Could a free market survive replicators?

[Kritish]

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.

Einstein suggest that matter and energy were interchangeable. The one thing that the universe is full of is matter. The asteroid belt around this solar system would meet our needs for quite some time.

 

[Leto Atrides]

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.

The recycled things into raw matter with which they could reassemble them. It had nothing to do with energy. Do you even watch any of the series?

And besides, I know they can't "disassemble matter into energy" because there's no precedent in physics for it. For one thing matter isn't made of energy. And there is no reason to think you can just convert them back and forth from one to the other.

You can feed fuel into a generator, and the waste material from that generator could be used for replication, but that would be very inefficient and it would be moreso to just produce the items the normal way. There is no possible way to more efficiently produce things with this sort of device. It's a huge waste of energy unless you're in some bizarre situation where carrying the same supplies would be more inefficient, for example in Star Trek.

It wouldn't change the economy, it would cost too damn much to do anything than to show off with in any reasonable situation.

 

[Leto Atrides]

Einstein suggest that matter and energy were interchangeable. The one thing that the universe is full of is matter. The asteroid belt around this solar system would meet our needs for quite some time.

The Mass-Energy Equivalence is an exceedingly complicated concept about the relationship between matter and energy. It's used in physics equations. It has to do with how mass is an expression of something's energy value. Sometimes mass get converted to energy or vice versa in infinitesimally small amounts. But it is not the gross conversion of, say iron, into electrical energy or heat or something.

 

[Spider-Bite]

The recycled things into raw matter with which they could reassemble them. It had nothing to do with energy. Do you even watch any of the series?

And besides, I know they can't "disassemble matter into energy" because there's no precedent in physics for it. For one thing matter isn't made of energy. And there is no reason to think you can just convert them back and forth from one to the other.

You can feed fuel into a generator, and the waste material from that generator could be used for replication, but that would be very inefficient and it would be moreso to just produce the items the normal way. There is no possible way to more efficiently produce things with this sort of device. It's a huge waste of energy unless you're in some bizarre situation where carrying the same supplies would be more inefficient, for example in Star Trek.

It wouldn't change the economy, it would cost too damn much to do anything than to show off with in any reasonable situation.

http://forums.superherohype.com/showpost.php?p=12060656&postcount=76

and we don't know what our understanding of physics will be a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years from now.

 

[Leto Atrides]

http://forums.superherohype.com/showpost.php?p=12060656&postcount=76

and we don't know what our understanding of physics will be a hundred or two hundred or three hundred years from now.

Try reading my next post after the one you quoted there buddy.