> In the above example, it is by no means clear that wealth disparities
> will vanish even with piles of useful nanotech and AI. It might turn
> out that everyone is equally rich when it comes to matter and energy,
> but rare things like true genius and wisdom have a high price and
> people with them can also buy more services of others than "ordinary"
> people. Maybe true equality is only possible when all limits are
> arbitrary.
The easiest way to determine what will constitute "wealth" in a future where nanotech, AI and other goodies reach their fruition is to think about what things will be scarce. Creativity may be the most scarce item (scarcity judged in terms of abundance in relation to demand). But I suppose it is possible that creativity may be reduced to some exotic algorithms. Maybe algorithm development will be all the rage in the future.
Doug
doug.bailey@ey.com