Whether big or small. We all have that one thing from Scifi we wished were real. I’d love to see a cool underground city with like a SkyDome or a space hotel for instance.
the end of scarcity. that’s a totally bogus concept that capitalism uses to keep the rich in power. we produce far more than the whole of humanity would need to feed and cloth themselves, and we have more houses empty than there are families. we could end poverty right now, we just choose not to.
The whole “we have plenty of housing if only the greedy capitalists would give it to us” claim is very much false. Empty homes are typically empty for a reason. They are being remodelled, or are searching for new renters, or have been condemned, or are in a legal limbo of some sort, etc. The idea that rich people are buying homes en masse and then keeping them empty makes no sense, since they would make more money by buying those homes and then renting them - then they get appreciated home values and rent money to warm their cold, capitalist hearts.
What is actually happening is far more mundane: people are moving to more desireable areas, and are choosing to live in smaller households. A two bedroom home that used to house mom and dad and Jack and Jill in their bunk beds now houses only Jill, plus her home office. And you can’t force Jill to take in a homeless man as a roommate, at least not in a democratic society.
The idea that rich people are buying homes en masse and then keeping them empty makes no sense
Yeah, which is why Zillow’s house flipping business was a disaster and they’ve backed out of doing that. Capitalism does not make sense, you’re absolutely right, and unfortunately we’re at the tail end of its collapse so we get to deal with the last gasps of a system that never made sense, was never sustainable, and prioritized short-term profits over long term financial stability.
None of that changes the fact that we don’t live in a world where people need to be homeless because we can’t house them. Nor do they need to be hungry because we can’t feed them. And the only thing holding us back from feeding and housing everyone is mindsets like yours, where you’re so stuck in the old way of doing things because that’s all you’ve ever known that you can’t even imagine a better world. The funny fucking thing about that is there used to be a time when nobody could imagine a world without kings and emperors, but guess what? Just like the power of kings, the economy is a fantasy. We made it up, it’s a bunch of nonsense rules, and at any time we can just decide not to listen to that bullshit.
And before you start in with any “what abouts” or other nonsense, consider for a second that you’re simping for a wholly imaginary system that has no basis in reality or a physical existence, and also that I do not care to listen to your brain react with shock and horror at the idea of things being different.
Goodbye, and good day.
Well more accurately, some of us did chose that for the whole of us
you got me there. there’s plenty of us who would love to see everyone get a fair share.
Not just capitalism, but all forms of corrupt, greedy governments.
which are all capitalist, thank you for agreeing with me.
I think you might be mistaken if you think that corruption and greed are exclusive to capatalist societies. Yeah, it’s rampant in captialism, but it can be present in any type of economic system. Greed and corruption are a human trait, not an economic one.
At no point did I even give the barest, most minute, even microscopic hint that corruption and greed were exclusive to capitalist societies. So I would not, in fact, be mistaken about anything I said.
We could be solarpunk. Like, right now. With everything using clean energy and plants everywhere.
That would be so nice.
I think a moon colony was possible at minimum the mid 90’s. I only think bureaucracy got in the way along with a very stunted space shuttle.
Agreed, a lot of sci-fi infastructure is technically feasable its just the logistics and our lack of organisation as a species that gets in the way. We could also technically start on a dyson swarm and a lunar space elevator (not an earth one though) with modern technology and materials.
I’m glad to see that we are moving forward with it, I just would rather it not be by Elon. But he has the tools to get it done.
There is also the cost.
The American program to go to the Moon cost several percentage points of American GDP over several years to get there. The USA could have physically had a moon base up there, but it would have been wildly expensive.
I will agree there. But the mining and manufacturing potential is rather insane. We could make money back rather quickly.
Cybernetics
Rosey!
Medical Biofoam from halo, we have prototypes already
Not yet, but I think we might see age reversal drugs in the not so far future.
Alarm clock that reads my brain activity and only wakes me up at the point in my REM cycle, where i’ll feel refreshed waking up.
I just wake up a few minutes before my alarm due to my internal clock. Doesn’t matter what time I go to bed.
Similarly I want something that I can set to put me to sleep for X hours guaranteed. Insomnia is a bitch and ambien is awful. I just want to get ready for bed, set my alarm, and wake up exactly when I need to.
Along somewhat similar lines, I wouldn’t mind a fan that monitored my temperature while sleeping and adjusts its speed accordingly.
Totally possible with homeassistant. They also make temperature controlled “smart” beds.
These exist in smartwatches. Not reading your brain activity but tracking your micro movements (or macro) and vibrating on your wrist when you are in a lighter stage of sleep around your alarm time.
Sounds like a fun Hack a Day-esque project for someone out there. If you can secure it well enough to stay in place while you sleep, can probably make something with a repurposed Star Wars Force Trainer headset, an Arduino, and some means of triggering an alarm (the fact that we’re just out there selling EEG tech as a kids toy is nuts to me).
I believe this does actually exist but the most reliable one is from a company that went out of business, so you have to buy second hand
Edit: Its the Zeo Sleep Manager
Abolishing the concept of money. Probably won’t happen but it would be pretty cool.
Money is a useful idea, and useful ideas are notoriously hard to kill.
I can see replacing cash with transfers but not removing currency entirely, but that’s my POV. What would you replace it with instead?
What would you replace it with instead?
Nothing. Humanity as a whole would have to evolve past the carrot and stick mentality for this to work. That’s why I said it probably won’t happen 😅
I’m confident that we could set up permanent human habitation on the Moon or on Mars with our current level of technology, and that’s featured pretty prominently in sci-fi.
I don’t know if it would actually provide a cost-effective return, but I do think that it’d be interesting to see happen in my lifetime.
Well, NASA was in the process of doing that already. It’s still on the calendar, but who knows if Trump will let it continue or not.
Vegas can make money from tourusm in a desert, a hotel on the moon (with a casino) will do just fine.
According to this article, a tourist space flight is/will cost $450,000. That’s just to break earth’s atmosphere. Tack on the additional cost of several days of space flight to reach and return from the moon, plus breaking the Moon’s gravity to return, plus the cost of building, maintaining, and staffing a moon base. Costs would be unbelievably prohibitive.
Vegas, meanwhile, is built on draining gambling-addicted grandmas’ pension funds. You can’t target that demo on the moon.
You haven’t been to vegas lately. Grandma is not the target. Rich people who want to flaunt it is. Sounds like a match made in… heaven. Lol.
And since the gap between the haves and have nots is growing, it a perfect way for the haves to separate themsleves. Think back to the first commercial airliners. It was only for the rich. And it made a lot of money that way.
We could have been doing this since the 70s. Nothing sci-fi about it. The plans to do it are outlined in:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_High_Frontier:_Human_Colonies_in_Space
When humanity turned it’s back on this project, we sealed our fate as a failed planet.
Why think small?
The asteroids are just sitting there.
We could move all of Earth’s heavy industries off planet.
We could definitely move into industry in space, but a lot of technology still needs to be developed. I think we now have the capacity to launch factories in pieces into space, but asteroid mining remains a technical challenge due as we now know that many asteroids are not so compacted. Furthermore, refining the raw materials in space can’t really be done right now, we probably could figure it out, but parts of the production chain do depend on gravity so we’d need to figure out artificial gravity on a rotating station or do some more direct kind of centrifugal refining. All hurdles we could probably cross. Then comes the question of what you drop back down from space and how you do it. Current heat shield technologies are generally poorly reusable, and even if we were we’d have to be flying the reentry devices back into space. Unless we create a cheap means to protect something from reentry that can be manufactured in space as a disposable, most goods would never be returned to earth. Unless we just refine giant cubes of rare metals and drop them into the ocean to be collected. I think most things made in space would be limited to serving those in space, or in lower gravity locations such as the moon or other asteroid bases. I would love to work on these challenges but there’s very few companies working on these challenges outside of a couple of asteroid capture startups that seem to have no further vision.
Something tells me you’ve not worked much in said heavy industries. That is scifi hopium.
Just so I don’t waste my time, why don’t you list all the degrees you hold in chemistry, astrophysics, and mining engineering? Then show the research you did that shows why it would be impossible. Please cite as many references as you can.
nah, ill save us both the effort and block you. bye
Socialized healthcare. A living minimum wage. UBI.
A permanent base on the moon. We should have had that 40 years ago, minimum.
The moon base (and/or moon orbit base) isn’t just cool, it would facilitate building ships in space that don’t have to escape the gravity well. That and asteroid mining (to get materials for ship building) would be such a huge step to having a real presence off-planet.
Mine materials on asteroids, send them to the moon refinery and manufacturing facility, send parts up to lunar orbital ship building facility, send ships to Europa, Ganymede, etc.
THAT’S COMMUNISM
Socialism technically, but I get your sarcasm. I hope it is sarcasm.
Well they did say Sci-Fi and we all know how likely that stuff is. So I think we’re “safe” with Late Stage Capitalism.
The technology has never been what is holding us back.
we’re commies on the moon, we carry a…
Madness!!
I don’t forking understand why in 2025, taking pills is still the only way for me to get better for some illness. As someone who gets pretty bad anxiety about taking pills and who sometimes almost chokes on them, I seriously can’t understand how we have pocket PCs but we don’t have a way to just treat things without pills. Hell, I’ll drink something that tastes horrible if it means I don’t gotta test my gag reflex.
Future.
This whole thread is just Americans saying things that they don’t have that is common elsewhere. And that isn’t answering the question at all. It’s the ever present thing of 'Murican idiocy thinking only about the US and acting like anything else doesn’t exist.
Post capitalism.
We have automation for so much manufacturing. We have solar energy which is basically free after manufacture. We could spend a fairly small amount of time really working towards automating most resource extraction and processing.
We could have a really good standard of living not just in the west but globally and we could in the process resolve the threats of climate change but instead we have billionaires.
I think if we had the tech to make replicators (Trek), we would easily be able to go full on post-cap, as that would essentially end hunger, our over extraction of earth’s resources, landfills, recycling, people not being able to afford basics like groceries, etc. I think we have the capability to do that now without that tech, but as a species, lack the will and compassion.
From what I have read there is no physical reason that we could not all have a reasonable standard of living right now with no extra technology. The reason for poverty is not a scarcity if resources, it is a distribution problem. Some people take too much and use systems like law and governance to enforce their relative position. Ditching individual wealth would solve most of the issues which prevent a good life for everyone. Being as most wars are ultimately about wealth and the same for borders it would be revolutionary.
