Re: Disabled In Socialist Countries
OK, then the question becomes: how do we get the necessary tech advancements in a world that is still too Capitalist to ignore? I don't want to keep coming back to the USSR, since we agree they failed so hard it might literally be visible from space, but I think one of the big problems that 20th century Communists had is that they were trying to go from pre-industrial to Communist without the intervening industrial-Capitalist phase, and trying to brute-force it with a planned economy destroyed things on scales for which Biblical would undersell the body count. It's an extreme example, and you've already demonstrated that you think rushing like the Russians is a bad idea, but I'm not entirely clear on what can be done now, vs what requires more advances, and how we can avoid the eternal procrastination phenomenon ("we'll get to it eventually. Eventually.").
I like that you brought up 3d printing, mostly because of the super fiberoptics cables they made using the International Space Station's 3d printer that could not be made on Earth. But if I stay on space too long, I'll find a way to make an annoying FALGSC reference.
I do want to challenge some of the "do the work for free" type stuff. Mostly because the problems I mentioned with healthcare are not solved via volunteer medical professionals. Doctors still need expensive certifications, and research is still expensive. We can solve the first if we can get a Healthcare Czar to make the MD requirements less pointlessly expensive, but the latter is the real bottleneck. I'm sure that if I do enough research, I can find one or two aspects that would benefit from more space-stuff, but that would kinda miss the point.
One innovation that would apparently help, unless the studies have failed to replicate or something, is to get doctors to follow checklists, and to make the software that hospitals and other medical practices use better (you thought I couldn't bring it back to space but behold! The space shuttle software was actually nigh perfect when shipped!) The thing these have in common, though, is that they're more Healthcare reform than new medical tech or socialist. But nobody can lead with nuanced policy proposals that might actually be implementable with bipartisan support, because that wouldn't energize the base or something. Have I mentioned partisanship is bad? Because partisanship is bad, mkay?
(Since I keep tying space to everything... umm... we could send partisan politicians into space, and only let them come back to Earth if they ... either invent something useful, or win a Gundam fight?)
UBI kinda scares me, tbh. It's hard to explain, but it almost feels more like a prison sentence than an offer of additional freedom. I'm not sure why. I'd probably change my mind if I actually had it. Heck, the LCB stipened on top of SSI is close to $1k, and I wasn't exactly paying the same amount in utilities or internet while there, so maybe money more or less being a non-issue was a bigger deal than was obvious? ...
I think it's because personal freedom is hard, and UBI by itself reminds me too much of the abyss of awful that was college. ... and 2014. Although I did go back for a semester in 2014, so I guess that counts. Ugh. ugh Ugh ugh uGh ugH UGH.
A few years back, I wrote a dialog between a couple of characters trying to come up with a way to cut healthcare costs. It was not too detailed, but it covered the point that the problem is not people being unwilling to work for free/cheap, but all the upstream costs. Not sure if I can find it or if it's worth sharing. And it focused on doctors and hospitals more than R&D, and, again, taking the profit motive out of the picture doesn't make R&D stop being costly. I mean, if it turns out that the cure for a bunch of cancers can only be produced in masse in space, money or no, that's going to be costly. And that's apparently not as far beyond the difficulties involved in developing new treatments as you might think. You basically have to get a huge number of people who want it more than anything else, are clever enough to use all the most efficient and most effective means, and you'd also have to reform the existing systems to make the barriers more reasonable and less "to distribute this life-saving treatment, you must first burn a giant pile of money".
Re: fix Earth before going to Space, I should point out that I'm not talking about moving to Mars, so much as the stuff we can do in Space that can improve things on Earth. Ex, low gravity chemistry, things requiring a vacuum, solar power (apparently solar panels are easier to manufacture in space, never mind all the wasted solar energy up there), etc. I include the Moon mainly because it's so bloody expensive to get things into Space that using the Moon as a source of raw materials could make all of the above more viable. And I get the impression we've failed hard enough at fighting climate change that we really do need a backup strategy asap, and giant mirrors / solar collectors in orbit have the advantage of being adjustable after the fact, unlike the ground-based or air-based geo engineering ideas. Like, if we are past the point of no return, we need more than Herculean emission-reduction efforts. Not that Herculean emission-reduction efforts aren't an essential part of the process, and also the one part that the average person can conceiveably do something about.
Weirdly enough, I'm less excited about the agricultural tech advancements, because we don't need them urgently enough compared to what we already have. This is an area where removing the profit motive would help tons, because as prices come down, people stop farming, which I suppose puts a floor on the prices. Increased automation sounds like it would help, but I think one of the things making food so cheap, and wrecking the agriculture-based economies that dominated the pre-war world, is that the number of people required has already dropped dramatically. Green Revolution, better machines, etc. So, as a result, Kansas is turning into a ghost-state. If we just built giant greenhouses more often, that'd boost yields significantly, and that's something we've been capable of since before the Green Revolution, IIUC.
Of course, let's not forget food waste. The amount of food that goes down the garbage disposal every morning at work could feed a small family for at least a day. Turns out there are laws about what you can do with leftovers, and incentives toward preparing too much food outweigh the incentives toward more efficiency. I've heard that Whole Foods tried to cut back on waste by allowing shelves to go empty when stocking them would have resulted in unnecessary waste, but customers disliked the empty shelves enough that they went back.
(Do I have to bring it back to Space again, at this point? Umm... Space Plane type systems would make transporting food around the world much quicker, possibly improving the distribution networks? )
I feel like I need to say something about education and housing, since costs and quality there are a mess that keeps getting messier, but I'm not really sure what I could say besides that. I think just making college free for everyone is not going to help as much as one might think, because the costs are not the root of the problem, so much as a symptom.
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