Food synthesizing creates real post scarcity.

[MarcusIII]

TL 14; Industrial food synthesizing using only carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, NaCl and a few other trace elements becomes a reality. The food is of course different in many ways from natural food. E.g. a synthesized grape has no skin but can be made in any size. You can get egg whites and egg yolk. But not as an integrated item as found in an egg. Meat, flours, milk, drinks of all kinds are the same.

Recipes are programmed to take advantage of the strengths and avoid the limitations of the system. The mass production of food using this technology puts an end to hunger on planets of TL 14 and above. People eventually forget all about “real food” because this is more than just good enough and almost cost free.

At TL 14 the synthesizers are commercial sized and produce mass food stuff to be distributed and final preparation/cooking takes place with the consumer. Tech level 15 machines are small enough for home and small ship installation produce completed meals.

This of course changes planets of those TL's as no matter the population there is no need to import or grow food. Although for the wealthy "real food" will be available at a high price.

 

[ross]

Post scarcity economics are a real problem in high technology science fiction. This is not simply a Traveller problem. Since most people don’t even understand how post scarcity economics works.

 

[MarcusIII]

Since most people don’t even understand how post scarcity economics works.

Yes, no person understands because we've never had it. As Econ is a social "science" we won't fully understand it until it actually occurs. Star Trek went at it but f'ed it up because Federation citizens have no buying power as seen in little bits and pieces on DS9. They created new scarcities.

 

[Condottiere]

It's connected with a number of related issues.

Fusion reactors provide cheap energy, robotics and artificial intelligence will remove the need for most human labour.

Add in life expectancy and births, and it becomes a question of human rights and privileges.

You can feed everyone, you can house everyone, and you can keep everyone entertained.

Could be, the issue resolves itself.


Behavioral sink is a term invented by ethologist John B. Calhoun to describe a collapse in behavior that can result from overpopulation. The term and concept derive from a series of over-population experiments Calhoun conducted on Norway rats between 1958 and 1962.[1] In the experiments, Calhoun and his researchers created a series of "rat utopias"[2] – enclosed spaces where rats were given unlimited access to food and water, enabling unfettered population growth. Calhoun coined the term behavioral sink[3] in a February 1, 1962, Scientific American article titled "Population Density and Social Pathology".[4] He would later perform similar experiments on mice from 1968 to 1972.[5]

Calhoun's work became used as an animal model of societal collapse, and his study has become a touchstone of urban sociology and psychology in general.[6]

 

[MarcusIII]

You can feed everyone, you can house everyone, and you can keep everyone entertained.

This line reminded me of the plight faced by the Puppeteers in Niven's works. Remember how they ended up living in such a society?

 

[Sigtrygg]

Might explain how the Imperium gets a stream of volumteers to be shipped in cold sleep to colony worlds on the frontier (see the Forboldn project)

Forboldn Project - Traveller

wiki.travellerrpg.com

 

[rinku]

Post scarcity is mostly a matter of assured supply. It really does not matter if the food is printed on demand, grown hydroponically, or simply farmed reliably enough that there's always an excess. And repeat that for clean water, breathable air, temperature control, shelter and any optional extras like entertainment you might want to name.

Population control is another way to cement post-scarcity.

 

[MarcusIII]

Post scarcity is mostly a matter of assured supply. It really does not matter if the food is printed on demand, grown hydroponically, or simply farmed reliably enough that there's always an excess. And repeat that for clean water, breathable air, temperature control, shelter and any optional extras like entertainment you might want to name.

Population control is another way to cement post-scarcity.

Correct. This simply makes that easy everywhere regardless of ability to have a natural food supply

 

[rinku]

A food synthesizer is useless unless you can supply it with the correctly prepared materials.

Just like actual cooking, really.

 

[MarcusIII]

A food synthesizer is useless unless you can supply it with the correctly prepared materials.

Just like actual cooking, really.

Not these. Just supply carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, NaCl and a few other trace elements. From that all food is made

 

[rinku]

Yeah. And regardless of how those are stored for use by the machine, they need to be pre-prepared. Even if that means cracking water and/or carbon dioxide, bottling nitrogen, or refining salt.

Now, it's certainly possible that all that can be done locally, and done easily, given Traveller's fusion power. BUT you still need to store the raw materials in a sensible form. Sodium Chloride is a nice, safe compound, but it's unlikely that you want to be dealing with elemental sodium or elemental chlorine for any length of time. Hydrogen and oxygen are much better stored as water.

Most likely the raw materials would be stored as stable food ingredients. Starches, sugars, carbohydrates. Maybe not edible or tasty ones; ease of use for the fabricator would be the priority.

So.

Your food printer has a bunch of vats to store "ingedient A", "ingredient B", "ingredient C" etc. You choose a food and press a button and it goes to work using the raw materials, outputting a thing. Probably it will need to add or subtract heat at some point, unless you're after room temperature snacks.

That's pretty much the cooking process.

(Now, the TL17+ version using nanotech is probably much different. I'm really talking about the lower tech fabricators that are much more likely to be encountered)

 

[MarcusIII]

Yeah. And regardless of how those are stored for use by the machine, they need to be pre-prepared.

Yep, and basically cheap as dirt

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Alternatively you have a relatively low population supervising lots of robots doing all the work. Then you can have a post scarcity society. Everyone is George Jetson.

 

[rinku]

I actually expect most available food fabricators are dispensing a range of food bars with a choice of flavouring and some nutrition options.

George Jetson was eating food pills, IIRC.

 

[MarcusIII]

I actually expect most available food fabricators are dispensing a range of food bars with a choice of flavouring and some nutrition options.

George Jetson was eating food pills, IIRC.

Probably but this is like a Star Trek: OS synthesizer. Hence the picture. It'll make bread, any kind of meat, fruit, drinks, et al.

 

[rinku]

It'll make food that looks like, and may even taste like what it's based on. Could well be quite sophisticated. But at the base level it's most likely shaped, flavoured and textured tofu. I think the TOS ones are meant to use some kind of glucose matrix as a raw material.

That sort of thing sounds quite possible at Traveller tech levels.

The STNG Replicator is definitely ultra-tech - it's using transporter tech to convert energy to matter to make food from a stored template.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[swordtart]

We already mostly have this. Just look at the ingredients in you prepackaged food. It is mostly up of generic food powders and concentrates that can be stored for years.

It doesn't make you post scarcity unless the manufacturer gives it away for free. If anything they have allowed even greater monopolisation and farmers encouraged to produce the most profitable crops.

 

[MonsterX]

It doesn't make it post-scarcity necessarily, but it could depending on whether you assume

1) this can be done without labour, in processing or obtaining the materials
2) that the materials are easily and cheaply available in every star system
3) the processed output is equally palatable, desirable, and nutritious compared to normal food

All these things could be true at TL 14. #2 probably is true, though you can think up situations when it wouldn't be, but the needed elements are common so in places people might settle they will probably all be there. #1 you might need worker bots. #3 you just have to decide as referee how good the tech is.

I feel like scarcity is needed for a good game (no scarcity, no trade, and also a lot of other interesting things don't happen) and for that reason I assume that human labour is needed, or at least is often cheaper than doing things with robots, and that social systems tend to toward unequal distribution of resources, so that TL 15 means there are rich people with everything and poor people who have to compete with the robots on cost in order to earn the money to feed themselves. Yes, maybe at TL 15 we could give everybody everything they need with robots doing all the work, but rich people own all the robots, so while there are robots, they aren't there to help you but rather to put a ceiling on how much pay you can demand from your boss before he switches you out with a robot. (this feeling is probably a familiar one for people these days.)

As far as the food tech is concerned, I assume processed food can be made is, and is made, but it is (usually) neither the cheapest option (the cheapest option would be grains from ag worlds), nor is particularly nice. It is something preppers, and far sighted governments of worlds that don't produce enough of their own food, might have machines around to make, in case you run out of actual food. In some places, it might be a main food source, but those aren't nice places, and that's not nice food.

These are just the assumptions I operate under, because it makes for a better game setting IMHO, but of course they are just assumptions.

 

[Condottiere]

Technically, it's more of a question of availability being greater than demand, and that both production cost and retail costs being comparatively insignificant, to both the producer's and user's resources.