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Shingle Beach Felt Underfoot by One Sin - One Grace (EverythingNarrative)
Fandoms: Armored Core (Video Games)
01 Jul 2024
Tags
Summary
Megastructures are such a cute thought experiment.
Labor theory of value: man takes raw materials out of the ground, builds a tethered launch ring, from that labor we derive the value of the launch ring — roughly one or two orders of magnitude more than the BNP of 21st century Earth. There are things you simply cannot do as a civilization because there is only so many welders and metallurgists and machinists and construction workers.
Artificial intelligence busts that wide open. Not the smart kind that'll take over the world, just smart enough to take orders and build things. Dogs with opposable thumbs. Slap it in a robot, and you can teach it to do anything, up to and including robot maintenance. Lateral thinking not so much.
Now, if you're very, very lucky, you fix everything forever. Abolish scarcity, make a new golden age to last forever, freed from the specter of capitalism.
If not, you get a 3d printer that will only ever print you one of a thing, because you're not licensed to make two. It's how you build cargo transit towers to the stratosphere, so many they blot out the sun. It's how you get the commodification of the human soul.
Tsutomo Nihei, prophet of the lord.
Series
- Part 2 of This is What Coral is Like