Saturday, January 08, 2011

Fulcrum Points of Civilization

The places where sticking a lever and pushing will lift up all of civilization. Arranged by effort to reward ratio.
  1. anarchistic catalog
  2. anarchistic media
  3. anarchistic OS
  4. cooperative software foundation with interaction designers
  5. medical expert system
  6. negative interest currency and community land trusts
  7. sortition - this one isn't as meta as it gets
  8. mini UAVs for drug smuggling
  9. small portable nuclear power plants - because coal kills trains
  10. automated construction - contour crafting and 3d printing
  11. bioreactors - in vivo meat
  12. stem cells and organ crafting
  13. synthetic biology
  14. mechanosynthesis
  15. inverted skyscrapers

2 comments:

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Richard Kulisz said...

I haven't written about it but if you want to talk about it more, drop me an email. You can probably guess my email address.

If you ended the drug war, drugs would still be illegal for two decades due to legislative and bureaucratic inertia. Drugs are still technically illegal in Switzerland and Denmark. Although it would prompt legalization if taxes were turned over every 3rd year on a random basis and then asked (and sued) for them back on the basis there's no tax rate set for illegal drugs. Just to keep it in the news and minds of politicians.

It's a fulcrum because there's a whole cascade of knock-on effects. Observe first NPPs for comparison,

In the case of traditional NPPs, they displace coal making it available for steel smelting through FINEX technology, and for coal-to-liquids, as well as eliminate all the coal transport over rail lines, making those rail lines available for passenger train transport, as well as eliminate the pollution (sulfur, arsenic, mercury, stuff infinitely more toxic than radioactive waste) from coal power plants, as well as cost LESS than coal, and upgrade the skills base of the workforce, AND move from a mature to a still developing (improvable) technology.

Mobile NPPs have the additional advantages of getting around legal and social restrictions (like incompetence and corruption in the third world, and just corruption in USA and Germany), lower costs of NPPs since they can be manufactured in saner jurisdictions like China, and can be deployed to sites too small for large NPPs can't, as well as reduce the need for long distance electricity transmission lines. And will probably result in more globally harmonized design and regulation of NPPs.

In the case of a new drug network, it showcases the power of technology, the weakness of totalitarian governments, collapses the cost of drugs, produces a novel fast, secure and comfortable distribution network that's worth having in its own terms, moves from a mature to a still developing (improvable) technology, can be used to move legal generic drugs against the pharmacological industry, can destroy the US pharmacological industry with all its attendant corruption, lessens the hold of criminals in the drug trade, collapses the chances of arrest, reduces the expense of police officers as well as their corrupt profiteering, ends the influence of the Columbians in Mexico, ends the shooting war in Mexico, undercuts niggers in the USA (it leaves only whores for them), turns over the criminal element from the Hispanics (who seem to be dumb as rocks) to the Russians (who are scarily educated and intelligent) (that's probably not a good thing though it is a major change), increases the purity of drugs available to consumers, increases the availability of marijuana and ecstasy for medical users (ecstasy treats PTSD), reduces and controls the availability of drugs to minors, allows effective anti-addiction drugs (the best isn't available legally since methadone clinics think it reduces their trade and so doctors are restricted from prescribing it) to be sold alongside the illegal fun drugs, and in the long term legalizes drugs and produces a new tax base.