Suppose we can now transport goods immediately. What happens to all the truck drivers and dock workers who are no longer needed and out of work?
This seems about as fundamental as it gets, hope i can get some help here.
@OP: This is for your friend: Chapter 7 of Economics in One Lesson: The Curse of Machinery http://jim.com/econ/chap07p1.html
Why anarchy fails
I may be an engineer, but I was debating majoring in physics, until I realized I wanted to do something constructive for a living, as with what we currently know about physics, teleportation is impossible. The problem is that to teleport, you must know both the position and the velocity of every particle (proton, neutron and electron) in the thing, and the more exact you know the postion the less you know about the velocity, so you cannot really get the exact copy. And even then, you still have the original at the original teleporter. The other idea they have, more alike the communist series Star Trek, they are thinking of using wormholes, probably with a rotating black hole, where yyou have to thread a pinhole piece of space, and even then, its too far to be any local use...
So I don't think we have to worry to much about this for the forseeable future.
paradise, thats what would happen. the cost of production would fall so much that... i cant even begin to imagine
I think the government would restrict the teleporter for military use only, at first, and the price of a teleporter would be so great only a few could afford it at first, plus you'd have it at both end points (assuming to get from a to b you'd have to have a teleporter at both a and b). I wouldn't expect every place of business to have a teleporter for their incoming stock. Nothing much would change, except the world game of chess played by the military.
I think how expensive the device is to build and operate would have a lot to do with what its invention would entail in any time period you care to consider.
Assuming it was so cheap that people did not find employment in transportation, they would find employment in an industry solving problems that we still had. If this sort of scenario played out in every industry we would enjoy a heaven on earth. don't hold your breath though.
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
thats what I think. But a firend keeps bringing up that her family and friends all work in the shipping industry in some way or another. She agrees that the teleporter would bring down prices by cutting shipping costs, but complains that her whole family and millions of others would be out of work and couldn't even afford the now super cheap food. Basically I say that things will eventually balance out. I don't know how to explain this.
food is already practically free if youre serious about getting bang for buck rather than brand name worship
They find different jobs and all teleported goods and services become cheaper if it is more energy efficient. Teleportation through anything but pure vaccum would cause nuclear fission, though.
doesnt need to be teleporters. How about micro manufacturing. Your goods will be e-mailed to you and you can print them out
I'm no physicist but wouldn't it take a hell of a lot of energy to move large amounts of matter from one point to another?
In other words, wouldn't it still be prohibitively expensive to teleport certain things?
permadelvin:thats what I think. But a firend keeps bringing up that her family and friends all work in the shipping industry in some way or another. She agrees that the teleporter would bring down prices by cutting shipping costs, but complains that her whole family and millions of others would be out of work and couldn't even afford the now super cheap food. Basically I say that things will eventually balance out. I don't know how to explain this.
Does your friend have personal memories of when transport happened by horse and buggy...?
....does she think it is a problem that she doesn't?
right now, what portion of the unemployed can be explained by an absence for demand in the 'horse and buggy' industry?
by your friend's logic, we should all live in stone age, don't use cars or planes, travel only by foot or horses etc. and that would employ every people, ad absurdum... Just another economic fallacy.
Does your friend use computer? Suggest him to throw it away and instead use dove mail. Yeah, makes perfect sense.
(english is not my native language, sorry for grammar.)
thanks aj, this is what I was looking for. Shoulda known it'd be in there.
Not quite what you were asking, but assume immediate teleportation were possible. Then something amazing like this might follow:
France declares war. Within the next few seconds, France consists of the President, a few aides, and a few of his generals.
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