[krapp]

Star Trek style replicators can't be invented. The laws of physics won't allow it. It will always cost more energy and be vastly less efficient to assemble a cup of coffee atom by atom than it would to just grow the beans, have them picked, packaged and shipped, and make it yourself, and unlike in Star Trek, energy in the real world isn't free.

You might say we could come close with advanced 3D printing and some kind of nanotech,but no such technology will ever be so cheap or ubiquitous as to render politics obsolete. History is replete with advancements and inventions which were supposed to usher in utopia, and all they have ever done is further the means by which the powerful enslave and control us. Technology cannot solve human nature.

[serf]

>History is replete with advancements and inventions which were supposed to usher in utopia, and all they have ever done is further the means by which the powerful enslave and control us. Technology cannot solve human nature.

humans are more sovereign than ever before in most calculable metrics.

[krapp]

What "calculable metrics?" By what definition of "sovereign?" Objectively, this is a meaningless statement to me.

[WalterBright]

Which countries force you where to live and what job to work at?

[krapp]

I would assume at least North Korea does. But every modern state requires you to at least work and to have housing, in order to generate taxable revenue and afford the means of survival.

But unless you hunt and grow your own food, own your own land and aren't subject to laws or government that owns your identity and tells you where you can go and what you can do, you aren't sovereign. If you have to spend the majority of your useful life trading your labor to a corporation, you aren't sovereign even if the market gives you the option of which feudal lord to serve as vassal to. If you require modern technological society, the infrastructure of agriculture and healthcare, for your survival, you aren't sovereign. There is a reason that word is synonymous with "ruler" or "king," it's a status that very few people, particularly in modern society, can claim.

[WalterBright]

I am sure you know the difference between free labor and slave labor.

[krapp]

I'm sure you know that's beside the point. Free labor isn't that free when the only alternative to trading the most useful half of your life to corporations is starvation in the streets. And the only alternative to that is dependence on a state's social safety net. Neither may be outright chattel slavery or literal feudalism but in modern society where people truly own so little, even of themselves, it isn't freedom either.

[WalterBright]

> energy in the real world isn't free.

That's because we haven't figured out how to harness it.

For example, 99.9999% of the sun's energy just disappears off into space.

We sit on a hot planet, all that's needed to drive our energy needs is to drill a hole through the mantle. But nobody has figured out how to do that yet.

[throwaway11460]

Energy in Star Trek is not free either, just too cheap to meter. They use fusion and matter-antimatter reactors. Once we get there we will also have more than enough energy to power the potential replicator.

Though I agree we probably won't be using it to replicate a cup of Earl Grey for a very long time.

[atrus]

growing the beans, having them picked, packaged and shipped and making them yourself is assembling building coffee atom by atom. What do you think those plants are doing growing those beans? What do you think pouring that hot water onto the grounds is doing?