Yeah, this is a 'What is the nature of Man?' 'Haves. Have Nots.' kind of question.
I sucked at SimCity 3000 and could never get started without an infinite resources cheat.
Whether Zeus is tossing raw metals off of Mt. Olympus' summit or we figure out how to mine large quantities of rare elements from space debris, pretend humankind would have as many resources as they would ever need. What would be the reaction. We can all guess that humanity is going to suffer as the planet's natural resources dwindle; it's a popular theme from a truckload of science fiction books. Genesis has the Garden of Eden. Star Trek had replicators.
If Man's needs are taken care of, as far as I can tell it can end up two ways. The first is man makes use of the infinite resources, making it a goal to refine them. All basic comforts are met and no one can really be wealthy anymore. A chicken in every pot and a plasma screen TV in every living room. There's still luxury since master craftsmen can only produce so much in a lifetime but basically everyone is without want. The second way is the people in charge of refinement become the new kings of earth and international greed or monopolies take over, since they'd control distribution of usable goods. Some believe that we have the capacity to feed everyone on the planet but people still starve so I wouldn't call the second way impossible.
That Rousseau guy said something along the lines of man being happy in nature but society corrupted him by instilling complicated wants and desires. War and greed don't end even when all desires are met and that sounds depressing. Then that Schopenhauer guy said Man's desire is insatiable, which is more depressing. Could any bureaucracy even handle infinite resources?
What problems would disappear if everything we needed was unlimited? Everything we wanted?
Equally important, what problems would be created?
Natural resources do include fresh water, wild animal populations, and open land. Yes, infinite land ... resting on a giant turtle's back. Pollution and overpopulation are not problems.
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War never changes.
Really, though, there is no amount of resources that we cannot expend. Even with an armada of asteroid-mining robots we'd still use up all the produced resources on various things—sending large sublight spacecraft to other star systems, building enormous sculptures of genitalia, etc.
Truly infinite resources is a meaningless concept; our perceptions are so anchored in the realities of scarcity that we cannot begin to comprehend what life would be like without it. I suppose it'd be my goal, at least, to expand my consciousness as far as is possible. I'd become a brain (or computer?) the size of a planet.
An infinite amount of things leads to an infinite amount of delightful ways to kill an infinite amount of humans.
First thing I thought (if that was indeed the case) is, someone would ask for a gun and stand outside the computer and make sure only he could use it. Dunno if that would really happen though.
Destroy this inequality by making humans uniform and you really aren't talking about humanity anymore. You are engaged in a double hypothetical in which you conjecture what a fantasy species would do in a certain situation, which might be fun imaginatively, but not particularly interesting.
Well, I mean, it might. If the lynx eat all the hares, the lynx go extinct. In the event that we don't have infinite resources, sustainability is obviously a Big Deal.
edit: Oh. Oops. I think I read "sustainable" as "possible." Carry on.
I like the hole, 'I don't care how much oil costs a barrel. We are fucking you in the ass this week, because we decided to not build enough refineries."
Or, well, "We are never going to let ethonol work, because we won't let it use the same tubes as oil. We have to charge extra for using truck."
Or, well "we need to charge you more for oil, due to inflation, our workers(board members) need more money. That money will come from you, thanks for the raise"
or eventually "we have to charge you out the ass for gas, because we need to pay to offset the creation of CO2 and other waste products."
there will always be limiting resources, those will dictate, in large part, the supply of goods.
If there are infinite resources, the earth probably collapses to a singularity, destroys the existing universe, and then, possibly, causes a new big bang.
On the one hand, with no real want for resources, there is no incentive to get the better deal, screw the other guy over, etc. so capitalism falls by the wayside. On the other, with infinite available resources no one will ever do the "dirty" tasks for money. The essential tasks that need to be done in a society will not get done, because without money there is no incentive for someone to be a trashman, for instance. Now, the world may have infinite space, but a city does not. It ends where it ends and if it's full of trash it will also have an infinite amount of disease to go with its resources.
I think, if we could hold society together, we would see much more cultural achievement and groundbreaking scientific discoveries, as people would be more disposed to be able to do such things. They wouldn't have to worry about time, and with infinite resources our schooling systems would be worlds better, with no poverty areas and teachers whose only motivation is the love of teaching.
I do wonder how it would effect religion. I can see the world becoming much more religious and, "idle hands are the Devil's playground" since more people would have no other real concerns, it is probable that we would all kill each other in some holy war or another. That would be more short term though, I think. Long term I wonder if religion would exist at all? If we have heaven on Earth, I don't see how the afterlife carrot would be able to operate, and as such I don't see how where you go when you die would be so important. People, as a whole, would forget what scarcity is like, and to an extent what suffering really entails, so the mass' motivation becomes a bit moot.
Hey, Marx said if all the basic needs of people are taken care of, we can use our brainpower to solve bigger problems and advance humankind towards an ideal state. I've got a feeling that if you talk about limited resources on D&D, though, the conversation usually steers towards how desperate people can become instead of balance. That's no fun.
I guess actually living surrounded by endless resources could get boring fast. If The Cat were stuck in the Garden of Eden, she'd end up devouring the forbidden fruit and the snake just to break up the monotony.
If everyone's basic needs are taken care of, what would people do with all the leisure time? Would they post on internet boards or would they do something meaningful? :P
Do you see what I did there?
Yeah but you can't maintain that state forever. If you ever reach a condition where you can feed, educate, and provide shelter and healthcare for every single person on Earth, population would skyrocket. Eventually you'd find out that the solution that works for 6 billion people doesn't work for 12 billion.
Ok. Well lets look at human population in the last couple of century - slowly but steadily it has expanded, based on more effective use of resources and technology. Where does this expansion end? Bacteria does the same, as do other animal species that gain an advantage - see say exotic rabbits/oposeums/ in NZ, where they have no predator.
So that is what I mean. What do you mean?
Abloobloo. What elec said; you're effectively treating that part of CivIV that happens after 2050 as if its more important than the whole rest of the game if you want a terrible local-appropriate analogy. The answers are boring and fairly obvious, and all you have to do to figure it out is take a random sample of the super-rich today and observe.
I've heard it mentioned in passing.
It was about a watch?
Not really, but I sense sarcasm.
Are you familiar with the Eloi?
For example, we die and feel pain. We require complex social relationships to function. We have to pee and poop. We only have a number of senses, which severely limits the information we can process and the knowledge we can learn from the universe.
With infinite resources, you will get some people who will try to solve or mitigate these problems by delving into transhumanism and AI stuff. If successful, transhumanism would just create a new kind of haves vs. have-nots—humans stuck with their bodies and limited senses vs. more advanced organisms or thinking machines.
At that point, the best we can hope for is to be treated as something like pets by our superior masters.
Ultimately, everyone would do whatever gives them the most pleasure/satisfaction. I tend to believe that the western world would be the new Eye of Terror, but I'm a cynical asshole.
Would you bother with that whole 'Hedonistic Calculus' stuff or would people become more isolated? I'm going to say people's homes will turn into islands, only opening their doors to bring in goods or to throw out the trash.
I suppose one person with absolute control of the universe and himself can have infinite resources, but even he might desire an equal with whom he could converse in a meaningful way and if such an equal did exist suddenly resources would be limited again.
Heck, even time is a resource. Even if you are immortal you might want to be playing tennis and eating a sandwhich at the same time while also hunting zebras on the moon.
Scarcity cannot be removed, and even if it was then scarcity itself becomes scarce!
This sounds like the first story from an anthology called "Fast Forward."
You can't say "Lets say some impossible event x happens, what are the results of that?" and expect normal answers.