you make good points. I should have said those *defined* by the US government or other organizations (such as the United Nations) as under the poverty line. However, there are still millions in the world living in the malthusian trap needlessly.

Yes. They'll steal your markets and sometimes "disrupt" the market, i.e. make a product/service available to a new market for whom it previously was too complicated, expensive, or unreliable. Not only is that good for the economy, but it means people enjoy life, enjoy making something.

When I think of guns or butter, I think of it meaning the gov't taxing your butter away to buy guns.

Technology will not overcome anti-reason. If you say "people should do something to help the needy," and half the people perceive themselves as needy, that's a problem. I don't know how it was years ago, but I imagine most people would hear that and disagree about how/whether to help the needy. If most people think they're needy, no technology in the world will solve the problems.

I was making a nod to the classic economic debate guns or butter. I am not angry. I was making a point about protecting myself against government force taking away my means to thrive to give it to another group to thrive. it is an intellectual argument. why do you infer anger when I bring up guns? You and I disagree about technological progress solving the problem of starvation, etc. We have had the technological ability to help those out of the malthusian trap for over 150 years. Governments and anti-reason are responsible for for the starvation of people in the broader sense-I am not talking about those who do not choose life.

I thought you were saying originally that you were angry at the notion of society becoming so wealthy we can provide for people's needs as easily as we can provide drinking fountains. I thought were you saying, "Yeah, but I wanna see some people really miserable, not see problems _solved_." Now I think you're saying that what constitutes basic needs is unclear and opens to door to and an ever increasing "basic" lifestyle. Your apparent anger and talk of guns is because you think misguided efforts to provide "basic" needs end up slowing the very march of technology progress I think will solve some of our problems.

Fantastic. I am copying and pasting this one!

and that only the government can make a starship enterprise or replicator or transporter....

and who is that? strawman that some like to see poor people suffer. Throughout the history of the world, technological advances incorporate creating "some things for almost no work." but creating and having are not the same thing. we have ratcheted up the definition of what it means to be poor and continue to do that. for all practical purposes we are well past the point of requiring large amounts of resources to get out of poverty compared to historical standards. the problem is an immoral attitude that Thomas Jefferson refers to:

"The mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs,
nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately,
by the grace of God."

We can't make something for no work, but I claim we may be heading to a time when we can have something for almost no work. We're not there yet. Suppose it happens and poverty decreases; fewer people lack their basic needs. Some people would be angered by such a development out of a perverse desire to see others suffer.

"the cost of giving people some minimal amount of basic needs will be trivial. We'll pay for it as we pay for bubblers in the park. Just taxing people to pay for them is more efficient then excluding those who failed to pay a parks maintenance fee."
the actual "cost" for feeding the poor should be quite low in the first place. The point never was do we have the technology to distribute and feed the starving, house the poor or heal the sick. We get exponentially more advanced at this all the time. Then why doesn't the number of people in poverty go DOWN exponentially as well? No, instead it increases. 1. governments poor policies, graft and gratuity 2. government's inefficient distribution 3. people who want some things for nothing
The idea that technology will give us the solutions to these problems at some future date completely ignores that technology has far surpassed these problems NOW. Where might technology be TODAY if we had not focused on a welfare state. If we didn't just believe food grew on trees but actually planted the orchards, watered the trees, maintained their health, harvested the fruit, distributed the fruit efficiently, ensured storing the fruit properly. NO! it's whole society's yelling Give me the fruit! I need it! I shouldn't have to pay for it! vote for me-You shouldn't have to pay for it! if all of this upside down thinking were gone we would have had 10 things like the power of the internet and personal computers over the last decade! we'd all be flying to work instead of scratching our heads over why the interstate infrastructure is crumbling. Millions would survive cancer. but no. we have to nit pick around with bumbling idiots administrating every aspect of our lives and taking our money which could have been invested a thousand times more soundly.
you go ahead and wish for 3D capabilities for butter-I'm sticking with the 3D guns

We may be close to replicator technology. A 3D printing revolution _may_ be coming, but it's not here yet. If production technology keeps improving, the cost of giving people some minimal amount of basic needs will be trivial. We'll pay for it as we pay for bubblers in the park. Just taxing people to pay for them is more efficient then excluding those who failed to pay a parks maintenance fee.

A good recent book on this is "Makers: The New Industrial Revolution"

I believe there is a slow automation revolution happening, but I'm not sure if 3D printing will play a huge role. I think so.

If technology ever makes the cost of production trivial, we'll need a new law for rightwing ideologues: "Any sufficiently complicated form of schadenfraude is indistinguishable from defending freedom."

If we must shoehorn this issue into left/right, we could say what Seth Godin (a top author on marketing online) says in Linchpin: Karl Marx was right that a free market for labor would never distribute things produced to those who do the work of producing them, but maybe new technologies will result in a fairer distribution by lower the cost of the means of production. '

http://www.element14.com/community/commu...

So true. This invocation of the Star Trek replicator reminds me of Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” We’re going to have to add Tracinski’s Corollary to Clarke’s Laws: “Any sufficiently advanced economy is indistinguishable—in the minds of the left—from magic.”