"post-scarcity" is an illusion presented to people living at the very top of the economic pyramid. I'm sure most HNers are in the top 90th percentile of US household income on their own, living in a world mostly surrounded by other affluent individuals working in a similar field, all in jobs with increasingly flexible work hours, better benefits and nearly unlimited job prospects.

The world only looks like it's moving towards post-scarcity because the resources consumed and waste produced have been nearly completely outsourced away, and the pangs of the labor issues created by automation are happening somewhere else.

Post-scarcity is not an issue of 'productivity' but of resource use. As Jevons paradox [0] points out the more efficiently we use resources the more of them we tend to use. Looking merely at productivity and efficiency without looking at resource use and waste production gives a wildly incomplete picture of "post-scarcity". What I see is that the world is increasingly separating into a small sub-population that is presented the illusion of post-scarcity and a another, growing, subset that is feeling the effects of scarcity required to maintain that illusion.

When I see data to support the argument that resource use and waste production are plummeting, then I'll believe in narratives about post-scarcity.

0. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

If labor is effectively free (because robots don't get paid) then I don't think that the products of that labor would be particularly scarce. Even material costs are primarily the labor cost to extract or recycle a material.

That's like saying if housing is effectively free (because buildings don't get paid).

Housing is expensive because:

1) Lots of people want to live in the same relatively small area. 2) Houses take a lot of labor to make. 3) The material houses are made from take a lot of labor to extract.

If labor were cheap 2 and 3 would be cheap as well and if people did not need to live near job centers I think 1 would not be as big of a deal either.

This discussion of the problems we will have once robots take our jobs by making labor free ignores the benefits of free labor. I am skeptical of the ability of robots to take our jobs by providing free labor, but we only have to worry about the downsides of free robot labor, if we actually have free robot labor.

There's a lot of delusion about the developing energy picture. The arithmetic shows we will not be running millions of robot slaves and self driving electric cars on solar and wind power. We will be walking places and drying clothing on clothes lines. We are running out of fossil fuel energy and still no viable replacements have been identified.

I like how you identify "walking places and drying clothing on clothes lines" as signs of the collapse of civilisation. To most people, those are normal things.

I doubt we're going post-scarcity any time soon though. We don't have any of the technologies that form the foundation of a post-scarcity society: abundant renewable energy, fully automated just-in-time production of nearly all goods and materials, extremely low cost delivery of goods to the home and/or business, and the intelligent software that ties it all together. Some of those things are close, others, not so much. Aside from a "magic" solution, like the singularity, I do not expect in my life-time to see a post-scarcity society arise.

I do agree that the automation of jobs is not a serious cause of concern, though obviously for those whose jobs are displaced it will be. People can't stand to sit around and do nothing for any great stretch of time (although everyone claims otherwise). They will find ways to be busy, and if you automate away one part of activity, other forms will take up its place. Someone will figure out how to monetize it and presto, a new job category. Selling software was once a crazy idea. Selling virtual characters was crazy just a few years ago, and is becoming normal. We will gradually become ever more refined in the sort of virtual goods and services we create through human labor that can be sold online.

> abundant renewable energy

We have enough uranium and thorium for millions of years with breeder cycle. Even if not renewable, who cares? And it's quite ecological, compared to burning oil products.

The rest is quite close.

It's the cost of building new plants that dominates the cost of nuclear energy, though. Cheap fuel is honestly a red herring.

Molten Salt Reactors are cheaper. They do not need a pressure vessel or a huge containment structure. They can fit in a shipping container. BTW red herring is delicious!

Renewables are basically already viable, despite what its opponents have been trying to say. It's already more competitive than natural gas in some places, and the next 5 years will be crossing many other such thresholds.

Renewables are not already viable, they are never going to be viable but for a small portion of our energy needs. Because Physics. They just don't have enough concentrated energy. Take solar for example, take a look at http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_38.shtml, In the UK solar basically works out to 100 watts per square meter on average. Somewhere really nice in the American Sotuhwest is maybe like 400 watts per square meter. At 25% efficiency, to equal the baseline load of a 1 GW nuclear power plant, you need something like 7.7 square miles of panel area when you factor in the need to capture enough sun during the day and store it for the night. You need to also have a high voltage DC grid to ship the electricity from the Desert to where we need it, and much better storage systems to hold the load for the night. Basically Solar is never going to work for baseline load, and to top it all off photovoltaics are dirty as hell to make. Wind is even more bad (There was a study that said you needed 270 square miles of land to generate 1 GW reliably), and hydroelectric is limited in where we can deploy it. Nuclear is exactly what we need, renewables just can't be anything but a small part of the solution considering our power usage is increasing not decreasing.

Ah. That's why Germany manages to generate >30% of their energy via renewables. They are this immensely huge country with wide open spaces, flooded with sunlight.

Wait. They're not.

Turns out that you don't need a high-voltage DC grid, you need decentralized power. And you don't need huge contiguous chunks of land, either - you need everybody to be involved.

That doesn't rule out that we might need other energy sources, too - there are the issues of base load, and industrial consumption - but claiming that renewables are "not viable" is a tiny bit of an exaggeration, don't you think?

There's no doubt that the US can learn from the shear audacity and willingness to invest in our country's long term energy plan like Germany has done with the Energiewende. However, we can't pretend that Germany, in terms of its size, existing infrastructure, and structure of the electricity industry, is at all comparable to the US.

While I agree with you that decentralized power will be the way of the future, there's no way the US, where California alone is larger than Germany, can make such a drastic and impressive transition in even a tenth of the time it takes Germany. The power grid in the US is one of the (if not the) most complex networks/systems the world has ever seen. Heck, it's not even a "singular" entity, with three interconnects spanning parts of Mexico and Canada comprising it. We're not going to easily transition away from this--not that I'm saying we shouldn't try. Our current infrastructure is not capable of handling mass amounts of renewable (read intermittent) sources of energy--the energy storage technology, bi-directional communication, and security measures among other necessities just don't exist yet. And while at a certain point our country needs to make the leap and take the risk, we should also be cautious about trying to brute force a solution--look how Spain's renewable energy investments are paying off.

Edit: It may also be too early to call Germany's energy plan a success. They still face many substantial challenges moving forward (http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21594336-germanys-new-s...)

Absolutely, there are issues. I was mostly commenting on the GPs "they are never going to be viable but for a small portion of our energy needs". They are viable already, for substantial parts of our load.

And you put your finger straight on one of the largest sources of trouble for the US - the existing grid. That's why I believe the way forward is decentralized power. Cut out the grid. Generate and consume very locally.

There are still many issues that need to be solved there, storage being probably the large one. But I'm more hopeful about that than reforming the US grid with its entrenched players.

California is perfectly positioned for going into renewables if it actually tried. I live near Los Angeles and there are only a few days during the year when we don't have sun. There huge open desert areas tat could be covered with solar collectors. If any area in the world can make the transition it's California.

What you have heard from supposedly impartial and expert sources may in fact be wrong.

http://cleantechnica.com/2014/08/12/experts-misleading-peopl...

It doesn't matter, I don't have to convince you. Renewable prices are already dropping so much such that they are coming regardless (can't say that about nuclear can you? unless you lie about the budget of course); only Koch-like attempts to oppose it like punitive fees for solar panels can do any damage.

Is that true even if you normalize subsidies between the different forms of production/transportation/use?

It is renewable. Every time there is a supernova a whole solar system loaded with Thorium is recreated!

I have seen credible estimates that there may only be about 80 years of uranium supply left for current usage, let alone massively expanded generation. Breeder reactors are a red herring. France is shutting theirs down because they are uneconomical.

Robert Owen thought the same thing at the beginning of the industrial revolution some 200 years ago. Skyrocketing productivity was supposed to lead to a new age where a society could produce all it needed with little effort, and much time would be left over for leisure and pursuit of the arts. Instead, there were mass populations of over-urbanized, overworked, impoverished people. Turns out that when the means of production are owned by the few elite, innovations in productivity are more likely to marginalize the rest.

I'd like to believe this, but I don't see the corresponding changes in societal structure. If we really are post-scarcity, it would be nice if some sort of average person could have a family if they choose, or at least have access to health care, housing and things to make a reasonable life. Truly part time work with a decent wage almost does not exist in most fields. The people I know trying to make a living doing artisan things would certainly not agree that arts and crafts are more (monetarily) valuable than ever.

Rising productivity has just put more money in precious few pockets. While I truly believe that this vision of the future is technically possible, I have little faith that it will be the future we end up with.

When has technology ever resulted in the improvement of wages and working hours of the average person? The only things that have ever had a clear, direct affect in quality of life of the masses (both positive and negative) are political.

> When has technology ever resulted in the improvement of wages and working hours of the average person?

Like, every time? Compare the average worker of today with average worker of 100 years ago.

Ok:

The average worker today has a 5 day working week rather than a 6 day working week: a change that was brought about by political means (unions) rather than technological means.

The average worker today has an 8 hour working day rather than a 12 hour working day: a change that was brought about by political means (unions) rather than technological means.

The average worker today has a minimum wage and minimum safe working conditions: a change that was brought about by political means (unions) rather than technological means.

Technology has certainly improved our lives, but you're not making the best case for it.

> Like, every time?

A chicken sees man coming to feed it, so it jumps out in front of him awaiting food. Then one day, man comes with an axe, and chicken still jumps in front of him expecting food. The end.

I.e. Correlation doesn't imply causation etc.

Imagine having at your disposal perfectly amoral and lethal robotics force. One that only exists to protect you and exterminate any threat to you. What stops the future rich man from treating a fellow man like a dog? Right now, the police might rebel against you if you go too far.

I'd be interested to look at average worker today and future where inequality is super rampant. In that society, I think a worker from 100 years ago would compare similarly to a worker from 100 years in such future.

Alright, I'd like to. Do you know where I can find statistics on wages and working hours over history (in particular, I'm curious not just about 100 years ago, but also 200, 300, and 400 years ago, to get a fuller sense of the impact of the Industrial Revolution).

world wide or just US. since alot of the work from 100 years ago got outsourced with the polution to parts of the world that don't regulated it as much.

> Rising productivity has just put more money in precious few pockets.

In all pockets. Again, compare a poor person of today with a poor person of 100 years ago.

This is absolutely true. But when money buys power, relative wealth becomes the important measure.

I've thought in the past that our pursuits might be more oriented towards art, but watching the video above reminded me that machines are getting more and more capable of creating art.

Maybe it will depend on whether we're using art to drive an economy, in which case creative robots will win, or we're using art to create meaning in our lives. In the second case, we'll still have to compete with entertainment (created by AIs) fully capable of filling our waking hours.

Ah, 1950's future.

"We are moving to post-scarcity, and the future is bright."

If you are the king, why do you need to keep those billions of loud, dirty, polluting, dangerous, depleting the natural resources, and now UNNEEDED serfs around? When you could gain by exploiting them, great. Someone had to do the hard work. But now / soon, they have nothing to offer, besides problems. Problems, are to be ..exterminated.

Imo, the (near) future, is either paradise, or total hell. Nothing in between. And history isn't offering reasons to be optimistic.

(PS: Yes, I totally understand that the above stands on the pov that there are some "kings", and we are the "serfs". It's a pov that's easy to dismiss. Personally, I don't.)

> Problems, are to be ..exterminated. > Imo, the (near) future, is either paradise, or total hell. Nothing in between. And history isn't offering reasons to be optimistic.

I doubt it is either of those. People can't go against billions, not without significant casualties, and not any time soon. I fear what the solution might be... If you are rich you might be more interested in culling number of those unneeded serfs by simply neutering them and providing them enough distractions unhealthy food and poor medicine that they just slowly keel over.

Otoh, intelligence isn't hereditary, so killing off those 'serfs' might also reduce the numbers of intelligent people.

> Otoh, intelligence isn't hereditary

How do you know that?