Re: Government/society in post-scarcity interstellar environments

Crown-Horned Snorkack skreiv:
On 26 okt, 10:01, Eivind Kjorstad wrote:

Roman pots and tiles did, and still do, exist in numbers
comparable to transistors today.
Actually, probably not if you consider that a single IC can contain
several million transistors. But if you consider only discrete
transistors, then possibly yes.
Admitting your point about the number of discrete items. But since
those are miniature items, the quantity of material is probably less.

That may or may not be the case, but it's a completely different claim.

Dunno. A million ? We sure as hell made them on occasion in our
university-lab, we're unlikely to have been the only ones. You could
make transistors at -home- without unduly burdening your
household-budget. They wouldn't be particularily -good- transistors
mind you, but that's mere engineering.

How were you refining germanium at university lab?

We wheren't. "How to refine germanium" is a different problem from "how
to make a working transistor". I'm not sure what your point is. That
there's *MANY* different pieces of knowledge needed for modern society,
and that the pieces tend to depend on eachother ?

Sure. That's a no-brainer. All of the important pieces tend to be
similarily well-documented though.

All the books in the deep mountain-vaults of national libraries around
the world aren't likely to be treated as "waste paper", regardless of if
any number of transistor-factories burn or not. That'd only be
possible after a near-total collapse of all government and all
civilization, not just in one area, but globally.

5th and 6th century England did have governments. King Vortigern, King
Arthur, King Cerdic of Wessex...

I have no idea what you're arguing. Are you arguing that the national
libraries *ARE* likely to be treated as wastepaper, even in the absence
of total civilization-collapse ?



Eivind Kjørstad
.