How did the Terran Federation economy work?

Think about this: they had AIs smart enough to make anything needed; even a repurposed tactical computer (Owl) is quite capable of manufacturing stuff for Merlin.
In fact, these AIs are capable of research on their own - Owl researched how to make a PICA (without reverse engineering Merlin's body).

With such AIs, making robots is trivial, especially for tasks comparatively simpler than that research.

They have nanites capable enough that Merlin has self-repair feature.

So... between robots, nanites and AIs, they can produce anything humans can; 99% of human jobs can be outsourced to workers that work 24/7 without salaries, medical insurance, worker's comp or anything.

Heck, they could perform 3/4 of the entertainment - everything but genuinely new art. A music player in an orchestra of 100 of them... how much originality does he need? Even the oldest profession; an artificial... sex care worker, which can be made to order to look as beautiful as desired, can do anything, defend herself as needed, and has zero risks of STDs for herself or for customers, could take a job of an organic one in many cases.

So people would effectively live on welfare.

Government, having enough robots, and robots being able to make new robots, could supply enough to everyone. The PRH from Honorverse could not, but a robotic work force could make up for the lack of human work.

Of course, during the Gbaba war, it was probably full command economy - the government runs the industry, allocates resources, gives salaries. (Although... Nimue's father was described as one of the rich people; how do you become rich if people can get stuff without paying for it? Government contracts maybe? But the government itself has robots and AIs that can make anything... so why would it buy from companies?)

To some extent, Charis will have to face the same problem. Once the story is out, and people regain all the lost tech one way or another, we're back to that point. So will it be a command economy, with everyone effectively working for the government?

What happens when someone gets an AI and a pack of nanites, puts them in his backyard to self-replicate and start with recycling all the garbage, making more nanites and robots as needed, robots growing fruit and vegetables, tending cows and sheep? No need to work. No work, no income, no taxes. Of course, the government doesn't need the tax money to buy stuff - they can have AIs and robots and nanites make it for them.

But it does need something with which to make people work (as the army, navy, police, you name it). But what does it give as salaries, when people can get anything made by their home robots and nanites anyway?

Today many people work because it means the difference between starving and not; but when you anyway have enough to eat, clothes, etc, what kind of reward would make it worth your while to go to work?

Five to ten percent of people might want to work for the love of work, but that's... quite different than the work we know now. The first time when the boss of such an employee starts giving him some shit of any kind, the employee shows the middle finger and walks out. He will ask for an >>interesting<< job and no idiotism at work.

The rest of the people will be Proles on the Dole.

It seems like it was in effect what we would consider a post scarcity society. Its not that everybody is on the dole since money would effectively have no meaning. About the only limited space would potentially be living quarters and with multiple colonies its very possible that was not even an issue. Once you have good nano fabricators food/clothing/vehicles all have minimal "cost" If you already have a car having it broken down and rebuilt into some new car would just be a small matter of time it would take the fabricators to work.

In this kind of society reputation and social standing and favors are probably the only thing that really passes for currency. So if somebody is said to be rich they may have a lot of favors owed to them that allows them if they call in their marks have more fabricator time devoted to some project of their choosing.

I would imagine there were a LOT of teething pains moving from a traditional economy to post scarcity for people trying to cling to items having some actual value even when the creation of those items no longer takes any real time or effort for basic things.

kaid wrote:It seems like it was in effect what we would consider a post scarcity society. Its not that everybody is on the dole since money would effectively have no meaning.

kaid wrote:In this kind of society reputation and social standing and favors are probably the only thing that really passes for currency.

The catch is, in such a society, 10% of the young people would learn cause they like it... the rest wouldn't bother going to school, or if forced, would not put any effort. Why put in an effort when you will be getting all your needs covered anyway?
Just look at today's real-world welfare leeches and imagine what would happen in a future society with TF-level industry.

Ten percent would work for the sake of work; 90% would sit and play video games (or do whatever activity they like, but not productive ones).

The government could - maybe - make a law that if you don't pass exams (in primary school, high school, college/university) you don't get any welfare and can starve. But the first parent that established a self-replicating (nano)factory in his backyard and thus manages to supply his children even if they don't study or work will make such a law pointless.

Then another civilization (Gbaba) might come and you might need people for war... but how do you get them to crew starships or do anything complicated if they have problems even reading and writing (today, in this world, education levels in public schools can tell you where this is headed)?

Same problem that Robespierre... err... Rob S. Pierre had in PRH, and they didn't have an AI/robotic workforce.

In fact, short of forced conscription, how do you get them to enlist at all? Again, ten percent will do it; ninety percent won't.

If in Federation times robots overtook industry and agriculture, then humans might've worked as robot designers, robot commanders, robot supervisors and the such. You wouldn't pay somebody to make you a robot, but to design you one, and then you could send the design to fully-automated factory and sell the robots, and then pay the designer. And if you happened not to be interested in engineering, you could join the military, become a politician, a lawyer, a journalist, historian, writer, psychologist...

Also, note that Federation tech seems high-tech to us, but it apparently wasn't high-tech enough, or it wasn't available in high enough quantities. First of all, we know the ships are manned by people instead of being run by some sort of Grade A AI system, or a couple of systems. We also know that instead of using robots for on-land fighting, Federation still had Marines who apparently entered combat instead of staying in the back like modern-day drone operators. That hints that robots might not be as powerful as we seem to believe here and that the Federation still hadn't reached the level when people could just sit back and enjoy doing nothing.

Aethor wrote:In fact, short of forced conscription, how do you get them to enlist at all? Again, ten percent will do it; ninety percent won't.

If you do not need people to work to produce the stuff people need, then you do not have the problem of needing people to work in order to produce the stuff people need. That's the post-scarcity aspect in a nutshell.

You certainly may have a problem with people not having much interest in contributing to society when they figure whatever they could contribute, society already has enough of.

If you do not need many people to enlist to fight the Gbaba - if you simply cannot usefully employ that many people - then it is not a problem if that 10% is all you get.

For a bit from the author around the question of how the Terran Federation worked (in two senses), see:
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... hold/230/1

And particularly:

Terran warships from the time of the Gbaba War were automated to a degree which would have made the Royal Manticoran Navy green with envy. They did have command crew, and they did have human personnel aboard to keep an eye on the AIs, to provide redundancy, and to keep human decisionmaking fully in the loop. For the most part, however, the ships were run and the human command crew's orders were executed not by flesh and blood humans directly interfacing with the hardware by punching buttons, but rather by computers taking direction from the human command crew and then executing the tasks they were given far better -- and far more swiftly -- than any flesh-and-blood could have. That's one of the things I meant when I said that manpower was never the limiting factor on the Federation's ability to fight the Gbaba. The differences in weapons technology and the sheer numbers of ships the Gbaba could bring to the party were the real killers for humanity in this war. That same massive use of cybernetics could also be found in the highly automated production of new warships and weapons, which is the only way that single star systems were able to stand off armadas of the size and combat power of Gbaba fleets more than very, very briefly.

So yeah, the people of the Terran Federation had time on their hands. Labor was in large part for the sake of personal satisfaction and, in the end, in some roles, survival of the species. Heck, it's always been for personal satisfaction, it's just that they had reached a point where the needs to satisfy were mostly about "what do I feel like doing and accomplishing?" and less about "gosh, food and shelter would rock, and I do wish I could see someone about this bleeding sore...."

kaid wrote:In this kind of society reputation and social standing and favors are probably the only thing that really passes for currency. So if somebody is said to be rich they may have a lot of favors owed to them that allows them if they call in their marks have more fabricator time devoted to some project of their choosing.

The "Venus Equilateral" series, after the invention of the duplicator mentions some possibilities.

It worked the same way as the economy in Star Trek, obviously.

Maybe they had worked out how to convince people that human fulfilment is rarely achieved by sittimg around doing nothing all day?

Besides not even AIs and nanites can produce something from nothing, ownership of primary resources is still going to be important.

Randomiser wrote:It worked the same way as the economy in Star Trek, obviously.

Maybe they had worked out how to convince people that human fulfilment is rarely achieved by sittimg around doing nothing all day?

Besides not even AIs and nanites can produce something from nothing, ownership of primary resources is still going to be important.

With AI-directed robotic and nanite mining of the asteroid belt, raw materials should not be a significant limiting factor. Certain specific elements or isotopes may still be relatively rare, especially heavy metals. And if you need transuranics elements for anything, they still need to be produced in breeder reactors and/or particle accelerators.

Energy may also be an issue. Providing enough for everyone to have a standard of living much higher than we have now should be easy enough. However, military applications, space-based heavy industry and high-energy physics research are going require more concentrated energy production that may need resources (antimatter, helium three, whatever) that can't be produced in unlimited quantities.

It is likely that PICA's are a luxury good because of their use of exotic materials.

Meanwhile, human input is still going to be needed for planning, decision making and research functions. AI's can help in these areas. Providing intelligent advice as well as dealing with the clerical details. But the books make it clear that even the best AI's don't have quite the same levels of flexibility and creativity as humans.

OWL started out as little better than an expert system, incapable of going beyond the literal wording of Merlin's instructions, or suggesting alternative approaches. After several years of working with Merlin, the inner circle and especially Nahrman's virtual personality, OWL has become much better at these things but we still get the following exchange from the Prologue of LAMA:

“Within the specified parameters and limitations, yes. I fail to perceive the purpose for it, however,”Owl said. Nahrmahn raised an eyebrow, and Owl tilted his head in a gesture he’d acquired from Nahrmahn himself. “I have, as I am sure you will recall, Your Highness, a less well developed sense of intuition and imagination than a human. I did not say there was no purpose, simply that I failed to perceive one."

Even aside from a natural desire to not have AI's simply take over, it seems clear that human input is necessary to make improve efficiency and prevent stagnation.

On the other hand, with technology at that level Earth could easily have a population of 10-20 billion or possibly much higher. Even if 90% of the population has no interest in productive work and many of the rest lack the intelligence to be more useful than an AI, that still gives you hundreds of millions of productive citizens whose contributions are enormously magnified by all that advanced technology and AI support.

The ones who want to work but aren't suited to being executives, scientists or soldiers can be useful in fields like news, entertainment, recreation and can provide enough receptionists and middle management functions to provide a human face to the government, corporations and the military and screen the leaders from anyone that won't take "No" for an answer from an AI.

looksbeforeheleaps wrote:Meanwhile, human input is still going to be needed for planning, decision making and research functions. AI's can help in these areas. Providing intelligent advice as well as dealing with the clerical details. But the books make it clear that even the best AI's don't have quite the same levels of flexibility and creativity as humans.

OWL started out as little better than an expert system, incapable of going beyond the literal wording of Merlin's instructions, or suggesting alternative approaches. After several years of working with Merlin, the inner circle and especially Nahrman's virtual personality, OWL has become much better at these things but we still get the following exchange from the Prologue of LAMA:

“Within the specified parameters and limitations, yes. I fail to perceive the purpose for it, however,”Owl said. Nahrmahn raised an eyebrow, and Owl tilted his head in a gesture he’d acquired from Nahrmahn himself. “I have, as I am sure you will recall, Your Highness, a less well developed sense of intuition and imagination than a human. I did not say there was no purpose, simply that I failed to perceive one."

Even aside from a natural desire to not have AI's simply take over, it seems clear that human input is necessary to make improve efficiency and prevent stagnation.

On the other hand, with technology at that level Earth could easily have a population of 10-20 billion or possibly much higher. Even if 90% of the population has no interest in productive work and many of the rest lack the intelligence to be more useful than an AI, that still gives you hundreds of millions of productive citizens whose contributions are enormously magnified by all that advanced technology and AI support.

The ones who want to work but aren't suited to being executives, scientists or soldiers can be useful in fields like news, entertainment, recreation and can provide enough receptionists and middle management functions to provide a human face to the government, corporations and the military and screen the leaders from anyone that won't take "No" for an answer from an AI.

Everyone is forgetting about NEAT. Everyone there was extremely well educated from birth on up. NEAT would have allowed total interface like the VR suit only better. Knowledge could be quickly transferred anywhere to anybody. Any other sensation would be equally transferable. Merlin existed to experience things and transfer them to Nimue through her NEAT data link that was his propose. Merlin was built to do dangerous, stupid thing like climb mountain, deep sea dive etc. and relay those crazy experience back to Nimue and anyone else that wanted them. Merlin was a TOY.

Every sensation would be available. touch, taste, smells, sex, etc. Any knowledge anyone wanted. VR on steroids


More Drugs please, Oh I meant snippet please twenty plus days is a long time to be in withdrawal.