Needed a bit of optimism in my day, and thinking about this possible scenario made me feel better. Perhaps there’s light at the end of the tunnel?
In the past 10 years, we watched electric cars go from the Utopian dream to a force for corporate evils to control you. What mental gymnastics are you doing to conclude that fusion would be totally different?
Are you talking about shitty car features associated with electric cars like built in tracking?
Yes, as well as how Elon owns Tesla.
They said this about the rise of fission, electricity, steam power, computers. The extra production was either captured by capitalists, or simply didnt materialze. What’s different this time?
No, if you want to see that era of global prosperity, you need to address a lot of deep, fundamental issues that humanity has trouble even acknowledging let alone actually acting toward fixing. edit: Though, stopping fascism would be a necessary first step.
The light is an oncoming fascism train and you’re smiling at it like it’s the sun.
At the heart of Fascism is ignorance. Ignorance can be readily defeated, we just haven’t figured out the best way to do so in the information age with social media creating BS faster than facts. Time keeps going, and beyond the coming tide of Fascism, is something else. As long as we can stay informed, and educated, Fascism can be overcome. It’s never taken hold permanantly because it’s built on unstable bullshit and populism. It will come, it will pass, and when it does, whoever left will want to move avawy from the ignorance that caused this rise of Fascism in the first place.
You just sparked a memory in me of a future kinda-dystopian book I was reading. Unfortunately the name of the book escapes me at the moment (I think it was a Neal Stephenson book?) but there was this part that struck me hard. The gist is that there was one internet, like there is now, and it’s just a cesspool of ads and misinformation and all kinds of toxic garbage. The difference was, people who had money enough, would basically pay for “live curators” to filter their internet so they only saw things that were verifiably true, had no awful bigotry baked in, etc etc.
Naturally this was not something poor people could afford.
Anyway apologies for going off topic. The “we just haven’t figured out the best way to do so in the information age” reminded me of that.
Yeah, but it’s a rusty old steam locomotive thats running on a broken track. It’s not impossible they’ll make it to the station, but it’s gonna take some patience.
Maybe in this trolley problem, someone pulls the lever. Stanislav Petrov did the right thing, perhaps others will too.
Appreciate your attempt at looking at the brighter side of things. I’m still down in the well though and can’t see any light at the top.
I hope so, but I feel like big oil is gonna kill it somehow.
They don’t need to kill it. I don’t actually know why people seem to believe that a source of infinite clean energy would end up being anything else than a money printing machine for the select few… It’s not free energy for everyone, it’s free energy for its owners. Unless OP also hopes for major social upheaval.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-top-countries-by-wealth-per-person/
Average wealth per adult in the US is five times higher than median. Average wealth per adult in the world (well, across the 39 countries measured) is ten times the median. The difference between average (mean) and median (middle) is because a huge amount of wealth is concentrated in a small number of people.
Whether there is a vast surplus of resources or not isn’t relevant. Resources are power, and power enables collection of more resources.
I still have faith in humanity. Things get rough sometimes but I think we’ll pull through.
Kill all the billionaires. That’s it. Leave even one and it will comtinue.
Even largely upscaled renewables would be nice.
Techno fascism will occupy most of the output of nuclear fusion to power AI centers and build automated robotproducts. Sorry buddy, but nuclear fusion is Completely and directly playing into the techno fascists hands
Fascism is a consequence of capitalism. Free (or very cheap) energy would not end capitalism outright, it would just reduce a cost in how profit is made.
The only hope for our collective future is socialist organizing. I highly recommend that anyone interested begin reading about the topic using books written by socialists and by joining a socislist organization or attending their events.
