The effect of income equality on societies...

[Reasonable]

mrstickball said:

Reasonable said:

Kasz216 said:

Also, I can think of a society that operates without money.

However FOR it to operate without money it would require either

A) People to stop wanting pretty much anything not related to needs.

B) Scarcity for non need objects to be eliminated by things like Star Trek Replicators.

In otherwords... your still working under the same system as outlined, without money. You are simply either decreasing demand or increasing supply to do it.

 

a) seems unlikely but assuming some form of Universal Constructor becomes possible then so does b) I guess.  Without any formal need for anyone to be dependant on anyone or anything else for anything they wanted current monetary systems would seem to be redundant.

EDIT: actually scratch that a little bit : if - big IF I guess - you assume fully capable Universal Constructors I'd imagine that original ideas/designs would become a source (perhaps the only source) of potential difference between individuals.  Would that require some form of barter/monetary system?  Assuming no change in basic human behaviour I guess it could.

Likely so. IP management would still exist in such a society, which would then become a potential source of product to barter.

For example, I may have X, Y and Z needs or wants met, but I create a way to satisfy desire A. If that product is indeed mine, then there would need to be a way to earn return on the time and effort I put into creating said product or service.

I mean, in the past 100 years, productivity for certain goods and services has risen so high that some items can be traded for almost no value. For example, books that were produced a long time ago at a cost of a day's wages now cost nothing via Amazon. Movie delivery through Netflix has taken a product that used to cost a part of a day's wage for a ticket to the theater now is about 1 hour of work for a month worth of content. The amount of money needed to sustain a human's caloric requirement has plummeted as well, as energy-dense foods become cheaper and cheaper.

So I think your on to something smart. Even if certain things were made redundant through a 'Universal Constructor', other goods, services, or research into new goods/products would still be needed, and a form of exchanged would need to exist to ensure such services were bartered correctly.

Yeah that's what I was thinking.  The interesting aspect is that you'd get - in theory - a huge focus on IP and creation of new IP.  Another aspect I thought of was raw materials - a UC needs to create stuff from something so far as I know.  So in addition to IP I'd guess that raw materials would suddenly hold value - although in theory it would be more of a policing aspct as with a UC you could use anything for construction, so you'd need controls to stop me deciding to consume your lawn with my UC to make something I'd like for me.