[pw0ncakes]

Or the incentive structure, if a lifestyle on the dole is too good for too many people, might be disastrous in the long term.

Within about 50 years, due to technological advancements, we'll have 20-40% paid employment (not unemployment) and there'll need to be some sort of dole.

Personally, I think it would be great to have a society where people don't need to work. The people who only work because they have to wouldn't be working, which means that the people who are working are those with ambition and talent, and only those.

[gaius]

They believed that in the 1950s too, and it sure wasn't true in the 2000s.

[hga]

The arch-conservative and historian part of me tells me in reply that "The Devil finds work for idle hands." For a pre-Christan example of this, look no further than Rome's initial "bread and circus" period.

The wealth gained from the Republic's Third Punic War had an ultimately disastrous result in all sorts of ways.

That said, you're absolutely right, we will someday have a true post-scarcity society, although the near total suppression of real nanotech research in the last quarter century makes me leery of predicting any dates.

[hugh3]

What do you mean by "the near total suppression of real nanotech research in the last quarter century"?

[hga]

Spend some time on this site: http://e-drexler.com/

Start with this item at the end of the home page: Changing the narrative in the U.S.

In short, "the establishment", e.g. existing chemists appropriated the buzz Drexler created while not actually doing what he was promoting for the usual parochial reasons plus in many cases a genuine and legitimate fear of what his style nanotech will bring about.

[hugh3]

Right, so the failure of significant progress towards Drexler's vision must be due to some kind of secret conspiracy of physicists and chemists rather than, say, the fact that atom-by-atom assembly is ridiculously hard?

I should probably vaguely mention that my PhD work was not entirely disconnected from the idea of fabricating devices by placing individual atoms in locations with sub-nm precision. I suppose I should be offended that nobody let me in on the fact that we're supposed to be suppressing that kind of work.

[hga]

It wasn't secret! See e.g. the "debate" Nobel Chemist Smalley had with Drexler in Scientific American and then I think the JACS. Smalley started out with a straw man ("fat fingers") in both, which is not a sign of honest intent.

The bottom line is "where are the grants and research centers for Drexler style nanotech"? Either he's lying about this---I'll admit most of my info about this is from him or people in his orbit---or he's mostly right.

Or let me put it this where: when you graduate, where are you going to be able to go to work on "Productive Nanosystems" in his style? Name names, this should be something you're looking for or at least aware of, or can ask about tomorrow when you go into "work".

ADDED: I know it's "ridiculously hard", for if finances hadn't gotten in the way I would have most likely eventually gotten a Ph.D. in work "not entirely disconnected from the idea of fabricating devices by placing individual atoms in locations with" atomic precision in the '90s.

[hugh3]

where are the grants and research centers for Drexler style nanotech

Same place as the grants and research centers into warp drives and unicorn husbandry?