So, I’ve always been fascinated with things like Star Trek and their idea of Utopia. I get that it’s basically just Asimov on Adderall, but even then, there are ideas and hopes there that really make you wonder if/how we’ll get there.

And one thing that always stuck with me was the replicators.

If we had replicators, a LOT of stuff in society would change dramatically overnight. The ability to essentially turn energy and matter into whatever you want is the science fantasy political commentary version of relatively sustainable 100% production automation. That’s a huge deal.

So, over the past ten to fifteen years that I’ve finally gone back and watched all the different shows, now that I’m mentally mature enough (not 5 years old or so when some of these were still airing new episodes) and can understand and deeply think about a lot more of it, it really makes me wonder:

Society and technology constantly try to approach the magical barrier of full automation, and even my boomer parents have wondered about what that would look like or how unrealistic or unsustainable would it really be? There’s been a lot of discussion about how we could get there and what PEOPLE would do. Would they/we just go around doing art all day?

Well, basically, yeah, we’re already pretty close to that already. A ton of people basically just shuffle information to other people that shuffle and massage around information. Whole industries, in fact. Except, that we’re still doing it for profit. We need profit to buy stuff, right?

TO BUY -STUFF-

S. T. U. F. F.

So, imagine, for a second, that AI and 3D printing and robotics get super progressed, and somehow we, the people, reclaim the means of production entirely. Except… It’s all 99.99% automated.

Nobody makes any money except whoever runs the machines. However, goods are somehow infinite (just bear with me, suspend that disbelief, and stay in the abstract “what if”), and essentially we would have nobody manufacturing or production work - nobody would need to work if they didn’t want to, because everything was super easy to get, exactly like if you had a replicator.

But wait a minute, you say, there has to be some sort of financial support or movement of money around for this to work, right? Otherwise it’s basically communism!

Government takes power of production, actually listens to the people, money doesn’t mean much, UBI, and people just find meaning through the stuff we already actually want to do: make music, go to parties, socialize, science, write books, make videogames, innovate, or just get yolked af 24/7.

The thing that’s limiting us from ever making this jump will be capitalism. It won’t be science, it won’t be war, it won’t be famine, and it won’t be religion. It’ll be the people in power, disgustingly rich, at the top, utilizing that existing and well utilized unlimited power to try to seek more power against the very direction that everybody else, regardless of politics or creed actually wants. It’ll be the devs of this site being required by society’s ever increasing cost of living absorbing all their free time and energy and money just to sustain it rather than develop it, and that’s not coincidence.

So, to finally get to my point, the “shower thought”, and the punchline of all of this:

The closer we get to [perfect automation], the more the government needs to control price and phase out capitalism and move towards mixed socialism.

Because, as workers become so efficient because of technology and less workers are needed for the same work, the value of an amount of work goes down. Yet, in capitalism, the price goes up because of consolidation - if you only need one person to control your factory, that job is in high demand, you can pay really low and nobody has any money and still needs those goods, and the goods/services cost so little to produce so the owner makes tons of money.

Theoretically there’s competition, but because of how capitalism works, eventually there’s a threshold of buy-in to compete that most people cannot get to and you end up with cutthroat, profit maximizing, zero ethics industries. And so you have to be as powerful or more to do anything about these companies.

Which is where the government is supposed to step in (when ethics or laws or whatever are broken), but they do less and less since the extreme elite basically control everything, including the government, in pure self interest, which, we’ve defined above to be explicitly against any movement towards “utopia”.

So the real question then, is, if the “overlords” (be it real people/puppet-masters, an unintentional conglomerate of unconnected oligarchs, or even an emergent reflection of our own human idiocy) cannot be controlled by us because WE are being controlled, or the government cannot control them because THEY are being controlled… Then how do we get past this limitation and prevent it in the future?

If I’ve learned anything from egoistical professors in the past, it’s that the first step to fixing a problem is admitting there’s a problem, and the second step is identifying the problem.

We all know something is wrong, we just can’t seem to all agree on what it is, exactly. We know that prices are way too high, basically none of us have enough stuff, and we have to all suffer from Stockholm Syndrome in our jobs to continue getting better and continue working to pay for the things that we ACTUALLY want. Sure, there are those whose stars aligned and it works for them, that’s great, but, what about everybody else? That’s not a system that serves us all. We know that something is wrong.

Our level of technology, there’s literally no reason that anybody in the world should go hungry, die from easy to treat problems, not have running water or decent infrastructure, or not have the bottom level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs covered (physiological: shelter, excretion, food, water, warmth, clothing, sleep, air) - except capitalism. Lecherous levels of capitalism prevent basically anything good happening anymore.

I gotta try to end this rant somehow because now I’m tired and this is getting repetitive.

The world needs more technology and less capitalism and more better education. Ownership needs to be more limited, we need to work to provide better safety nets for people in society, and the road to all of this is a complete rehaul of public education. Standardize it, fund it way way better, stop stripping citizens of their rights, the government only exists to help the people, profit is not the only road to innovation and does not lead to prosperity, teach empathy and philosophy and anthropology, make it k-18, all tax supported, and instead of training soldiers, train engineers, inventors, scientists, teachers, creators, and most of all, train people how to be good people. Being a good person is not hard, but learning to be one is and the same way we’re taught that 2+2=4, we should be taught that people with heritage nearer to the equator have longer and thinner fingers arms and legs and torsos and have more melanin, and that skin color is just a temporary adaptation by animals of the human race to protect ourselves from ionizing radiation from the increased amount of sun, and that everybody came from Africa, and nobody actually knows how to define biological gender, and that the scientific method is only a hundred years old, and we are ALL primates, and that different people have slight genetic predispositions to subtle differences, that being overweight is almost ALWAYS a physical manifestation of really fucking bad mental health, that everybody WANTS to work, that nobody laziness doesn’t exist, that emotions and logic are separately valid but also intertwined and both can be seemingly directly opposed and both be correct, that two people arguing can both be correct and both be wrong, that everybody has real struggles that you don’t know about and may never understand, and that, yes, you should ALWAYS follow your dreams because life is too damn short to not, that haters will always hate because that is their very real problem with themselves and it’s really really sad, and that no matter what anybody tells you, you ARE worth loving and it’s never too late to change your mind and do better.

I don’t know why, but I believe that this world has a future so full of hope, so full of peace and beauty… If we are capable of fucking it up as bad as the history books have shown us, we are capable fixing it. Maybe not in our lifetimes, and that’s sad. But at least we’re not rocks. I’m happy I’m not a rock, because a rock is just a rock, and does not feel or think or see or love or hate or do the things we get to do. Life and consciousness are gifts so rare in the entire universe; every second you’re allowed by fate the ability to ponder yourself pondering life and conciousness is an actual priceless treasure. Once you’re dead, no amount of money or gold or number of horses or votes or gallons of oil or diamonds can give you that again. How many seconds did it take you to read this? An actual inconceivable amount of value, yet you got this far because you want better.

Seriously, if you read this far and you remember even one thing from any of this, just remember that life is short but the race is long, and in the end, it was only with yourself. And please, try to forgive yourself - past you and future you will appreciate it.