MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
No. Not unless you ordered cooked soy beans. It is exactly the same chemical form and make up of what it is synthesizing
Food synthesizing creates real post scarcity.
- Thread starter MarcusIII
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MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Because a horse is a horse of course. (Old Econ Professor saying)
ottarrus
Emperor Mongoose
First there's 'synthesizing' and there's synthesizing...
Creating food out of materials with nutrient value while subtracting harmful elements is one thing. Creating food out of nothing but carbon and oxygen is a whole different thing.
There is a difference between flavored food paste and pushing a screen icon and ordering a catfish sandwich a'la Star Trek. In the food paste example you will not be 'post scarcity' because fresh food will become a luxury item. 'Post scarcity' may have all sorts of socio-scientific definitions depending on the discipline, but to the average everyday person it mean 'freedom from want'. You want a new set of clothes? The synthesizer will make them, custom tailored and at no cost to you. Same thing if you want a new air/raft or a steak medium rare with hollandaise.
But so long as your synthesizing process requires rare elements or luxury items exist, you are not 'post-scarcity'.
Personally I believe 'post-scarcity' is a fantasy based wishful thinking about an unattainable dream. For one thing, humanity is a conflict based species. The fact is, wehaven't really evolved all that far from out monkey troop ancestors. We divide the universe into two groups: 'Us' and 'Them' and it is in our very nature to resist and compete with 'Them', whoever 'them' is. We instinctively know that there is a limited amount of everything. Even sunlight is limited because the Sun will explode one day. And the more I have the less you get. Thus, conflict.
Creating food out of materials with nutrient value while subtracting harmful elements is one thing. Creating food out of nothing but carbon and oxygen is a whole different thing.
There is a difference between flavored food paste and pushing a screen icon and ordering a catfish sandwich a'la Star Trek. In the food paste example you will not be 'post scarcity' because fresh food will become a luxury item. 'Post scarcity' may have all sorts of socio-scientific definitions depending on the discipline, but to the average everyday person it mean 'freedom from want'. You want a new set of clothes? The synthesizer will make them, custom tailored and at no cost to you. Same thing if you want a new air/raft or a steak medium rare with hollandaise.
But so long as your synthesizing process requires rare elements or luxury items exist, you are not 'post-scarcity'.
Personally I believe 'post-scarcity' is a fantasy based wishful thinking about an unattainable dream. For one thing, humanity is a conflict based species. The fact is, wehaven't really evolved all that far from out monkey troop ancestors. We divide the universe into two groups: 'Us' and 'Them' and it is in our very nature to resist and compete with 'Them', whoever 'them' is. We instinctively know that there is a limited amount of everything. Even sunlight is limited because the Sun will explode one day. And the more I have the less you get. Thus, conflict.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Yes, it is
Oooh this is kinda a murky area. I'm going to chime in to say I think Ottarius has the resolution right. High quality and high nutrition is too hard to create until TL's well past 15 IMTU. All the complaints about the autochef will continue with a firm basis in reality until TL17 at a minimum. I'll add that I think the process is hard enough that synthesized food is not perfectly healthy much in the same way processed foods today are not strictly healthy if that's all you eat. But then again, it does prevent starvation at TL14+ worlds in a way that except in emergencies doesn't become a desired trade product.
I had a whole post including a TL tree, but it wouldn't post due to "spam-like" elements. Spam. Processed food. Hmmmmmmmmm. I think big-processed-foods is onto me!
Anyway, I'll include the original rejected post as a text attachment instead. Almost positive the rejection was because I referred to an old post over on Citizens of the Imperium from 2020 via a URL. It's in the file.
I had a whole post including a TL tree, but it wouldn't post due to "spam-like" elements. Spam. Processed food. Hmmmmmmmmm. I think big-processed-foods is onto me!
Anyway, I'll include the original rejected post as a text attachment instead. Almost positive the rejection was because I referred to an old post over on Citizens of the Imperium from 2020 via a URL. It's in the file.
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MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
Yes, that's a common theme in Sci Fi stories.
Sageryne
Emperor Mongoose
Looking at TL14 or 15, I think that major navies would have "food manufacturing ships." They could skim gas giants for the raw materials, and then assemble them into food. The food would still be distributed to the ships in the fleet, but it would be better than pre-packaged foods.
That's an awesome idea for relief ships as well.
ottarrus
Emperor Mongoose
Let's get a couple things clear here:
1. It's impossible to feed a world of billions by importing food. With Traveller economics, it's simply not doable.
2. We are ignoring using all those rockball worlds and moons in most systems. Using human waste [dung] and ground regolith you can create soil. You can import water from cometary sources. With strict rationing and with Traveller's unspecified but clearly incredible recycling technology [which begins to appear at TL 9 or 10] it's entirely possible to farm a Martian type world using insulated domes, UV lighting, etc. Yes, it would be expensive to do, but when you have a world of billions to feed you can find the political will to feed them. And however expensive it is, it's certainly cheaper than Jumping hundred-thousand-ton megafreighters in.
1. It's impossible to feed a world of billions by importing food. With Traveller economics, it's simply not doable.
2. We are ignoring using all those rockball worlds and moons in most systems. Using human waste [dung] and ground regolith you can create soil. You can import water from cometary sources. With strict rationing and with Traveller's unspecified but clearly incredible recycling technology [which begins to appear at TL 9 or 10] it's entirely possible to farm a Martian type world using insulated domes, UV lighting, etc. Yes, it would be expensive to do, but when you have a world of billions to feed you can find the political will to feed them. And however expensive it is, it's certainly cheaper than Jumping hundred-thousand-ton megafreighters in.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
Off topic, but I sent you a DM and fear notification of it went to spam. Carry on.
Sageryne
Emperor Mongoose
I was talking about feeding the crews of a fleet. pholus96 mentioned they could act as relief ships in an emergency. I am not sure where you got the idea of feeding billions of people from that.
You don't even need soil. Hydroponics works quite nicely at TL7/8 without any soil.
You don't even need soil. Hydroponics works quite nicely at TL7/8 without any soil.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
Which economics would those be?
The trade mini-game is for PC ethically challenfed merchants, we have yet to see a Mongoose version of GT Far Trader.
TL8+ - build lots of agricultural O'Neill cylinders
Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
Population Control is a bad trope to follow, especially when you have the primary and secondary planets in charted space.
Under population control, useless people who consider themselves to be better than you, no matter how idiotic their opinions are, will always maximize their percentage of the permissible population, and will minimize the survivability of anyone who dares to disagree with their policies.
Social media posts (or in more established totalitarian systems, overheard or imagined whispers) become grounds for participation in Carousel or Soylent Green processing plants.
Under population control, useless people who consider themselves to be better than you, no matter how idiotic their opinions are, will always maximize their percentage of the permissible population, and will minimize the survivability of anyone who dares to disagree with their policies.
Social media posts (or in more established totalitarian systems, overheard or imagined whispers) become grounds for participation in Carousel or Soylent Green processing plants.
"Freedom from want" in the sense of having everything that you could possibly desire is, of course, impossible by definition. There's all kinds of intangibles that will never stop being wanted. There are also unique material things that cannot be had by more than one person. You and I both can't have the original Mona Lisa. It is impossible for everyone to have a beachfront house in Hawai'i. We can't all be space admirals. If that's your definition of post-scarcity, of course it is a pipe dream. Even Grandfather with his reality warping technology couldn't have everything he wanted.
Post scarcity is normally used to mean that staples like food, housing, healthcare, clothing, and the like are not contingent on "earning" them. It means that people are free to pursue their interests and do the things that they enjoy without concern that they are going to starve or become homeless as a result. I am not going to be guaranteed happiness or to be a successful youtube influencer, though I could at least be a full time youtuber without starving to death.
It is generally more difficult to run a game from a basis of post scarcity, because we don't have any experience with it or any agreement on what its parameters are. Most, though not all, depictions of it are dystopian: everyone's a Reaganite welfare queen. Star Trek tends to have this problem regularly. Roddenberry wanted it to be post-scarcity, but the writers often struggled with creating stories within that structure. Not that there aren't any, but the constraints you'd work against to create the conflicts are amorphous.
Traveller does not assume post scarcity. The Third Imperium is frankly bordering on dystopian in the level of corruption and nastiness it tolerates despite the resources it has. That makes is rife with adventure.
Post scarcity is normally used to mean that staples like food, housing, healthcare, clothing, and the like are not contingent on "earning" them. It means that people are free to pursue their interests and do the things that they enjoy without concern that they are going to starve or become homeless as a result. I am not going to be guaranteed happiness or to be a successful youtube influencer, though I could at least be a full time youtuber without starving to death.
It is generally more difficult to run a game from a basis of post scarcity, because we don't have any experience with it or any agreement on what its parameters are. Most, though not all, depictions of it are dystopian: everyone's a Reaganite welfare queen. Star Trek tends to have this problem regularly. Roddenberry wanted it to be post-scarcity, but the writers often struggled with creating stories within that structure. Not that there aren't any, but the constraints you'd work against to create the conflicts are amorphous.
Traveller does not assume post scarcity. The Third Imperium is frankly bordering on dystopian in the level of corruption and nastiness it tolerates despite the resources it has. That makes is rife with adventure.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Assuming one kilogramme/litre of food per person, per day, with all relevant nutrients.
One tonne would be fourteen thousand person days of food.
71,428.57142857143 tonnes per billion person days.
One tonne would be fourteen thousand person days of food.
71,428.57142857143 tonnes per billion person days.
You HAVE to recycle waste in terms of the total ecosystem. We're just spoilt here on Earth because it's the ecosystem we're part of, and it's pretty vast.
If nothing was taking care of all the dung, we'd be neck deep in it.
Even if a planet has an existing biosphere, it's unlikely to be fully compatible with the colonists' biology; poo becomes an espicially vital resource to use.
I will reiterate that the simplest way to achieve post-scarcity is population control. LOCAL post-scarcity is likely on many worlds, but I'm with V that it is not something that Traveller technology gifts to the general galaxy.
If nothing was taking care of all the dung, we'd be neck deep in it.
Even if a planet has an existing biosphere, it's unlikely to be fully compatible with the colonists' biology; poo becomes an espicially vital resource to use.
I will reiterate that the simplest way to achieve post-scarcity is population control. LOCAL post-scarcity is likely on many worlds, but I'm with V that it is not something that Traveller technology gifts to the general galaxy.
