Could a free market survive replicators?

[Super Kal]

how? all sources of currency would be worthless...

 

[Kritish]

how? all sources of currency would be worthless...

If you keep the knowledge of the device to yourself and you create billions of dollars.

 

[Spider-Bite]

Or someone would figure out how to replicate unlimited amounts of Nerve gas or nuclear warheads. Humanity would have to learn to act moral and deceit for a change, something that doesn't seem likely.

Not necessarilly. The replicator would need instructions stored in it's memory, and many people dont' know how to build those things. In addition people need motives for that kind of stuff.

I honestly don't believe it would be a good thing for replicators to come into existence today. I don't think the human race is ready for a lot of stuff.

I dont' think were ready for interstellar ships, holodecks, advanced medical science that makes you live a lot longer than we do, a cure for HIV, or even an economy where machines do all the work, and nobody has to work for a living anymore.

We just aren't there yet.

 

[Addendum]

Money is one item that some people are greedy about.

You can think of more

 

[Kritish]

Not necessarilly. The replicator would need instructions stored in it's memory, and many people dont' know how to build those things. In addition people need motives for that kind of stuff.

With a quick google search you can find instructions on how to make gun silencers, pipe bombs and even nukes. What makes you think replicators will be any different.

 

[Super Kal]

there'll probably be laws and restrictions at first if they ever do come out...

 

[Kritish]

Oh wait, I know how to make things like pipe bombs by myself. Just wait till some nuclear physicist with anger management issues gets a hold of one of these things.

 

[Super Kal]

that's easy to say, especially in this time of day, with terrorism, bomb threats, and whatnot...

 

[CyberFaust]

yes, but we would need to find a way to kill them first

 

[Super Kal]

it's probably gonna have to get a lot worse before it can get any better

 

[CyberFaust]

u-arr.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

Yes

 

[Leto Atrides]

it's probably gonna have to get a lot worse before it can get any better

Unless I'm mistaken, Star Trek went through a Eugenics War and World War III (with its subsequent breakdown of society) before Zephram Cochrane even invented the warp drive. If we're going with Star Trek logic here.

 

[Rorschach II]

The free market would probably be wiped out, but seeing as we could replicate anything endlessly, that wouldn't matter much, would it?

 

[Spider-Bite]

With a quick google search you can find instructions on how to make gun silencers, pipe bombs and even nukes. What makes you think replicators will be any different.

show me a link to where it tells you how to build nukes? The government works very actively to filter that stuff out. In China they don't even get You Tube or inormation on a lot of history.

and replicators can be programmed not to build that kind of stuff anyways. Like a fail safe.

 

[Spider-Bite]

Unless I'm mistaken, Star Trek went through a Eugenics War and World War III (with its subsequent breakdown of society) before Zephram Cochrane even invented the warp drive. If we're going with Star Trek logic here.

That's true. However I believe that, assuming a star trek like utopia exists one day, it wont come into existence the way things did on Star Trek.

I do see world wide devestation and world war 3 coming, and if it doesn't kill us all, it will probably finally teach us to pull our heads out of our assess and quit killing each other.

On Star Trek is was the landing of the Vulcan ship that showed mankind we weren't alone, which united us as one world.

I think it would probably take the human race living as one country or at least all investing in the same space program to acheive interstellar ships.

 

[Leto Atrides]

The free market would probably be wiped out, but seeing as we could replicate anything endlessly, that wouldn't matter much, would it?

Once again, I'm assuming we're using Star Trek logic.
You can't replicate things endlessly. You need an external energy source and raw material. It's not a magic box that makes things out of nothing, it uses a lot of power, moreso than making the materials would. It's used on starships because it's more efficient than hauling all that food and stuff around, and on stations and remote colonies because it's hard to set up manufacturing facilities there. It's a convenience more than anything, they're very inefficient (compared to just manufacturing the object).

Even in Star Trek, where such devices are possible, on Earth or Vulcan or something they still just manufacture things.

 

[Spider-Bite]

Once again, I'm assuming we're using Star Trek logic.
You can't replicate things endlessly. You need an external energy source and raw material. It's not a magic box that makes things out of nothing, it uses a lot of power, moreso than making the materials would. It's used on starships because it's more efficient than hauling all that food and stuff around, and on stations and remote colonies because it's hard to set up manufacturing facilities there. It's a convenience more than anything, they're very inefficient (compared to just manufacturing the object).

Even in Star Trek, where such devices are possible, on Earth or Vulcan or something they still just manufacture things.

Yeah but you could use replicator technology to disassemble a few tons of a planets surface or moon, or asteroid, and use it for energy. Energy would be limitless, and automated non piloted ships could even perform that work of flying to get the energy and flying back, hooking up to a power grid, and distributing power to everybody homes and replicators.

Energy could be limitless. And it would be easy for humans to recycle everything. Houses wouldn't be cluttered with so much junk you use every once in a few years. When your done using something just disassemble it and recycle it, inserting the energy back into the grid.

 

[Leto Atrides]

Yeah but you could use replicator technology to disassemble a few tons of a planets surface or moon, or asteroid, and use it for energy. Energy would be limitless, and automated non piloted ships could even perform that work of flying to get the energy and flying back, hooking up to a power grid, and distributing power to everybody homes and replicators.

Energy could be limitless. And it would be easy for humans to recycle everything. Houses wouldn't be cluttered with so much junk you use every once in a few years. When your done using something just disassemble it and recycle it, inserting the energy back into the grid.

There is nothing to say that a replicator could just make energy out of matter. When they say replicators convert an object to energy, they're talking about encoding into a signal, using the same technology as a transporter. It's not changing matter into raw power. The power comes from an external power source. It probably could make some kind of charge, but that would be MONSTROUSLY inefficient.

It seems you're not talking about replicators ala Star Trek like you said you were in the original post, you're talking about some machine you made up that can absorb anything and turn into anything else with no other external input. Yes, that could solve everyone's problems. But I could make up some impossible machine that could do the same, it's not that hard, not that replicators are even that plausible in the first place.

 

[Sandman138]

If replicators were to come into existence, the money would no longer be in selling the actual items themselves, but in selling the plans/blueprints/instructions for people to build their own and possibly the materials needed to do so. Capitalism would still have the floor.

jag

Your forgetting the number one thing the market would thrive on. Energy would be in even more constant demand than it is now.

 

[Spider-Bite]

There is nothing to say that a replicator could just make energy out of matter. When they say replicators convert an object to energy, they're talking about encoding into a signal, using the same technology as a transporter. It's not changing matter into raw power. The power comes from an external power source. It probably could make some kind of charge, but that would be MONSTROUSLY inefficient.

It seems you're not talking about replicators ala Star Trek like you said you were in the original post, you're talking about some machine you made up that can absorb anything and turn into anything else with no other external input. Yes, that could solve everyone's problems. But I could make up some impossible machine that could do the same, it's not that hard, not that replicators are even that plausible in the first place.

check it

This process requires the destructive conversion of bulk matter into energy and its subsequent reformation into a pre-scanned matter pattern. In principle, this is similar to the transporter, but on a smaller scale.

Look at a nuclear explosion. There is an enourmous amount of energy inside of a tiny amount of matter. Look at the results from atom smasher experiments, or energy collision experiments. There is an enourmous amount of energy in just a tiny piece of matter.

And remember scientists have already successfully transported beams of light, and a few atoms of copper, so obviously transporters and replicators are quite feasible. It might take a few centuries to get what they got on Star Trek although I doubt it will take that long. For the most part real life technology appears to be moving at a faster pace than it did on Star Trek, however interstellar ships are probably a lot longer off than 50 years. I think it's like a hundred or two hundred.

 

[Spider-Bite]

Your forgetting the number one thing the market would thrive on. Energy would be in even more constant demand than it is now.

http://forums.superherohype.com/showpost.php?p=12056773&postcount=68

 

[Leto Atrides]

Look at a nuclear explosion. There is an enourmous amount of energy inside of a tiny amount of matter. Look at the results from atom smasher experiments, or energy collision experiments. There is an enourmous amount of energy in just a tiny piece of matter.

You need a massive amount of energy to start ripping atoms apart, hit them together, etc. Just because reactions create release energy doesn't mean there is a gross energy production.

Nuclear power plants only produce positive energy outputs because they use huge amounts of energy in a continuous chain reaction that goes by itself for years. It takes a while, weeks at least, before they are even in positive gross energy production. You can't just have a machine that rips apart individual atoms and release more energy than that took.

And as to your "check it", energy =/= raw power. It just means it destroys the matter and stores the data in a computer as a pattern.

Star Trek even knows better than that:

Replicators sample an object at a molecular rather than quantum level. The computer then applies a loss compression algorithm to save computer memory. This gives the computer a pattern from which to produce copies.
Starships keep a small supply of recycled bulk material from which to create new objects. A waveguide conduit system sends bulk material to the replicator, which reforms it into the requested objects, then it transmits the new object to the terminal.
Quantum transformational manipulation allows the creation of new elements. Energy costs are high for all forms of replication, thus making practical alchemy, such as creating limitless latinum, impossible, but food (normally simple arrangements of water, proteins, and liquids) is more practical to replicate from bulk matter than to store.
The replicator is also capable of inverting its function, thus disposing leftovers and dishes - and presumably materials not created by a replicator, esp. the crews excrements - and storing the bulk material again.

 

[Spider-Bite]

You need a massive amount of energy to start ripping atoms apart, hit them together, etc. Just because reactions create release energy doesn't mean there is a gross energy production.

Nuclear power plants only produce positive energy outputs because they use huge amounts of energy in a continuous chain reaction that goes by itself for years. It takes a while, weeks at least, before they are even in positive gross energy production. You can't just have a machine that rips apart individual atoms and release more energy than that took.

And as to your "check it", energy =/= raw power. It just means it destroys the matter and stores the data in a computer as a pattern.

Star Trek even knows better than that:

just because it was one way on star trek doesn't mean it has to be that way in real life you know. and actually on star trek they did disassemble matter and turn it into energy. They called it recycling. do you remember the episode where Voyager was stuck in the nubulae for a while, and Chakotah made that locket for Janeway, before everybody abandoned ship, and left Janeway, the doctor, Neelix, and Torres onboard? Janeway told Chakotah to recycle it because it might make the difference between a meal and starving one day, because resources were running low.

you have no way of knowing that they wouldn't be able to disassemble matter into energy.

 

[Kritish]

show me a link to where it tells you how to build nukes? The government works very actively to filter that stuff out. In China they don't even get You Tube or inormation on a lot of history.

and replicators can be programmed not to build that kind of stuff anyways. Like a fail safe.

To be fair I couldn't find a site about nukes this time around. I saw a page about it before 9/11 happened. But you still didn't respond to the items I mentioned a replicator could make.