Comment by munk-a | Hacker News Reader

Comment by munk-a | Hacker News Reader

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Land will always be scarce because it isn't quantity of land (though that too can be a separate issue) but quantity coupled with positioning of land. Most people could afford to purchase four acres of land in Alaska or VT's north east kingdom, but four acres along central park is quite expensive because, due to the location of the site relative to all the services of NYC and the access to greenery, it is rather exclusive... and I don't believe (including references from all the SciFi I've ever read) that there is any situation society could be in that would nullify the difference in value of two parcels of land - Judge Dredd and Mega City one I believe come closest, even though land overall is much more of a limited supply, most of the inhabitable land is equally worthless - but there are still a few Oasis of dystopian high society around that have vastly different value.

If we draw even to Hitchiker's Guide's concept of built planets, and we considered the cost of making planets would eventually trend to zero... there is still the concept of locality that would influence price.

Presumably, if you have unlimited resources, you can create most, if not all, of what makes that land in NYC valuable. You could create enough city districts to meet demand.

There's lots of factors that go into the value of land. Available amenities, jobs, being near other people, quality of schools and other resources, transportation, etc. But those all seem to boil down to scarce resources being pooled in one area. If you could mass produce amenities, buildings, school supplies, etc, then NYC wouldn't have any inherent value, because its equal would exist everyone someone cared to plop one down where there was enough demand to fill it with people.

I don't know if post-scarcity must mean perpetual motion machine. I'm not certain if you're familiar with the societal concept of systems collapse but it may be that attempting to do that would result in a maintenance burden that's untenable... Also I think a large chunk of NYC's value is in its people and I believe there's always going to be advantageous positioning from rarity, maybe this eventual society still has a government that has a capitol building and people congregate specifically around that... or perhaps it's more artificial - if the whole world was a city perhaps it'd get less significant and value would come from living at exactly 0' 0' or 3'14" 15'92" and so on.

I think there's a bit of innate petty jealousy in human beings so land value differentials will always exist.

But, that angle is pretty thin, so maybe I'm just stretching the argument at this point. Quite interesting to ponder!

I think that the problem is that the time when technology causes dramatic unemployment is likely to happen long before the time when technology can provide unlimited resources. So the question is: what do we do in-between?

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