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IMPress Polly
08-11-2015, 10:56 AM
In the classic series Star Trek: The Next Generation created by futurist Gene Roddenberry, human civilization has evolved beyond want and thus beyond market economics. Food and luxuries alike are free, created by machines known as "replicators", which are virtual reality devices capable of creating basically anything from pure energy. In this new era free of scarcity and want -- the defining features of our science of economics -- human beings find value in things like hobbies, personal betterment, and helping others rather than from material accumulation. Is this pure science fiction or might it actually be something like the future of humanity?

I ask because one professional economist in the employ of Bloomberg recently authored this article in which he contended that it doesn't seem that far-fetched actually (http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-03/star-trek-economy-and-life-after-the-dismal-science?utm_medium=email&utm_source=digg). I'd recommend checking out his argument and see what you think!

Here's the heart of his case:


The first thing to consider is how to distribute the fruits of plenty. If we can harness renewable energy to ward off a collapse when fossil fuels run out, then it’s a good bet that increased automation, virtual reality and other technological advances will provide us with a world of plenty unimaginable in previous times. Current world annual gross domestic product per capita, in purchasing power parity terms, is only about $13,000 (http://www.indexmundi.com/world/gdp_per_capita_%28ppp%29.html) -- enough to put food on the table and a roof over one’s head. What happens when it is $100,000, or $200,000?


It would seem ridiculous to limit this incredible plenty to a few people. When the world gets rich enough, a trivial tax on the rich would be enough to provide everyone on Earth with a basic income that would allow them to lead lives of leisure. Or, as Yglesias suggests, voluntary giveaways by the rich could support the rest, since we might get more altruistic as our lives become more comfortable. Who cares if the robots put us all out of a job, when we can create paradise with just a tiny dash of redistribution?

Oh I definitely think that some kind of tax or something forcible like that would be required. After all, despite the fact that the world's per capita income (i.e. what everyone in the world would be making if we redistributed all the wealth exactly equally) is $13,000 in current American purchasing power (which is a working class income just sufficient to provide basic food and shelter for a family), 84% of the world's population nonetheless currently lives on the current U.S. equivalent of less than $7,300 a year (http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/07/11/poor-j11.html) and I think that tells us that the generosity of the rich cannot be underestimated. But I too see no reason why humanity wouldn't naturally evolve into something generally like the kind of state we're talking about under those circumstances, and it seems likely that we'll indeed see them some day. After all, right now we are already capable of "replicating" many things in virtual environments (some applications of which we call file sharing for example) and it seems like VR replication is becoming a more general phenomenon that's being applied to ever more and more things.

Yes the robots will put us out of work, but do we really need compulsory labor to have a sense of fulfillment? I for one already define myself primarily by my hobbies, activism, and interests -- things I enjoy on a voluntary basis -- as do lots of people. What is to say that that kind of ethic cannot become a more general phenomenon when the circumstances allow it?

Private Pickle
08-11-2015, 11:20 AM
Someone will always want control and power. Having a replicator sounds great until they start replicating weapons.

I do think humans are evolving our sense of humanity and perhaps the lack of want for material things would create a lack of desire for power.

The Xl
08-11-2015, 11:20 AM
It's possible, if we get to the point where robots do most of the work and if food and water are easily created. Humanity will come at a crossroads at some point if technology keeps progressing at this rate. It all really hinges on whether or not we have the technology to create food, water, and other resources, because if we can't, I foresee a problem at some point in time.

Captain Obvious
08-11-2015, 11:24 AM
No.

We are a "capitalistic" (the definition is very misleading too) and materialistic society, which means everything is done to make a profit and feed the 1% pig. It's why our technology is shit, our political, educational, everything else environments are shit.

There will always be poverty, pollution, corruption etc. because these are the tools the wealthy use to stay in power.

southwest88
08-11-2015, 11:49 AM
Someone will always want control and power. Having a replicator sounds great until they start replicating weapons.

I do think humans are evolving our sense of humanity and perhaps the lack of want for material things would create a lack of desire for power.

If you have cheap power on demand, you can go wherever you want in the 'verse. If things locally aren't to your liking, you fabricate a ship, supplies, recruit like-minded staff, colonists, etc. & off you go. Conflict requires people or factions fighting over the same resource. Once it become easy to move off & start over, with a good chance of establishing a regime you're happy with - Who would want to stay & slug it out with no guarantee of winning in the long run?

Ethereal
08-11-2015, 11:58 AM
I don't see how that could be considered a post-market economy, especially when the technology that will make it possible is being developed largely by private sector firms.

Private Pickle
08-11-2015, 12:49 PM
If you have cheap power on demand, you can go wherever you want in the 'verse. If things locally aren't to your liking, you fabricate a ship, supplies, recruit like-minded staff, colonists, etc. & off you go. Conflict requires people or factions fighting over the same resource. Once it become easy to move off & start over, with a good chance of establishing a regime you're happy with - Who would want to stay & slug it out with no guarantee of winning in the long run?

And then the Klingons kill you...

southwest88
08-11-2015, 01:01 PM
And then the Klingons kill you...

Roddenberry TMK never worked out the economics of the Federation. & the backstory of the Federation is pretty sketchy, too. He seemed to regard the cowboys & Indians theme as a universal & a given - @ least, from what I recall of the original run of Star Trek. Certainly there was a lot of conflict there.

Although I think the Borg have the right idea - they assimilate the bits of tech & biology that they want, & presumably recycle the rest. The Klingons seemed relatively unsophisticated in their take on foreign races/cultures.

Private Pickle
08-11-2015, 01:13 PM
Roddenberry TMK never worked out the economics of the Federation. & the backstory of the Federation is pretty sketchy, too. He seemed to regard the cowboys & Indians theme as a universal & a given - @ least, from what I recall of the original run of Star Trek. Certainly there was a lot of conflict there.

Although I think the Borg have the right idea - they assimilate the bits of tech & biology that they want, & presumably recycle the rest. The Klingons seemed relatively unsophisticated in their take on foreign races/cultures.

Alright the Romulans then...

Chris
08-11-2015, 01:20 PM
What many fail to understand is when economists speak of scarcity they don't really mean scarcity of products or even of resources but scarcity brought about by the allocation of resources, and products and services, for different uses.

Very simple example. There's a lot of space in the Universe. But only one person can occupy a space at a time. there's lots of time, but one can do only one thing at a time. The economic problem is how to allocate resources the uses of which are competed for in the production of goods and services. Mises called it the economic calculation problem. It doesn't matter that production is automated.

southwest88
08-11-2015, 01:29 PM
Alright the Romulans then...

Nah, the Romulans were some offshoot of the Vulcans. & we all know how rational the Vulcans are/will be (damn temporal mechanics. Never a good one around when you need one.)

Somehow the Romulans got sidetracked into a warrior society - like hyped-up samurai. You'd think that with a bedrock faith in rationality, that the proto-Romulans would have been fairly immune to false premises, but something happened to them along the way. I don't recall - or more likely, Roddenberry never explained - what sent the Romulans down the societal path they took.

southwest88
08-11-2015, 01:42 PM
What many fail to understand is when economists speak of scarcity they don't really mean scarcity of products or even of resources but scarcity brought about by the allocation of resources, and products and services, for different uses.

Very simple example. There's a lot of space in the Universe. But only one person can occupy a space at a time. there's lots of time, but one can do only one thing at a time. The economic problem is how to allocate resources the uses of which are competed for in the production of goods and services. Mises called it the economic calculation problem. It doesn't matter that production is automated.

Yah, but if you can allocate essentially endless resources, What are the grounds for conflict?

As for space - if multiverses actually exist, folded up & co-existent with ordinary reality around us - then there's no limit there either. It's a possibility, & there are various high-level physicists looking @ the possibility. Nobody's working on the tech, TMK - they're still waiting for the math to jell. (& for some conceptual methodology to manufacture equipment that could operate on the various levels.)

It's not just that production would be automated. A replicator presumably taps into the constant energy flow in the physical universe, & allows the operator to assemble practically anything from the energy. Which is probably one of the reasons Roddenberry never elaborated on the topic - There's no real need for an economy, if you can simply whip up a thousand widgets, or uranium, or dilithium crystals, or ...

Private Pickle
08-11-2015, 01:54 PM
Nah, the Romulans were some offshoot of the Vulcans. & we all know how rational the Vulcans are/will be (damn temporal mechanics. Never a good one around when you need one.)

Somehow the Romulans got sidetracked into a warrior society - like hyped-up samurai. You'd think that with a bedrock faith in rationality, that the proto-Romulans would have been fairly immune to false premises, but something happened to them along the way. I don't recall - or more likely, Roddenberry never explained - what sent the Romulans down the societal path they took.

12316

Peter1469
08-11-2015, 04:38 PM
No.

We are a "capitalistic" (the definition is very misleading too) and materialistic society, which means everything is done to make a profit and feed the 1% pig. It's why our technology is shit, our political, educational, everything else environments are shit.

There will always be poverty, pollution, corruption etc. because these are the tools the wealthy use to stay in power.

You are thinking in the economics of scarcity. Polly brings up an alternative (and we discussed it in another thread).

When the necessities are no longer scarce, there is no need for a free market to allocate scarce resources.

Chris
08-11-2015, 04:45 PM
Yah, but if you can allocate essentially endless resources, What are the grounds for conflict?

As for space - if multiverses actually exist, folded up & co-existent with ordinary reality around us - then there's no limit there either. It's a possibility, & there are various high-level physicists looking @ the possibility. Nobody's working on the tech, TMK - they're still waiting for the math to jell. (& for some conceptual methodology to manufacture equipment that could operate on the various levels.)

It's not just that production would be automated. A replicator presumably taps into the constant energy flow in the physical universe, & allows the operator to assemble practically anything from the energy. Which is probably one of the reasons Roddenberry never elaborated on the topic - There's no real need for an economy, if you can simply whip up a thousand widgets, or uranium, or dilithium crystals, or ...


There's quantum physics and then there's the Newtonian reality we still live in and in which resources are finite.

Dr. Who
08-11-2015, 07:07 PM
What many fail to understand is when economists speak of scarcity they don't really mean scarcity of products or even of resources but scarcity brought about by the allocation of resources, and products and services, for different uses.

Very simple example. There's a lot of space in the Universe. But only one person can occupy a space at a time. there's lots of time, but one can do only one thing at a time. The economic problem is how to allocate resources the uses of which are competed for in the production of goods and services. Mises called it the economic calculation problem. It doesn't matter that production is automated.
Well, if you have a replicator, depending on the science of the replicator, that may not be an issue. Say you only have to add water and dirt and it will make anything you want? No matter where you are on the planet, you can have water and dirt. The water can be extracted from the atmosphere and the dirt is everywhere. Then there is no resource allocation.

Dr. Who
08-11-2015, 07:11 PM
Nah, the Romulans were some offshoot of the Vulcans. & we all know how rational the Vulcans are/will be (damn temporal mechanics. Never a good one around when you need one.)

Somehow the Romulans got sidetracked into a warrior society - like hyped-up samurai. You'd think that with a bedrock faith in rationality, that the proto-Romulans would have been fairly immune to false premises, but something happened to them along the way. I don't recall - or more likely, Roddenberry never explained - what sent the Romulans down the societal path they took.
All of these species invented by Roddenberry were analogues of people on earth, sometimes in combination. The success of the series was predicated on the audience identifying the personality types and even the cultural types. The first series was entirely based on moral tales.

Chris
08-11-2015, 07:12 PM
Well, if you have a replicator, depending on the science of the replicator, that may not be an issue. Say you only have to add water and dirt and it will make anything you want? No matter where you are on the planet, you can have water and dirt. The water can be extracted from the atmosphere and the dirt is everywhere. Then there is no resource allocation.

But it's not about the availability of resources, it's about allocating them for different uses. How do you decide how the dirt and water is allocated and what it is allocated for? You can't just dream up imaginary worlds where that's not a problem--well, you can, central planners have been dreaming that up for ages, and it's never worked.

Dr. Who
08-11-2015, 07:20 PM
But it's not about the availability of resources, it's about allocating them for different uses. How do you decide how the dirt and water is allocated and what it is allocated for? You can't just dream up imaginary worlds where that's not a problem--well, you can, central planners have been dreaming that up for ages, and it's never worked.
If you have a machine that extracts water from the air, and dirt is everywhere, I don't see a problem. The replicator might be more sophisticated than that - perhaps it just extracts everything from the air. Every individual might have a replicator. I seem to recall an old discussion with you where you admitted that the advent of the replicator would spell the end of any need to buy and/or sell anything.

southwest88
08-11-2015, 07:54 PM
There's quantum physics and then there's the Newtonian reality we still live in and in which resources are finite.

Well, sure, we're talking Roddenberry & Star Trek & replicators here. With basically free & endless energy, you can afford to assemble objects, food, cloth, what-have-you a molecule @ a time, if you want to. That's the pot o' gold @ the end of the rainbow - if we ever make the breakthrough on commercial fusion, for instance, to the point that a self-sustaining fusion reaction actually generates more power than it takes to contain the plasma & run all the control mechanisms - then we'll be in fat city. There won't be any resource allocation issues because there will be no need to allocate resources @ all - energy will be practically free & endless, & we can assemble any object we want.

We'll be able to pursue all the projects in the World, simultaneously.

Chris
08-11-2015, 08:03 PM
Well, sure, we're talking Roddenberry & Star Trek & replicators here. With basically free & endless energy, you can afford to assemble objects, food, cloth, what-have-you a molecule @ a time, if you want to. That's the pot o' gold @ the end of the rainbow - if we ever make the breakthrough on commercial fusion, for instance, to the point that a self-sustaining fusion reaction actually generates more power than it takes to contain the plasma & run all the control mechanisms - then we'll be in fat city. There won't be any resource allocation issues because there will be no need to allocate resources @ all - energy will be practically free & endless, & we can assemble any object we want.

We'll be able to pursue all the projects in the World, simultaneously.


OK, I'm not much into scifi. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Gibson, Neuromancer, a few others, 20, 30 years ago. A little Star Trak early on. The Day the Earth Stood Still was great.

Dr. Who
08-11-2015, 08:33 PM
OK, I'm not much into scifi. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Gibson, Neuromancer, a few others, 20, 30 years ago. A little Star Trak early on. The Day the Earth Stood Still was great.
Much sci fi predicted what we would be doing in the future - or it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of all SF, Star Trek probably had the greatest influence on the most people. Communicators = cell phones. Replicator = 3D printers and beyond. Huge numbers of people went into aeronautics, physics and computer tech because of Star Trek. People are currently researching the science behind the transporter, warp drive etcetera. Roddenberry painted a world of unlimited possibilities, without poverty and without capitalism, where we explore the universe, because we can. A world where someone runs a restaurant, not for money, but for the joy of making people happy. It's a compelling vision.

Chris
08-11-2015, 08:51 PM
Much sci fi predicted what we would be doing in the future - or it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of all SF, Star Trek probably had the greatest influence on the most people. Communicators = cell phones. Replicator = 3D printers and beyond. Huge numbers of people went into aeronautics, physics and computer tech because of Star Trek. People are currently researching the science behind the transporter, warp drive etcetera. Roddenberry painted a world of unlimited possibilities, without poverty and without capitalism, where we explore the universe, because we can. A world where someone runs a restaurant, not for money, but for the joy of making people happy. It's a compelling vision.


So did the Bible predict a lot. And Nostradamus. And Marx.

I think it's compelling because it's you all's vision of heaven on earth.

Dr. Who
08-11-2015, 09:05 PM
So did the Bible predict a lot. And Nostradamus. And Marx.

I think it's compelling because it's you all's vision of heaven on earth.
Do you find dog eat dog compelling? It's a survival technique, but is it our destiny to always be scratching out a means of survival, when we could be using the same abilities to do things that are so much more worthwhile. We could be extending our knowledge and travelling to other universes. Beyond feeding ourselves, clothing ourselves and having shelter, the rest is ego. There is more than money to feed ego. Success is how we define it. We currently define it with money, but that is just symbolic of success. It is not immutable.

southwest88
08-11-2015, 09:57 PM
OK, I'm not much into scifi. Heinlein, The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Gibson, Neuromancer, a few others, 20, 30 years ago. A little Star Trak early on. The Day the Earth Stood Still was great.

No worries, sci-fi is an acquired taste. Although the way stuff (nanotech, cybernetics, gene-splicing, etc.) keeps hopping off the page, I would think everybody would want to @ least scout the territory, see what might be coming up next.

Which Day the Earth did you prefer? The original B&W, or the recent remake? I preferred the B&W, seems to me the storyline was kept simple & straightforward - although they never did show Gort's true nature, either. I thought the remake spent an awful lot of time & energy on side stories - distractions to the main event, as it were. Pretty pix, nice SFX, good casting - but there's only so much audience attention available - you have to point it in the right direction.

Green Arrow
08-12-2015, 12:42 AM
I think as we grow increasingly more urbanized, we will start to see a Star Trek-like society emerge.

decedent
08-12-2015, 12:52 AM
This is commie talk.

People are only motivated by money. They're certainly not motivated by prestige, work ethic, self improvement, family or curiosity. That's why people stop working after they get rich... after they get about $3 million in the bank, people totally lose their desire to work.

IMPress Polly
08-12-2015, 05:50 AM
southwest wrote:
If you have cheap power on demand, you can go wherever you want in the 'verse. If things locally aren't to your liking, you fabricate a ship, supplies, recruit like-minded staff, colonists, etc. & off you go. Conflict requires people or factions fighting over the same resource. Once it become easy to move off & start over, with a good chance of establishing a regime you're happy with - Who would want to stay & slug it out with no guarantee of winning in the long run?

A WINNER IS YOU!!

Nobody has yet offered a compelling answer to this point that I've seen.


Dr. Who wrote:
Much sci fi predicted what we would be doing in the future - or it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. Of all SF, Star Trek probably had the greatest influence on the most people. Communicators =cell phones. Replicator = 3D printers and beyond. Huge numbers of people went into aeronautics, physics and computer tech because of Star Trek. People are currently researching the science behind the transporter, warp drive etcetera. Roddenberry painted a world of unlimited possibilities, without poverty and without capitalism, where we explore the universe, because we can. A world where someone runs a restaurant, not for money, but for the joy of making people happy. It's a compelling vision.

And this. *points upward*

Science fiction has shown a remarkable capacity to not remain pure fiction. A lot of genuinely great ideas and inventions began as science fiction.


Ethereal wrote:
I don't see how that could be considered a post-market economy, especially when the technology that will make it possible is being developed largely by private sector firms.

It's an essentially post-market state of affairs in the sense that most all production occurs for use rather than for exchange. THAT's a fundamental change that's likely to happen well within this century. At anything resembling its current rate of growth, for example, the non-profit sector will encompass most of the world economy by mid-century. In other words, we'll probably be living largely post-capitalist that soon, although market economics will continue to exists on the periphery. Now imagine 100 or 200 years from now. Do you think we'll still be using market economics at all then?

Some day a generation of human beings will come along that looks back on this time as simple, barbaric, and backward, much as we do ISIS. That's what I think.

PolWatch
08-12-2015, 06:39 AM
The modern replicator is an updated version of the Philosopher's Stone. The stone was said to turn base metal into gold (eliminating want) and provide immortality. The first mention of the stone was 300 AD...how's that for early sci-fi?

Chris
08-12-2015, 07:07 AM
Do you find dog eat dog compelling? It's a survival technique, but is it our destiny to always be scratching out a means of survival, when we could be using the same abilities to do things that are so much more worthwhile. We could be extending our knowledge and travelling to other universes. Beyond feeding ourselves, clothing ourselves and having shelter, the rest is ego. There is more than money to feed ego. Success is how we define it. We currently define it with money, but that is just symbolic of success. It is not immutable.


Dog eat dog? That's a Progressive misrepresentation of Herbert Spencer's survival of the fittest misunderstanding of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Destiny? Evolution is not progressive but random. The problem is man cannot redefine man.

Chris
08-12-2015, 07:08 AM
No worries, sci-fi is an acquired taste. Although the way stuff (nanotech, cybernetics, gene-splicing, etc.) keeps hopping off the page, I would think everybody would want to @ least scout the territory, see what might be coming up next.

Which Day the Earth did you prefer? The original B&W, or the recent remake? I preferred the B&W, seems to me the storyline was kept simple & straightforward - although they never did show Gort's true nature, either. I thought the remake spent an awful lot of time & energy on side stories - distractions to the main event, as it were. Pretty pix, nice SFX, good casting - but there's only so much audience attention available - you have to point it in the right direction.

B&W.

CreepyOldDude
08-12-2015, 04:10 PM
Food and luxuries alike are free, created by machines known as "replicators", which are virtual reality devices capable of creating basically anything from pure energy.

Being super nit-picky, but replicators are based on transporter technology, not virtual reality. :)

CreepyOldDude
08-12-2015, 04:53 PM
Nah, the Romulans were some offshoot of the Vulcans. & we all know how rational the Vulcans are/will be (damn temporal mechanics. Never a good one around when you need one.)

Somehow the Romulans got sidetracked into a warrior society - like hyped-up samurai. You'd think that with a bedrock faith in rationality, that the proto-Romulans would have been fairly immune to false premises, but something happened to them along the way. I don't recall - or more likely, Roddenberry never explained - what sent the Romulans down the societal path they took.

Much less like samurai, and much more like the Roman Empire. The guy who created the Romulans, Paul Schneider, once said "it was a matter of developing a good Romanesque set of admirable antagonists ... an extension of the Roman civilization to the point of space travel".

southwest88
08-12-2015, 06:08 PM
Much less like samurai, and much more like the Roman Empire. The guy who created the Romulans, Paul Schneider, once said "it was a matter of developing a good Romanesque set of admirable antagonists ... an extension of the Roman civilization to the point of space travel".

Maybe. The Romulans always seemed much too inflexible to be good warriors - which seemed to be the ethic they were emulating. The Romans @ their peak were seeking promising peoples & individuals to incorporate into their culture (more like the Borg, for instance. Although the Borg are too literal in their notion of incorporating individuals.)

But then Rome fell away from their founding principles - & stratified into rigid classes.

CreepyOldDude
08-12-2015, 06:37 PM
Maybe. The Romulans always seemed much too inflexible to be good warriors - which seemed to be the ethic they were emulating. The Romans @ their peak were seeking promising peoples & individuals to incorporate into their culture (more like the Borg, for instance. Although the Borg are too literal in their notion of incorporating individuals.)

But then Rome fell away from their founding principles - & stratified into rigid classes.

Romans weren't really warriors. They were soldiers.

The Romulans have a star empire, which I always thought was roughly equivalent to the Roman Empire, circa 180 AD, during the reign of Commodus. The rot hasn't really shown yet, and most lower class Romans believe in the system. But there's lots of scheming and maneuvering for advantage in the upper classes.

Dr. Who
08-12-2015, 07:07 PM
Romans weren't really warriors. They were soldiers.

The Romulans have a star empire, which I always thought was roughly equivalent to the Roman Empire, circa 180 AD, during the reign of Commodus. The rot hasn't really shown yet, and most lower class Romans believe in the system. But there's lots of scheming and maneuvering for advantage in the upper classes.
I think the Klingons were a cross between Samurai and Vikings.

CreepyOldDude
08-13-2015, 11:49 AM
I think the Klingons were a cross between Samurai and Vikings.

Agreed.

In TOS, they're really reminiscent of orientals. If you keep in mind that this was just 27 years after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so it was still relatively fresh in people's minds.

Later on, they added the Klingon honor code, which is quite similar to bushido.

Dr. Who
08-13-2015, 04:29 PM
Agreed.

In TOS, they're really reminiscent of orientals. If you keep in mind that this was just 27 years after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so it was still relatively fresh in people's minds.

Later on, they added the Klingon honor code, which is quite similar to bushido.
Agree, but their religious beliefs were definitely Norse inspired. Stovokor = Valhalla.

OGIS
09-13-2015, 10:07 AM
Someone will always want control and power. Having a replicator sounds great until they start replicating weapons.

I do think humans are evolving our sense of humanity and perhaps the lack of want for material things would create a lack of desire for power.

I forget the name of it, but there was a fascinating, ugly little science fiction story some years ago about an alien attack on Earth. Their purpose is not to conquer or kill us; merely to remove us from competing with them. All they do is drop "replicator" machines that will reproduce, out of one end, anything that you put into the other end. The only thing that it will not replicate is people.

Very quickly money becomes useless. The only form of wealth and status worth having is slaves (because people can not be replicated), and society quickly collapses into pre-industrial feudalism. Mission accomplished.