It is sad that this has become a topic of the culture wars. Nothing good comes out of this, certainly not a rational weighing of the pros and cons of nuclear power.
I’m particularly interested in how they plan to finance reactors in a grid dominated by solar. I wouldn’t be surprised if they legally allow the building of new reactors but then fail to find investors. But perhaps they plan on using them as some sort of strategic assets and will just run them at a loss?
We need to increase energy output by an order of magnitude in order to upgrade civilization to the next level. Does solar offer a pathway to doing that today, once you account for the costs of battery storage?
Nuclear, moreover, keeps us on the tech tree for space exploration. I don’t think solar is going to lead us to fusion or antimatter powered spaceships.
You’ve got it backwards. The Star Trek universe is depicted as originating out of a recognizable United States. Warp Drive was of course, invented by a Musk-like individual in Montana, not a committee or government. Cochrane is depicted as having no particular moral philosophy and as having invented warp drive in pursuit of profit. It’s very clear that post scarcity came first and the socialist/military model came afterwards.
It’s notable that while Roddenberry had various humanist philosophies, TOS and TNG more than anything resemble the U.S. military officer culture, reflecting his Air Force service. You’ll see the exact same culture if you walk into an officer’s club at the U.S. Naval Academy.
I'm not sure I want to argue how a fictional universe's fictional history is arranged.
I can tell you however, that in the real world, with real incentive structures, if we remove scarcity before we fix ownership, we will get a few feudal lords and the rest of us lacking any leverage their dependence on labour used to give us and dependent on their (historically rather limited) charity.
You cannot have a Star Trek future if you don't fix the social part first. Technological progress will make the social issues worse otherwise. There is no point of technological progress that will magically make the rich and powerful suddenly give up their wealth and power. Maybe in a made-up world, people are less power hungry and greedy. In the real one, more technology owned by a few effectively means that their concentration of wealth and power will just keep increasing at the expense of everyone else.
Your theory is contrary to the evidence of history. Technological progress makes people more free, not less. 500 years ago, you would have been a serf and your life would be literally worthless. In much of the undeveloped world, that’s still true.
The industrial revolution begot the labor movement, which is what caused greater freedom.
It could do that because of the dependence on labor for production, or in other words leverage over the ownership class.
If we accelerate technology to the point where we sever this dependency, all those freedoms will no longer have the leverage required to extract them. Our lives didn't become not worthless because of the steam machine. They became not worthless because of leverage over capital reproduction, and once that's gone they may well become worthless again.
Technology doesn't cause freedom, or at least not directly. Social relations and power dynamics do. Technology just drives those.
I think you're both right in different ways. Some labour movements were not dependent on technological advancement. Some technological advancements materially and independently improved the lives of people. The contraceptive pill gave women much greater control over the timing of pregnancy. [Its diffusion substantially affected women's investment in professional careers and the timing of marriage.](<a href="https://www.nber.org/papers/w7527" rel="nofollow">https://www.nber.org/papers/w7527) Medical and reproductive technologies played an important role in increasing married women's ability to participate in paid work. Those are changes in actual individual choice brought about, in significant part, by technology.
However if we circle back to your original comment that social change (and I'm reading that as some form of communism) is required before technology delivers material abundance, then I feel compelled to remind you that the last 37 times humanity attempted this, it failed so spectacularly that 100+ million people died. I think it's clear that whatever the nuance of this discussion, communism (or whatever aphorism you prefer) is incompatible with scarce resources. I therefore argue that the abundance must come first.
> However if we circle back to your original comment that social change (and I'm reading that as some form of communism) is required before technology delivers material abundance, then I feel compelled to remind you that the last 37 times humanity attempted this, it failed so spectacularly that 100+ million people died. I think it's clear that whatever the nuance of this discussion, communism (or whatever aphorism you prefer) is incompatible with scarce resources. I therefore argue that the abundance must come first.
This is somewhat overstating the case, though I currently agree "the abundance must come first".
Capitalism, as it was understood when the Communist Manifesto was written, basically doesn't exist any more. A large subset of what it called for is now so widespread even in "capitalist" nations that the absence of those things is considered a sign of being a failed state.
Yes, there are three primary examples of Communism absolutely failing, hard: Four Pests, Holodomor, and Pol Pot.
The Communist Manifesto was written during the famous potato famine. Less famously, the impact of the blight hurt the Irish much more than other places that were also using potatoes as staple crops, and the British Government of the era (which controlled Ireland) was pursuing laissez-faire capitalism at the time.
Similar (that a capitalist regime was in charge) can be said about subsequent famines in India before independence.
Some say that Communism ended with the USSR, that while modern China uses the name "Communist" for their one-party state it is really state-capitalism. By this standard, capitalism (as the term was understood by Marx et al) ended roughly in the era containing both Roosevelt's New Deal taking root in the USA and the UK's Labour Party replacement of the Liberal Party's position in Westminster.
adrianN · · focus · HN ↗
I’m particularly interested in how they plan to finance reactors in a grid dominated by solar. I wouldn’t be surprised if they legally allow the building of new reactors but then fail to find investors. But perhaps they plan on using them as some sort of strategic assets and will just run them at a loss?
rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
Nuclear, moreover, keeps us on the tech tree for space exploration. I don’t think solar is going to lead us to fusion or antimatter powered spaceships.
Hikikomori · · focus · HN ↗
dguest · · focus · HN ↗
Hand him the nerds and you'll hand him the future, for better or worse.
rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
vrganj · · focus · HN ↗
Getting the tech without the social change first (e.g. what Musk et al are going for) gets you a Cyberpunk dystopia, not a post-scarcity utopia.
rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
It’s notable that while Roddenberry had various humanist philosophies, TOS and TNG more than anything resemble the U.S. military officer culture, reflecting his Air Force service. You’ll see the exact same culture if you walk into an officer’s club at the U.S. Naval Academy.
vrganj · · focus · HN ↗
I can tell you however, that in the real world, with real incentive structures, if we remove scarcity before we fix ownership, we will get a few feudal lords and the rest of us lacking any leverage their dependence on labour used to give us and dependent on their (historically rather limited) charity.
You cannot have a Star Trek future if you don't fix the social part first. Technological progress will make the social issues worse otherwise. There is no point of technological progress that will magically make the rich and powerful suddenly give up their wealth and power. Maybe in a made-up world, people are less power hungry and greedy. In the real one, more technology owned by a few effectively means that their concentration of wealth and power will just keep increasing at the expense of everyone else.
rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
vrganj · · focus · HN ↗
It could do that because of the dependence on labor for production, or in other words leverage over the ownership class.
If we accelerate technology to the point where we sever this dependency, all those freedoms will no longer have the leverage required to extract them. Our lives didn't become not worthless because of the steam machine. They became not worthless because of leverage over capital reproduction, and once that's gone they may well become worthless again.
Technology doesn't cause freedom, or at least not directly. Social relations and power dynamics do. Technology just drives those.
Gareth321 · · focus · HN ↗
However if we circle back to your original comment that social change (and I'm reading that as some form of communism) is required before technology delivers material abundance, then I feel compelled to remind you that the last 37 times humanity attempted this, it failed so spectacularly that 100+ million people died. I think it's clear that whatever the nuance of this discussion, communism (or whatever aphorism you prefer) is incompatible with scarce resources. I therefore argue that the abundance must come first.
ben_w · · focus · HN ↗
This is somewhat overstating the case, though I currently agree "the abundance must come first".
Capitalism, as it was understood when the Communist Manifesto was written, basically doesn't exist any more. A large subset of what it called for is now so widespread even in "capitalist" nations that the absence of those things is considered a sign of being a failed state.
Yes, there are three primary examples of Communism absolutely failing, hard: Four Pests, Holodomor, and Pol Pot.
The Communist Manifesto was written during the famous potato famine. Less famously, the impact of the blight hurt the Irish much more than other places that were also using potatoes as staple crops, and the British Government of the era (which controlled Ireland) was pursuing laissez-faire capitalism at the time.
Similar (that a capitalist regime was in charge) can be said about subsequent famines in India before independence.
Some say that Communism ended with the USSR, that while modern China uses the name "Communist" for their one-party state it is really state-capitalism. By this standard, capitalism (as the term was understood by Marx et al) ended roughly in the era containing both Roosevelt's New Deal taking root in the USA and the UK's Labour Party replacement of the Liberal Party's position in Westminster.