Re: Capitalism, Scarcity, MNT, and the Future
Warrl kyree Tale'sedrin (warrl@mail.blarg.net)
Fri, 30 Jan 1998 19:42:19 +0000
> From: DOUG.BAILEY@ey.com
> Scarcity in an MNT Future
>
> Several people have stated that they believe that capitalism will go the way of
> the do-do in the future. Often a fully realized molecular nanotechnology (MNT)
> is cited as a reason for this predicted death of capitalism. I do not think we
> should dismiss capitalism in such a simple fashion. A MNT future where
> production is virtually free and the supply for such resources is virtually
> limitless is beguiling. I can understand why people, even using my definition
> of "scarcity" above, could assert that such scarcity would no longer exist
> since demand could easily exceed supply. I submit that the one commodity
> (scarce resource) in a MNT future would be MNT itself. The only real
> "object"/"process" with value would be the ability to produce with MNT. The
> crucial question becomes would the supply of MNT exceed the demand for it?
This doesn't matter because there is one resource that will always be
in short supply, that MNT can't do a thing about.
That resource is creativity.
And to pay for creativity, another resource which can already be
produced in very large quantities with essentially no resource input
but which, it appears, we will also never have enough of:
respect.
>
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