I guess the conversation I would like to have is, are we ready? Do you think we have had advancements withheld and held back and is the economy more important than the planet? Personally I feel like everything comes back to monetary wealth getting in the way of global happiness. Star Trek really got that right.
People keep coming back to the free energy discussion and I don’t know why, because it’s moot.
The question isn’t is there a secret hoard of free energy.
The question is, are we ready? When you (you being me) talk about do we believe we’ve had things held back, the answer is of course. But not in terms of technology, but in terms of restraints.
If you gave every house in your country a battery, solar panels, a rooftop wind turbine and a ground source heat pump, you could revolutionize the grid requirements. But that’s expensive and quickly people would find a way to fleece the average person of their new found financial wiggle room. So again, it comes down to, how can we make it so money doesn’t matter?
Someone intent a holodeck so I can experience a world without monetary wealth.
We’re responding to the question in your OP: “Do you think we have had advancements withheld and held back and is the economy more important than the planet?”
Free energy, by itself, wouldn’t really mean much besides a lower power bill for regular people, and increased profits for corporations due to lower overhead. With no other changes to society, that would incentivize corporations to produce more, which would be a net negative for the environment, though thankfully they wouldn’t be creating much greenhouse emissions anymore.
Profit incentive always does find a way in capitalism. Similar to the scenario of UBI, where without rent control, it is likely that landlords would try to gobble up most of that free money. I’m not sure how much of that type of leeching would happen if people didn’t have to pay their power bills, probably not quite as much as it would be with UBI.
Practically, the only real solution is eliminating capitalism, and adopting socialist (and hopefully anarchist) principles societally. Getting to that point in a world where the ruling class will do everything in their power to prevent it, is the ultimate problem to solve.
History has shown us such a thing is possible to achieve. The best example we have is from 1936, during the Spanish Civil War. The anarchists in Catalonia created a society free of money and exploitation. It was as close to Star Trek as humanity has ever come.
WTF? You know this is the Internet right? What’s with these high quality posts you keep casually dropping?
Isn’t that great for the local economy though? In theory. If people resist hoarding and spend, the money accumulated through taxes and can pay for local improvements.
So really, we need legislation to save normal people from rich people, otherwise just to get rid of monetary wealth.
Isn’t it always.
I’m super grateful for this. Thank you and thank you again for such great replies in this post.