Socioeconomic implications of certain technologies

[+Oltux72]

I did not want to write interdimensional travel into the title, but that is what this is about. They have access to an unlimted number of worlds with limited access. I am leaving aside the ethical implications of interdimensional imperialism for now. What does that mean from a social and economic angle?

• there can be no absolute shortages of resources. If you really need some natural resource, you can source it from some dimension.
• some tourist destinations take a real hit. Unspoiled tropical beaches are no longer rare. Others do not. You can see the real Rome only in the real Rome.
• crime pays again. If you get a lot of money and manage to evade the law for long enough to buy and escape to your own dimension, you live your dream.
• There is a market for personal combat instructions and gear and possibly mercenaries to a far greater extent.
• language instruction in classical dead languages suddenly has a much larger market. They don't speak an understandable form of English? So what, speak Latin! The dimension is much cheaper.

Edited March 16, 2022 by Oltux72
added language instruction

[NameIess]

19 hours ago, Oltux72 said:

• some tourist destinations take a real hit. Unspoiled tropical beaches are no longer rare. Others do not. You can see the real Rome only in the real Rome.

Considering an infinite multiverse, there has to be a universe where Rome exists. But tourism in alternate dimensions might be off the table if interdimensional travel is as expensive as it's been implied.

 

[+Oltux72]

23 hours ago, Nameless said:

Considering an infinite multiverse, there has to be a universe where Rome exists. But tourism in alternate dimensions might be off the table if interdimensional travel is as expensive as it's been implied.

 

But it would not be our Rome. You could always say that it is not the city whose streets Caesar, Ovid and Tacitus wandered, but just copies.

[NameIess]

Just now, Oltux72 said:

But it would not be our Rome. You could always say that it is not the city whose streets Caesar, Ovid and Tacitus wandered, but just copies.

Maybe, but the cost of interdimensional travel still makes tourism on earth the better option.

[+Oltux72]

2 minutes ago, Nameless said:

Maybe, but the cost of interdimensional travel still makes tourism on earth the better option.

Exactly, but to a different degree. That was my point. This dimension business is pretty seedy if you go into the details. If your touristic dream is a real dungeon where you can torture purple llamas for real, our Earth cannot compete. I will remain silent about the even more unsavory options.

And the dimensions suitable for such activities will be cheaper, as the language requirement falls away. In fact for some options people are a hinderance. Do you want to offer safaris into lands of roving mammoths and roaring sabretooth cats? Take a dimension in which man has gone extinct.

I wonder where the cost is. Is it the actual transfer or do they just have to make good on the high initial cost of discovery?

[bmcclure7]

On 3/16/2022 at 9:10 AM, Oltux72 said:

But it would not be our Rome. You could always say that it is not the city whose streets Caesar, Ovid and Tacitus wandered, but just copies.

People wont care if it looks like duck talks like a duck it's a duck. 

[Olmund]

On 3/17/2022 at 11:58 AM, bmcclure7 said:

People wont care if it looks like duck talks like a duck it's a duck. 

Nah. Historians wouldn't consider alternate Rome #3405050 to be interchangeable with ours, because it wouldn't actually allow them to learn/extrapolate anything meaningful (way too many variables and possibilities for cross contamination). Tourists wouldn't consider it THE "Rome," because that would negate a big part of their travel experience. 

On 3/15/2022 at 8:03 AM, Nameless said:

Considering an infinite multiverse, there has to be a universe where Rome exists. But tourism in alternate dimensions might be off the table if interdimensional travel is as expensive as it's been implied.

Brandon's original idea was "time travel tourism," and the guide itself includes touristy goals (among other things) as possible motivations for visiting alternate universes. You're right that the cost definitely puts limits on the prevalence of interdimensional travel, and it's probably more expensive (and definitely more dangerous) than regular tourism. We also don't know exactly how difficult it is to find alternate universes which have the very specific attributes (i.e., a nearly identical copy of Rome).

[+Oltux72]

On 24.3.2022 at 4:20 PM, Olmund said:

Nah. Historians wouldn't consider alternate Rome #3405050 to be interchangeable with ours, because it wouldn't actually allow them to learn/extrapolate anything meaningful (way too many variables and possibilities for cross contamination). Tourists wouldn't consider it THE "Rome," because that would negate a big part of their travel experience. 

Some tourists would, others wouldn't. That is kind of the point. The beaches of Bora Bora or Fiji suffer far less in that regard. Hence you would see a selective shift in the flow of money.

On 24.3.2022 at 4:20 PM, Olmund said:

Brandon's original idea was "time travel tourism," and the guide itself includes touristy goals (among other things) as possible motivations for visiting alternate universes.

Yes, and it may still be. We are told that universes are expensive to buy. But are they expensive to travel to?

On 24.3.2022 at 4:20 PM, Olmund said:

You're right that the cost definitely puts limits on the prevalence of interdimensional travel, and it's probably more expensive (and definitely more dangerous) than regular tourism. We also don't know exactly how difficult it is to find alternate universes which have the very specific attributes (i.e., a nearly identical copy of Rome).

We have I would think at least three cost factors

1. Discovering a universe
2. Exploring and assessing a universe
3. Transfer things and people there

If you wish to sell universes the price has to make up for all three factors and the failed attempts nobody wants. We have no way to judge the ratio. It may be in the 1 : hundreds.
If, however, you do tourism, the only cost you have to cover is #3. And we can make some educated guess at those costs, because they are a part of #2 indirectly, as you need to send people to do these things. Those people even need to be highly paid, as if you step into an unknown world, you may be stepping into a puddle of nerve agent on the bottom of a radioactive crater while breathing spores of some bioweapon.
Hence I would conclude that the trip has to be at least a thousand times cheaper.

[The Isochronism]

I love thinking about how the economy would be effected by different things, and I think all of you have raised interesting questions and possibilities. So Kudos.

[Lost Lobo]

On 3/14/2022 at 3:13 PM, Oltux72 said:

I did not want to write interdimensional travel into the title, but that is what this is about. They have access to an unlimted number of worlds with limited access. I am leaving aside the ethical implications of interdimensional imperialism for now. What does that mean from a social and economic angle?

• there can be no absolute shortages of resources. If you really need some natural resource, you can source it from some dimension.
• some tourist destinations take a real hit. Unspoiled tropical beaches are no longer rare. Others do not. You can see the real Rome only in the real Rome.
• crime pays again. If you get a lot of money and manage to evade the law for long enough to buy and escape to your own dimension, you live your dream.
• There is a market for personal combat instructions and gear and possibly mercenaries to a far greater extent.
• language instruction in classical dead languages suddenly has a much larger market. They don't speak an understandable form of English? So what, speak Latin! The dimension is much cheaper.

"The Long Earth" series faces and handles some of these questions (and agrees with you on some of those things).

I'm looking forward to seeing how Brandon handles things like trade - it's not just destinations that are no longer rare, it's gotta be easily exploitable mineral deposits on less-advanced versions of Earth(s).

[+Oltux72]

20 hours ago, Lost Lobo said:

"The Long Earth" series faces and handles some of these questions (and agrees with you on some of those things).

O well, no use sugarcoating it. Doing better than The Long Earth is trivial. That series has ridiculous economics. Who would buy all that grain those would-be pioneers are growing?

20 hours ago, Lost Lobo said:

I'm looking forward to seeing how Brandon handles things like trade - it's not just destinations that are no longer rare, it's gotta be easily exploitable mineral deposits on less-advanced versions of Earth(s).

Well, no, not unless you can transfer at arbitrary points and in huge chunks. You need to figure how costly it would be to build transport infrastructure. You can't even easily run a ship.

• no weather forecast
• no GPS
• no refueling underway
• no ports
• no charts
• if somebody falls ill or has a serious accident during the trip, that's it
• unknown germs

Can you imagine what it would cost to run a railway inland under those circumstances? Those resources are out there. You cannot ever run out of something, but they are not cheap.

And as a second point, can governments let companies without a lot of regulation? For starters, you have just unextincted smallpox. Do you really want to let people teach the Mongol Empire (even less savoury possibilities omitted) about modern weaponery?

[king of nowhere]

well, now that we have the actual book, we learn that it's not possible to bring stuff back. so the things about resource scarcity, or about some conqueror from an alternate dimension invading us, are no longer issues.

on the other hand, we learn that they can make gold in their fusion reactors; if they can make gold, they can make other elements too, and it only costs energy - which they have in unlimited amount, thanks to fusion. so they are already post-scarcity as far as resources go.

advanced technology can still cost a lot of money, though.

also, the fact that they engineered and unleashed an actual zombie epidemics on real people as a game does not paint a bight light on that future. i am reasonably sure we wouldn't do something like that. and it would be nigh-impossible to prevent would-be tyrants to lock themselves in another dimension and set themselves as god emperors. the potential for tragedy to billions of people is incredible. though on the plus side, the potential benefit with a benevolent wizard is equally incredible.

[AquaRegia]

On 3/23/2023 at 2:44 PM, Oltux72 said:

Doing better than The Long Earth is trivial. That series has ridiculous economics.

I really enjoyed The Long Earth series, and TFW brought it to my mind as well.  I thought Baxter and Pratchett did a reasonably good job of showing how people's first (and second, and etc) schemes for commercial exploitation of the infinity of parallel Earths all ended up being, as you say, ridiculous.  They "worked" for a short time, until the people on the buying end realized that (with infinity just a step away) there is always an easier or cheaper way, then they went bankrupt.

I think one of the main themes of The Long Earth is that so much about our economic system is predicated on scarcity.  If infinite resources suddenly become available, most "traditional" economic ideas can go right in the trash.  I do wish this idea had been fleshed out more in the books.

[+Oltux72]

On 17.4.2023 at 6:09 PM, AquaRegia said:

I think one of the main themes of The Long Earth is that so much about our economic system is predicated on scarcity.  If infinite resources suddenly become available, most "traditional" economic ideas can go right in the trash.  I do wish this idea had been fleshed out more in the books.

The problem with that is that they do not understand scarcity. By their logic if you get enough aluminium ore into one place, you'll get an aircraft. They removed a lesser component of the limits and thought that they'd show something.

[king of nowhere]

On 17/4/2023 at 6:09 PM, AquaRegia said:

I really enjoyed The Long Earth series, and TFW brought it to my mind as well.  I thought Baxter and Pratchett did a reasonably good job of showing how people's first (and second, and etc) schemes for commercial exploitation of the infinity of parallel Earths all ended up being, as you say, ridiculous.  They "worked" for a short time, until the people on the buying end realized that (with infinity just a step away) there is always an easier or cheaper way, then they went bankrupt.

I think one of the main themes of The Long Earth is that so much about our economic system is predicated on scarcity.  If infinite resources suddenly become available, most "traditional" economic ideas can go right in the trash.  I do wish this idea had been fleshed out more in the books.

no, not really.

sure, gold prices would go way down, because gold would no longer be so rare.

on the other hand, oil prices would stay the same. because there is plenty of oil in our world too, the problem is digging it up from deep underground and transporting it. those costs don't go down with parallel earths. same with iron, aluminium, timber, agricultural products...

by the way, we already have a society that's post scarcity in some areas: most notably, digital entertainment. we already have more books than anyone can possibly read, more movies than anyone can possibly watch, more videogames than anyone can possibly play, all available completely for free because they are a couple decades old. and guess what? people keep paying good money for those things.

[Treamayne]

On 3/23/2023 at 2:44 PM, Oltux72 said:

Well, no, not unless you can transfer at arbitrary points and in huge chunks. You need to figure how costly it would be to build transport infrastructure. You can't even easily run a ship.

• no weather forecast
• no GPS
• no refueling underway
• no ports
• no charts
• if somebody falls ill or has a serious accident during the trip, that's it
• unknown germs

Can you imagine what it would cost to run a railway inland under those circumstances? Those resources are out there. You cannot ever run out of something, but they are not cheap.

On 4/17/2023 at 0:09 PM, AquaRegia said:

I really enjoyed The Long Earth series, and TFW brought it to my mind as well.

As a contrast to that series, you may consider reading Wildside by Steven Gould, which shows what the protagonist and team go through to set up infrastructure to find resources in an alternate Earth (not to mention the dangers).

Sales Blurb:

Spoiler

Forget the lottery.

Teenager Charlie Newell has just discovered something that will make him and his friends billionaires. What if a world existed in which no humans ever evolved? No cities. No pollution. No laws. A fantastic world filled with unimaginable riches in which everything—everything—was yours just for the taking?

Charlie has found that world. And he plans to use it to make him and his friends rich.

There is a problem: How do you keep something this big a secret?

1997 Recipient of the Hal Clement Young Adult Award

Nominated for the 1997 Prometheus Award for Best Libertarian SF Novel

Slight Spoiler:

Spoiler

Established early, Charlie (son of an Airlines pilot) already has his PPL (private pilots license), so they set up weather monitoring, beacons, refueling stations, etc. Not to mention flying lessons, A&P mechanics certifications, buying the aircraft, etc. . .

 

[+Oltux72]

22 hours ago, Treamayne said:

As a contrast to that series, you may consider reading Wildside by Steven Gould, which shows what the protagonist and team go through to set up infrastructure to find resources in an alternate Earth (not to mention the dangers).

 

Is that the story where a teenage farm owner discovers a tunnel leading to another world under his family farm?

[Treamayne]

24 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

Is that the story where a teenage farm owner discovers a tunnel leading to another world under his family farm?

You probably mean the same story - (spoilers in case somebody does want to read it)

Spoiler

but it is that Charlie inherits the property that his Uncle left behind when he disappeared seven years ago. Charlie had already known about the "gate" at the back of the barn because, as a tween, his uncle had taken him "hiking" on "the other side." More Spoilers:

Spoiler

So, of course, Charlie eventually find's his uncle's remains and eventually learns that his mother and her brother were originally worldhoppers and the gate is how they came to this version of Earth in the first place. 

 

The story bears a striking resemblance to elements from Sanderson's planned Apocalypse Guard book (just 20 years earlier - since it released in 1996)

[+Oltux72]

4 minutes ago, Treamayne said:

The story bears a striking resemblance to elements from Sanderson's planned Apocalypse Guard book (just 20 years earlier - since it released in 1996)

To be fair, wouldn't you have to first point at the Paratime or Poul Anderson series, thus going back all the way to 1948? Larry Niven did a take on it. So did Turtledove. The idea, I am sorry, is hardly original. Even Star Trek has a time police.

[Treamayne]

3 minutes ago, Oltux72 said:

To be fair, wouldn't you have to first point at the Paratime or Poul Anderson series, thus going back all the way to 1948? Larry Niven did a take on it. So did Turtledove. The idea, I am sorry, is hardly original. Even Star Trek has a time police.

Oh, I wasn't saying that Gould started the idea by any means (and the people under discussion from this book are not really time hopping nor police - but that is beside the point):

Spoiler

I was talking about the "saving a dying alternate reality"- it's implied that Charlie's mother and uncle came from an Earth that was dying due to ecological disaster; and they sometimes use the tech to help other "Earths" that are on the brink of destruction (similar to how the Apocalypse Guard is about saving a Dimension that's about to die out).

 

[DocNappers]

So, I've just got up to the point where they mention that their fusion reactors produce gold as a by-product. I'm wondering if Brandon is aware that fusion reactions stop producing net energy once you reach iron (this is what triggers core collapse supernovas).

In order to produce gold you'd need to be dumping a huge amount of energy into the reactor to progressively form the elements heavier than iron, so for each gold producing fusion reactor, you'd need a significant number of hydrogen fusion reactors dedicated to powering it (I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect that it's at least an order of magnitude more). So while it would be possible to generate the rarer elements this way, it wouldn't automatically lead to an over abundance of these elements without some other societal incentive for doing so.

[alder24]

1 hour ago, DocNappers said:

So, I've just got up to the point where they mention that their fusion reactors produce gold as a by-product. I'm wondering if Brandon is aware that fusion reactions stop producing net energy once you reach iron (this is what triggers core collapse supernovas).

In order to produce gold you'd need to be dumping a huge amount of energy into the reactor to progressively form the elements heavier than iron, so for each gold producing fusion reactor, you'd need a significant number of hydrogen fusion reactors dedicated to powering it (I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect that it's at least an order of magnitude more). So while it would be possible to generate the rarer elements this way, it wouldn't automatically lead to an over abundance of these elements without some other societal incentive for doing so.

I bet Brandon knows it - his assistant, Peter Ahlstrom, minored in astronomy while at the university, he does math and physics for Brandon. They certainly are aware of that, and the simplest solution is the one you've proposed. But in the book one reactor can just do that, so we have to excuse them for using some kind of unknown sci-fi tech. 

[DocNappers]

6 hours ago, alder24 said:

I bet Brandon knows it - his assistant, Peter Ahlstrom, minored in astronomy while at the university, he does math and physics for Brandon. They certainly are aware of that, and the simplest solution is the one you've proposed. But in the book one reactor can just do that, so we have to excuse them for using some kind of unknown sci-fi tech. 

Fair enough. I thought it just seemed odd considering that this is the sort of thing he usually gives reasonable in-world explanations for other than just outright stating that it happens.

[king of nowhere]

12 hours ago, DocNappers said:

So, I've just got up to the point where they mention that their fusion reactors produce gold as a by-product. I'm wondering if Brandon is aware that fusion reactions stop producing net energy once you reach iron (this is what triggers core collapse supernovas).

In order to produce gold you'd need to be dumping a huge amount of energy into the reactor to progressively form the elements heavier than iron, so for each gold producing fusion reactor, you'd need a significant number of hydrogen fusion reactors dedicated to powering it (I haven't run the numbers, but I suspect that it's at least an order of magnitude more). So while it would be possible to generate the rarer elements this way, it wouldn't automatically lead to an over abundance of these elements without some other societal incentive for doing so.

remember three quarters of our planet are literally covered in hydrogen oxyde, for a depth of kilometers. there's no shortage of hydrogen for fusion.

let's make the generous assumption that it takes 100 hydrogen fusions to power up the formation of a gold nucleus. one liter of water is 55 mols, which make 110 mols of hydrogen, with which you make 1 mol of gold. which is 200 grams, because gold is heavy.

so, under that assumption of 100 hydrogens for 1 gold, you can make 200 grams of gold for a liter of water. if you can also recycle the oxygens, you make more.

really, how much gold can you really need? that's unlimited for all practical purposes.

[DocNappers]

8 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

remember three quarters of our planet are literally covered in hydrogen oxyde, for a depth of kilometers. there's no shortage of hydrogen for fusion.

let's make the generous assumption that it takes 100 hydrogen fusions to power up the formation of a gold nucleus. one liter of water is 55 mols, which make 110 mols of hydrogen, with which you make 1 mol of gold. which is 200 grams, because gold is heavy.

so, under that assumption of 100 hydrogens for 1 gold, you can make 200 grams of gold for a liter of water. if you can also recycle the oxygens, you make more.

really, how much gold can you really need? that's unlimited for all practical purposes.

My point though is that heavier elements are not a by-product, but rather something that you need to deliberately manufacture, which means that you don't necessarily have an overabundance of them as it then becomes an issue of economics and supply and demand (even if they are easier to produce than by current standards), and this is the sort of thing Brandon is usually careful about having in-world explanations for (i.e., having the heavier elements as by-products essentially contradicts his third law of magic by introducing new magic physics unnecessarily, whereas adding a one-liner explanation for easily manufacturing it wouldn't).

Edited August 21, 2023 by DocNappers