Posted on 02/18/2015 6:36:05 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
If you were to build a city from scratch, using current technology, what would it cost to live there? I think it would be nearly free if you did it right.
This is a big deal because people aren’t saving enough for retirement, and many folks are underemployed. If the economy can’t generate enough money for everyone to pay for a quality lifestyle today, perhaps we can approach it from the other direction and lower the cost of living.
Consider energy costs. We already know how to build homes that use zero net energy. So that budget line goes to zero if you build a city from scratch. Every roof will be intelligently oriented to the sun, and every energy trick will be used in the construction of the homes. (I will talk about the capital outlay for solar panels and whatnot later.)
I can imagine a city built around communal farming in which all the food is essentially free. Imagine every home with a greenhouse. All you grow is one crop in your home, all year, and the Internet provides an easy sharing system as well as a way to divide up the crops in a logical way. I share my cucumbers and in return get whatever I need from the other neighbors’ crops via an organized ongoing sharing arrangement. My guess is that using the waste water (treated) and excess heat from the home you could grow food economically in greenhouses. If you grow more than you eat, the excess is sold in neighboring towns, and that provides enough money for you to buy condiments, sauces, and stuff you can’t grow at home.
Medical costs will never go to zero, but recent advances in medical testing technology (which I have seen up close in start-up pitches) will drive the costs of routine medical services down by 80% over time. That’s my guess, based on the several pitches I have seen.
Now add Big Data to the mix and the ability to catch problems early (when they are inexpensive to treat) is suddenly tremendous.
Now add IBM’s Watson technology (artificial intelligence) to the medical system and you will be able to describe your symptoms to your phone and get better-than-human-doctor diagnoses right away. (Way better. Won’t even be close.) So doctor visits will become largely unnecessary except for emergency room visits, major surgeries, and end-of-life stuff.
Speaking of end-of-life, assume doctor-assisted-suicide is legal by the time this city is built. I plan to make sure that happens in California on the next vote. Other states will follow. In this imagined future you can remove much of the unnecessary costs of the cruel final days of life that are the bulk of medical expenses.
Now assume the city of the future has exercise facilities nearby for everyone, and the city is designed to promote healthy living. Everyone would be walking, swimming, biking, and working out. That should reduce healthcare costs.
Now imagine that because everyone is growing healthy food in their own greenhouses, the diet of this new city is spectacular. You’d have to make sure every home had a smoothie-maker for protein shakes. And let’s say you can buy meat from the outside if you want it, so no one is deprived. But the meat-free options will improve from the sawdust and tofu tastes you imagine now to something much more enjoyable over time. Healthy eaters who associate with other healthy eaters share tricks for making healthy food taste amazing.
Now assume the homes are organized such that they share a common center “grassy” area that is actually artificial turf so you don’t need water and mowing. Every home opens up to the common center, which has security cameras, WiFi, shady areas, dog bathroom areas, and more. This central lawn creates a natural “family” of folks drawn to the common area each evening for fun and recreation. This arrangement exists in some communities and folks rave about the lifestyle, as dogs and kids roam freely from home to home encircling the common open area.
That sort of home configuration takes care of your childcare needs, your pet care needs, and lots of other things that a large “family” handles easily. The neighborhood would be Internet-connected so it would be easy to find someone to watch your kid or dog if needed, for free. My neighborhood is already connected by an email group, so if someone sees a suspicious activity, for example, the entire neighborhood is alerted in minutes.
I assume that someday online education will be far superior to the go-to-school model. Online education improves every year while the classroom experience has started to plateau. Someday every home will have what I call an immersion room, which is a small room with video walls so you can immerse yourself in history, or other studies, and also visit other places without leaving home. (Great for senior citizens especially.) So the cost of education will drop to zero as physical schools become less necessary.
When anyone can learn any skill at home, and any job opening is easy to find online, the unemployment rate should be low. And given the low cost of daily living, folks can afford to take a year off to retool and learn new skills.
The repair and maintenance costs of homes can drop to nearly zero if you design homes from the start to accomplish that goal. You start by using common windows, doors, fixtures, and mechanical systems from a fixed set of choices. That means you always have the right replacement part nearby. Everyone has the same AC units, same Internet routers, and so on. If something breaks, a service guy swaps it out in an hour. Or do it yourself. If you start from scratch to make your homes maintenance-free, you can get close. You would have homes that never need paint, with floors and roofs that last hundreds of years, and so on.
Today it costs a lot to build a home, but most of that cost is in the inefficiency of the process. In the future, homes will be designed to the last detail using CAD, and factory-cut materials of the right size will appear on the job site as a snap-together kit with instructions printed on each part. I could write a book on this topic, but the bottom line is that home construction is about 80% higher than it needs to be even with current technology.
The new city would be built on cheap land, by design, so land costs would be minimal. Construction costs for a better-than-today condo-sized home would probably be below $75,000 apiece. Amortized over 15 years the payments are tiny. And after the 15th year there is no mortgage at all. (The mortgage expense includes the solar panels, greenhouses, etc.)
Transportation would be cheap in this new city. Individually-owned automobiles would be banned. Public transportation would be on-demand and summoned by app (like Uber).
And the self-driving cars would be cheap to build. Once human drivers are out of the picture you can remove all of the safety features because accidents won’t happen. And you only summon a self-driving car that is the size you need. There is no reason to drag an empty back seat and empty trunk everywhere you go. And if you imagine underground roads, the cars don’t need to be weather-proof. And your sound system is your phone, so the car just needs speakers and BlueTooth. Considering all of that, self-driving cars might someday cost $5,000 apiece, and that expense would be shared across several users on average. And imagine the cars are electric, and the city produces its own electricity. Your transportation budget for the entire family might be $200 per month within the city limits.
The cost of garbage service could drop to nearly zero if homes are designed with that goal in mind. Your food garbage would go back to the greenhouse as mulch. You wouldn’t have much processed food in this city, so no cans and bottles to discard. And let’s say you ban the postal service from this new city because all they do is deliver garbage anyway. (All bills will be online.) And let’s say if you do accumulate a bag of garbage you can just summon a garbage vehicle to meet you at the curb using the same app you use for other vehicles. By the time you walk to the curb, the vehicle pulls up, and you toss the bag in.
I think a properly-designed city could eliminate 80% of daily living expenses while providing a quality of life far beyond what we experience today. And I think this future will have to happen because the only other alternative is an aggressive transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor by force of law. I don’t see that happening.
It isn't new. Karl Popper wrote a book about it: The Open Society And Its Enemies whose first topic, in fact, the topic of the first volume of two, is Plato. One thinks of Plato as an exemplar of free thought but in fact, in The Republic he posited a planned society within which every citizen had his assigned place and optimal role...for life. A Philosopher-King, the best of humanity, a natural ruler from whose ukases there would be no appeal because, of course, none would be needed. That's more than a little unrealistic, but then my own opinion is that Plato wasn't actually intending it to be realistic. Popper differs, however, and he has a point.
To indicate where this leads, Popper's second volume discusses two thinkers: Hegel and Marx. The latter was utopian to a fault, but in practice it never did work without the mythical New Soviet Man, a creature whose only imperfection was that he didn't exist and couldn't be created. Not that they didn't try.
I think Adams would be furious to read my contention that he is a totalitarian, but I'm afraid that is, in fact, where this sort of thing ends up. People would be "permitted" to eat meat if imported from outside? Really? Collective agriculture managed by the Internet? Really? Perfect transportation effected by machines that never break, never err? Really?
And the gorilla in the room - who runs this stuff? Who are the "experts"? Who has the power to direct others' lives, because in this scenario their lives will very definitely be directed? Adams doesn't say, but I'm afraid it's going to take the Philosopher-King who doesn't exist, or perhaps collective councils...let me see, didn't those used to be called "Soviets"?
WOW. A communist paradise. A workers’ paradise. To each according to their needs and each according to their abilities.
“This central lawn creates a natural “family” of folks drawn to the common area each evening for fun and recreation. This arrangement exists in some communities and folks “.. avoid the area unless they want a prostitute or drugs.
“The neighborhood would be Internet-connected so it would be easy to find someone to watch your kid ...”
Humor, intentional or not.
No more need for the cartoonists’ home studios. Think of the space and energy savings! No more need for advances in drawing software. Think of all the energy savings eliminating all that commuting to the software developers offices, and resources saved by eliminating all that advertising and packaging!
Using man’s infinite wisdom to create utopia has always been a temptation, even for the most libertarian of us.
As long as one realizes that it can only be a fantasy and can never be a reality, it’s harmless.
It’s only when those start to take their fantasies seriously are we in trouble.
I had a liberal go off screeching at me recently about how the flyover county is supported by the cities.
He seemed to think that we all live on farm subsidies paid for by urban people and if they cut off the subsidies we would all starve to death. I pointed out that most of us would happily cut off the subsidies and if the farmers want they could charge a premium when selling to city dwellers.
Then he trailed off about rooftop farming feeding all of NY but I don’t think he was even buying that one.
***I can imagine a city built around communal farming in which all the food is essentially free.**
Ah yes! The socialist ideal! The pilgrim fathers tried that in 1621 and almost died out. Then they tried capitalism farming and invented THANKSGIVING with the bounty of crops that flowed in when they applied the St Paul rule...”He who does no work shall not eat!”
1. Communal is a poor choice of word. Each resident or family would best have an individual space and responsibility for production. Such a community should also be rural. Open source equipment designs should be included.
2. There are county zoning ordinances and laws against any and all kinds of small manufacturing operations.
3. There are regulations for only allowing approved, graded building materials produced by government-linked producers and outlawing others (e.g., compressed earth blocks).
4. There are regulations against some of the best of homebuilt components for alternative energy systems.
5. Large impact fees and engineering fees are required by many counties for building permits.
6. There are regulations against the best methods for composting waste.
7. Counties only approve subdivisions with homeowners’ associations attached in order to keep out non-government riff-raff.
The bipartisan establishment doesn’t like self-sufficiency, working class real property ownership, competition or consumer savings and will officiously rob anyone trying to engage in such behaviors and exile them to homelessness.
Permanent, unLawful slavery is complicated in law, but it’s the law.
These utopian ideals sound like the future plan for the city of Seattle. So far, all it has accomplished is to make it one of the most expensive places to live in the nation.
How to live like a millionaire. First get a million dollars.
I can tell you one thing.
The best lifestyle for me doesn’t include living in a city.
“I can imagine a city built around communal farming in which all the food is essentially free.”
He lost me there too. Yep, that food just jumps out of the ground onto the table. He is obviously clueless about agriculture (and plenty more).
I thought hippies have been trying to do this in their communes since the 60’s. Seems they always end up either leaving broke or starting some sort of business dependent on capitalism. Al Gore is a perfect example of bailing out of the utopian commune or city model. He used to spend a fair amount of time at ‘The Farm’ in Tennessee hanging out smoking dope with Stephen Gaskin and the others before he got into politics.
I’d like to know what they intend to do with all the takers in society.
I hope they aren’t expecting them to work in the communal farms.
This is the intention that paves the road to hell. What he’s missing is that you can’t get MANKIND out of the equation.
1. It works with a group of people who voluntarily get together to build the city, if they are free to kick out anyone they want - any height, weight, color, gender, hair color, number of toes, favorite color.
2. Hundreds of millions die within 100 years from war and famine the minute this bozo (maybe he isn’t - but he IS mankind) is elected to something in the US or any other country that has a legal monopoly on the initiation of the use of force (i.e. - it’s a government program.)
Great idea kiddo - but go do it with people who choose to join you, and don’t expect those people to behave. You still have jealousy, sin, violence, ignorance, hatred, resentment, and everything else that’s true of man the moment he’s conceived to content with. As soon as they arise, someone will suggest a government. Government + Mankind = Mark Steyn’s finest phrase: Farce, followed by farce, followed by tragedy.
And, there’s nothing depressing about that. This is what man does. Go ask the Bible.
Where I live the sun tends to move around.
How about a house that can be rotated to point to the sun?
A great idea for the eggheads in DC to study, it can be paid for by raising the gas tax.
All the comforts of hive..er...home...
I can imagine a city built around communal farming in which all the food is essentially free.
Without labor the fields will be full of weeds. The author trivializes the work of a farmer. He probably should leave the city one day, go 100 miles south, and see for himself how much labor goes into growing anything.
I share my cucumbers and in return get whatever I need from the other neighbors’ crops via an organized ongoing sharing arrangement.
What is he going to do with grain? Is he advocating pre-Bronze age technology?
We already know how to build homes that use zero net energy.
Absolutely. They are called "caves." Beware of bear, though.
Now add IBM’s Watson technology (artificial intelligence) to the medical system and you will be able to describe your symptoms to your phone and get better-than-human-doctor diagnoses right away.
Is he INSANE? No diagnosis these days, short of minor flu in winter, can be complete without examinations and tests. No doctor, aside from a friend who already knows you, will even give you a diagnosis over the phone.
In this imagined future you can remove much of the unnecessary costs of the cruel final days of life that are the bulk of medical expenses.
Nazis euthanized mental patients, but even they did not go as low as killing old people just because they are old. Logan's Run was NOT a documentary.
Everyone would be walking, swimming, biking, and working out.
Instead of working, of course.
the common center, which has security cameras [...] creates a natural “family” of folks drawn to the common area each evening for fun and recreation.
I see a contradiction here. Why do you need a security camera there? Aren't you trusting your neighbors? :-) (That's how utopias fall apart.)
The neighborhood would be Internet-connected so it would be easy to find someone to watch your kid or dog if needed, for free.
Yes, people are already lining up to watch for someone's kid for free.
When anyone can learn any skill at home, and any job opening is easy to find online
Let's see how you can learn at home to be an oil well worker, or a fisherman, or a scientist. Oh, Mr. Adams is an artist. Yes, you can learn to draw at home... as long as you have someone real who will hold your hand for a while.
In the future, homes will be designed to the last detail using CAD, and factory-cut materials of the right size will appear on the job site as a snap-together kit with instructions printed on each part.
Unfortunately, today workers have to grow trees at the work site to cut them into beams and to make plywood. They have no drawings, and there are no architects, and of course they have no idea what materials they need, and how much - especially not ahead of time. But it will change in the future.
The new city would be built on cheap land, by design
Does the author have any idea what makes land cheap or expensive? I'm sure that an old artillery firing range, with thousands of unexploded shells still in the ground, can be bought cheap enough. Is this his idea of cheap land?
Individually-owned automobiles would be banned.
Ah, you MUST hire someone to do work that you could otherwise do yourself for less money and with less hassle. That's freedom for you, remember! You are free to choose what I tell you.
Besides... where will Uber drivers live and keep their vehicles? Are they exempt from the requirement of hiring someone else to transport themselves? If they are, what stops everyone from becoming a Uber driver but transporting only themselves and their friends? If they are not, wouldn't it be inhumane to deny the drivers the right to live in a city that they serve? It's always easy to build a nice society, as long as you don't need to worry about workers who make it happen. Invariably, utopias cannot exist without magic.
You wouldn’t have much processed food in this city, so no cans and bottles to discard.
It must be nice to live in California (it is, actually :-) - but even here I cannot buy all kinds of produce all the time. I have to buy goods in jars, in containers, in bags, in boxes - unless I want to subsist on whatever is currently available in the garden. I'm eating a Washington Red apple now, but - surprise - the apple tree outside is not even blooming, unlike the peach and the plum. I have lemons, if that's a suitable substitute :-) Oh, rice will be out - CA does not have enough water for it, and never had. There are far less hospitable climates where you can't grow much, and even that would be not always tasty (beet, potatoes.) You'd likely develop vitamin deficiency.
In other words, Mr. Adams must be trolling :-)
Money was invented thousands of years ago because bartering was so inefficient.
I think a properly-designed city could eliminate 80% of daily living expenses while providing a quality of life far beyond what we experience today.
I only skimmed over his particular view of utopia, but it did not appear to me that the quality of life would be particularly good. You spend half your time maintaining your energy efficient home, and your other half growing your one little crop for barter? What if you don't want to grow stuff? What if you want to spend your time surfing the internet or traveling instead? His idea of a room where you could "immerse" yourself in history lessons or whatever doesn't sound like a good substitute for traveling somewhere new and exotic.
Whenever I read about utopias, I notice that they would only be utopic for the person imagining them. For everyone else, they would be miserable.
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