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The Cash:
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The Story:
There is one person who inspires in the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency space like no other, a man known as a Bitcoin rockstar, who has made even the most passionate and informed Bitcoiners stop and wonder what is truly possible with the gift of Satoshi. His name is Andreas Antonopoulos.
When Antonopoulos first heard of Bitcoin he laughed it off, saying dismissively to himself “Ha! Internet nerd money.” But after investigating more thoroughly, he began to see that he wasn’t just looking at money, but an entirely new implementation of networking, using a distributed ledger which we now know as “the blockchain”. Antonopoulos constantly reminds us all that Bitcoin won’t just be used as a currency, but as the basis of various financial instruments, even the likes of which have never been seen, such as smart contracts and disributed autonomous corporations. This is summed up in his quip: “Bitcoin isn’t just the money for the Internet – it’s the Internet of money.”
In this episode, we had a chance to grab a few minutes of Antonopoulos’s time, and ask him what he thought about the future of Bitcoin in Latin America, what the killer apps will be in developing nations, what he thinks about the mind-revealing qualities of psychedelic drugs, his political views, and of course, what he thinks about tacos. Join us in the next technological breakthrough in this episode of … The Paradise Paradox!
We are about to enter an age of unseen prosperity. For years we have been seeing the prices of high technology decrease incredibly rapidly – with an item reducing to a third of its price within a few short years – even to the extent that smartphones and tablets are available to many people, even in developing nations. We’ve already seen computers replace many jobs. Naturally, mechanical thinking tasks such as human computers were the first to go. Yet with the age of automation – the age of artificially intelligent robots – the same gains that have been realised in the technology sector are going to be realised in every other sector – either directly or indirectly.
We are at a stage where machines cannot just aid manual labour, but replace it entirely. Let’s imagine a case study. You might pay $30 for a new pair of jeans, or if you live in Australia you might pay $100. How did those jeans get on your legs? Which steps can be automated, and which steps can be removed entirely?
Those jeans were probably made in a sweatshop in a cheaper country, by hand. They were driven by van to a shipping yard to be packaged and sent across the seas. They’re unloaded at the dock, and transported by truck to a wholesale centre, then on to retail stores. At the mall, the labourers unload the jeans and carry them up to the store, where the shop attendant puts them on the shelves. You take a bus to the mall, and you’re served by a fitter who gives you some tips on sizes and styles. That’s how it happens today. Let’s have a look at how it will happen in The World of Next Tuesday.
The jeans are made in a factory by stitching robots. This factory is located within your own country, as the price of labour (i.e. robot maintenance and electricity) has dropped down so low that it is cheaper to produce the goods in your country than produce and ship them from another. A robot truck delivers them, perhaps interstate, to a local distribution centre. You could go to the mall and look at some jeans, but that’s somewhat excessive when you can just order a solar-powered drone to fly to your house with a selection of jeans in your size, let it land itself on the table and give you a couple of different camera angles as you try them on. Or maybe you forgo remote production and delivery entirely by ordering the patterns online and entering them into your own stitching machine.
Using automation, scores of human positions have been replaced, and scores more have been eliminated. It wouldn’t be unusual to see the price drop to a quarter of what it was previously.
You might say “But those greedy capitalists will just install their robots and keep the profits for themselves! Those savings won’t reach the consumers!” Some of the business owners will behave in this way, no doubt. But it only takes one very efficient and economical company to use a new production and cost model to put pressure on an entire industry. One single company selling clothes this way can disrupt the existing models enough to change everything, bidding down the price like a Dutch auction.
You might say “So what Kurt? Now we’ll be getting cheap jeans, whoopedydediiddly-doo!” The point is this: these savings will be passed on to just about everything you buy. Every table made from wood chopped by robots, every television delivered to your door by a drone, every tomato shipped from Sonora to Jalisco, every piece of fertiliser delivered by auto-truck to grow that tomato, and every irrigation pipe laid by machine. Every, every, everything.
You won’t need a corner store any more. You’ll have access to a convenience distribution centre. Look through the merchandise online, and the drone will deliver your goods in less time than it takes you to walk around the corner and back. The store doesn’t even have to be large enough for customers to walk into, potentially saving money on real estate, or allowing a larger selection of goods.
Many people, when eating cheaply, will opt to eat from fast foodmachines rather than fast food stalls or restaurants. In apartment buildings, you won’t necessarily have a kitchen within the apartment any more. You will simply look through a list of thousands of recipes, order an omelette from the building’s central kitchen, and the robots will prepare it and deliver it for you, using eggs sent directly from a farm that morning by drone.
I tell a lot of people about these technologies becoming accessible, and they tend to dismiss it as something in the distant future, perhaps something that governments will try to stop, something potentially dangerous, or something which we might not even have to think about in our lifetime. But this is not science fiction or something distant. This is already happening. Google’s autonomous vehicle is already on the roads, along with autonomous trucks; Baxter the robot is already in factories. This is real change that’s already occurring. In five years, these technologies could have a dominant role in many economies.
This could provide many people a problem which they never thought they would have – the problem of having too much money. Of course, many people will squander their newfound wealth. But many more will save it, and take a risk on creating a new technological breakthrough, propelling us exponentially into a future where grand luxuries aren’t just available for the few, but for the many. What would you do if you were living at a 50% discount?
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The Story:
It’s the 29th of September, 1913. We’re in Antwerp, Belgium. Rudolf Diesel calmly boards the steamboat Dresden, and is escorted by a porter to his cabin. That night, Diesel dines with the passengers and retires at 10 p.m. He takes out his diary, turns to today’s date, and draws a single cross. That was the last time Rudolf Diesel was ever seen alive – a mysterious and remarkable death of a remarkable man.
1894, Berlin, Germany. Diesel filled the tank of his combustion engine with oil, and pulled the string to fire it up. The resulting explosion could have killed him, but by a stroke of luck he emerged unscathed. Despite the great risk he was undertaking with his life, and despite the odds, inspired by his wish to level the playing field between craftsmen and monolithic factories, Diesel persevered. Two years later he demonstrated a combustion engine with a theoretical efficiency of 75%, blowing the steam engine’s 10% out of the water. By 1898, Diesel was a millionaire.
This was the engine that could ignite fuel without using a spark, and that was what made his name – or at least his last name – a household name. What people don’t know is that Diesel wasn’t using petroleum, but biofuel. The oil that almost killed him, and the oil that lead to his success, was made from the humble peanut.
For many years, people used diesel fuel made from petroleum, but now in the 21st century, there have been predictions for many decades that the world is fast approaching peak oil – the condition in which every litre of oil extracted is accompanied by a litre or more of water used to flush it out. People around the world are seeking alternatives, and using a product that’s renewable such as vegetable oil is a very attractive option. With a homemade product, people are getting a discount of up to 80% at the pump. It’s 10% less toxic than table salt, much safer to transport than petroleum diesel due to its high flash point (300°F/149°C), can extend the life of a diesel engine, and, with exhaust that smells like popcorn or french fries, it’s hard to say no.
But it’s not just oil that people are turning to. More and more people are looking to the reduced prices of solar panels to provide electricity to their homes, buying electric cars, or converting their cars into electric cars. Beyond that, people are looking at ways to reduce their use of resources and energy in general, turning to solutions such as tiny houses – houses around 25 m² or 270 square feet, or “Earthships” – self-sustaining houses.
How might we see the energy industry change in the next few years? What new sources of power will people find? What ways will they find to reduce their use of electricity, or avoid it entirely? We ask these questions, and might even supply some of the answers, in this exciting chapter of… The Paradise Paradox!
