliminating all the workers from industry and agriculture. No additional science is required, just a lot of engineering. John von Neumann, the famous mathematician, once called self-replicating industry "the inevitable destination of automation technology." We'll achieve it without even trying to achieve it.

In 1980 NASA proposed landing a fully automated industrial seed on the Moon and having it build more seeds. In their scenario, the seed would mass 100 tons and replicate itself in one year. Since the population of seeds would double every year, lunar industrial output would surpass Earth's in less than 25 years (2^years*100tons).

NASA's proposal is an obvious solution to the environmental crisis, and since orbital space colonies could be produced faster than we could fill them, automated industry would also delay the population crisis for another 1000 years. That assumes we would use one of Jupiter's giant outer moons as raw material to build colonies for a thousand trillion people.

Imagine a tin can 50 miles long and 20 miles in diameter, spinning on its axis to create pseudo-gravity. Its 3,000 square miles of inner surface would be sculpted into cities, parks, lakes and wilderness areas. With a population density of only 1000 per square mile it would comfortably house three million people. Standing on the inside and looking up, the entire living surface would be spread across the sky (20 miles away), and at night the porch lights of a million homes would shine in the sky like stars. With panoramic skies, mild weather, zero-gravity play areas, and low-gravity housing for the elderly, space colonies would be popular among all age groups. Without earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, or background radiation they'd be safer than Earth.

Anyway, that's the way I like to imagine the future. It's full of free stuff and endless room to form unique communities. On the downside, it requires a large investment and a significant amount of delayed gratification.

The free-stuff future seems to make capitalism and communism obsolete. Without scarcity would there be any purpose for government force beyond the policing of violent crime? I imagine that without scarcity a pure democracy might be possible, so a participatory democracy might take the place of "honorable" work.

It seems like this idea could be promoted to the social justice class since it solves some of their major issues, while the objectivist class may like it for the positive outlook it might generate among today's youth. Could this idea be capable of inspiring hope and uniting people behind a common cause?

References:

Advanced Automation for Space Missions
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19830007077.pdf

Space Colony Art (no copyright but needs color enhancement)
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education/SpaceSettlement/70sArt/art.html

Notes:

1. NASA's study "Advanced Automation for Space Missions" is a large book that cost twelve million dollars to produce in 1980. It's still considered the most detailed study of self-replicating technology.

2. An important aspect of NASA's study is that it proposed a dumb, centralized control architecture that could not become a frankenbot nightmare.

3. The study was quietly swept under the rug. Today, only one NASA web page links to a copy of the study, not counting the ntrs index. https://www.google.ca/#q=site:nasa.gov+%22advanced+automation+for+space+missions%22

4. Included with the study is a twenty year timeline detailing the development phase. If the project had been started immediately and the timeline achieved, there would now be about 3 million tons of industry on the moon.
 

[Anuojat]

A lot of automation that happens these days i due to minium wage and government intereferance in the economy and peoples lives for decades now. Not to mention current banking "system" set up by the state.

 

Also any technological advance great enough can onyl came trough the market and especially free market at that so... the idea that capitalism would be rendered moot by automation is putting the cart before the horse. AND also scarsity is fact of life and nature and even though it may seem "free" and "abundant" with proper high tech  i still scarsity of time, labor of the mind and having to deal and worth with finding acticvities outside of manual labor for human to NOT degrade physically.

 

Hell most of fitness bussness today is strictly already bussness that dealwith this fact of moderm tech getting better, also do no forged it will be long ass whhile before the 3rd world cathes up and long as time the 1st world where this "sopposed" adundance techn will come out, to have time to recover from sjw, feminist, statism and dept. And the aftermath of it all blowing up.

[rosencrantz]

the idea that capitalism would be rendered moot by automation is putting the cart before the horse.

 

When you have self replicating machines, the marginal costs of production will be 0 and the return of investment will be infinite. When this is the case there won't be competition on an industrial level because the starting point and the future development of production is the same. The only way to compete in that society is by offering services and creating hand crafted products. 

[AncapFTW]

yes, it's possible.  I even want to build an automated farm one day, but it's too expensive to produce food that way.

[dsayers]

Not a good first impression. I didn't read most of it because the parts I did had overstatements, assertions, and sensationalism.

[AccuTron]

Population control is called having fewer babies.  Given that the better off breed less and have little incentive, I can't imagine tons of Bangladeshi being shipped to Jupiter's moon.  Which would immediately be replaced on Earth by new Bangladeshi.

 

I don't see any reduction in environmental pressures, since the Earth's population will still be orders of magnitude beyond any Moon Towns.  Maybe all that will come to pass, but it's hard to see the appeal unless it's total ugly down here, and it seems better by comparison.  Free Soylent Green with each one way ticket!