Vertical cities

[Northstar1989]

On 4/14/2016 at 11:21 PM, Stargate525 said:

Because 80% of our economy is retail services and transportation. You will quite literally crash the entire planet's economy if you remove all brick and mortar stores from the USA. It's currently happening, and anyone who knows what markers to look for should be terrified of the self-driving car.

The "brick-and-mortar" stores are largely going to disappear, one way or another.  And the self-driving car is the future- terror won't change anything about that.

The reality we need to embrace is that HUMANS ARE OBSOLETE for doing many jobs.  With time, we will eventually automate so many of them (or replace them with more efficient systems, like online shopping) that we will simple be unable to employ most of the population.  Laissez Faire capitalism is sowing the seeds of its own doom with technology and productivity- certain "adjustments" will eventually be needed.

Mainly, we need to cut the link between employment and sustenance.  Already we are developing a permanent underclass with large sections of our populace (even college graduates!) stuck in mind-numbing jobs in retail and food-service and paid barely-livable or unlivable wages...

The solution is something like a Universal Basic Income- funded mainly by taxation of the rich.

The wealthy are, after all, the ones who inevitably pocket all the profits of automation and ever-increasing productivity.  Even when the workers simply work harder to produce more goods, they almost never, ever, ever get paid more for it- the rich simply pocket the extra profits and the income-gap grows...  Meanwhile, corporations rarely get into price-wars anymore that would actually see these gain distributed back to the lower classes (through their paycheck purchasing more goods and services) because they form trusts and associations (legal or illegal) or work out unwritten agreements and understandings so as to avoid "destructive" (really only for the incomes of the rich) price-wars...  The result is ever-increasing prices and a working class squeezed by stagnant wages.

 

A Universal Basic Income allows us to provide the entirety of the population with the necessities it needs and eliminate social ills like homelessness and extreme poverty that capitalism has proven completely unable or unwilling to eliminate- even in EXTREMELY wealthy countries like the United States.

Those at the top would have us blame the individual- call them "lazy" or "stupid", but the reality is it's the SYSTEM that is rigged- it forces the lower classes to work for unlivable wages, and stomach risks like going with little or no healthcare (the inability to meet medical bills is actually one of the leading causes of homelessness, by the way...) or working in a business that might close down or ends up laying off many of its workers...

Those at the bottom cannot afford such risks when they are already teetering on the edge of survival- and the current welfare system is horrendously broken, with perverse incentives not to work and tremendous social stigmas for going onto it.  We can do much better- and a Universal Basic Income is a VASTLY better option than the current welfare system (with none of the associated stigma, since EVERYONE receives it, rich or poor...)

 

My point is that things like brick-and-mortar stores and trucking jobs are GOING to disappear, one way or another.  We could delay this a good bit by implementing a low Universal Basic Income and greatly lowering the Minimum Wage (some might call this subsidizing businesses that pay the Minimum Wage- but the reality is the workers exist and need to be supported anyways, regardless of whether or not they are employed- so we might as well not ask businesses to pay their entire cost of living if it keeps them productively employed for longer into the forseeable future) in order to delay further automation, but the reality is sooner or later large segments of our population are going to be unemployed through no fault of their own, and we will need to find ways to adapt (hiring more teachers, police officers, and scientists funded by the government could put SOME of these people to work- but would require raising taxes on the rich even further...)

 

Future cities need to be built with these future trends in mind- that people will work less in the future (either through higher unemployment or a decrease in the length of the working-week: another trend that could be supported by changes in labor laws and a Universal Basic Income), that more good will be ordered online rather than purchased in stores, and that cars will drive themselves (in fact, it would behoove many cities to eventually outlaw manually driving cars withing the city-limits: as computerized drivers will be able to safely drive in much more crowded streets without accidents...)

 

Regards,

Northstar

Edited April 20, 2016 by Northstar1989

[YNM]

Except that even the gov't won't even think of taxing them - giving them tax levy ? More likely. Cue government contractors.

[Stargate525]

15 hours ago, Northstar1989 said:

The "brick-and-mortar" stores are largely going to disappear, one way or another.  And the self-driving car is the future- terror won't change anything about that.

The reality we need to embrace is that HUMANS ARE OBSOLETE for doing many jobs.  With time, we will eventually automate so many of them (or replace them with more efficient systems, like online shopping) that we will simple be unable to employ most of the population.  Laissez Faire capitalism is sowing the seeds of its own doom with technology and productivity- certain "adjustments" will eventually be needed.

I'm not terrified of the car itself. I'm terrified of a mass of lightly-to-non-educated disenfranchised people rising up to take what isn't theirs once the economy completely collapses, and historically speaking such revolutions come with many, many corpses.

But that has nothing to do with vertical cities. Done talking about this thread. You want to continue this with me, take it to a PM.

[kerbiloid]

Cars, elevators, trains and arcologies. 200 years ago:
It's really mad to believe that a horse-driven carriage can be replaced by a lifeless iron thing running (just imagine this nonsense) under the ground along the iron bars. Do you really think anybody will use it? How do you think to tranport a million people per day through the narrow tonnels?
 

Edited April 21, 2016 by kerbiloid

[YNM]

There's one "miracle" though : industrial revolution. Much like any other things that weren't very popular long back then, some revolution occurs that brings them into realm. (anyway, subs have been around London since 17th century, so clearly somebody had thought of it before that.)

Arcologies... Unless some revolution happens on building materials we won't see them coming like machines.