part one: the problems
Our worst problems would evaporate if the world could become only twice as rich. It might take weeks to invent a new set of problems then.
This is a primitive planet with deliberate complications. Inhabitants live in squalor and are functionally illiterate. It's much easier to create new people than new products. Places like the Sudans and Bangladesh still have more slums than functional bathrooms.
The first problem is energy. Oil is running out faster than admitted, despite fracking. Government programs can't make solar power work. Religions, genetics (above all), culture, and science teachers all discourage innovation.
The first solution involves the 'C' word: Conservation will require some (technically easy but socially difficult) lifestyle reductions.
Cars will have to get flimsier, slower, and less cool looking. It will take an hour longer to fly cross-country powered by high-bypass propfans.
Telecommuting should be encouraged. It's relatively easy to track everyone's contributions, but most jobs have strong social hierarchy aspects.
New homes in the remaining high-density zones will need to be smaller. Obsolete downtown business districts will eventually be converted into housing. With improved VR illusions, the cheapest homes will shrink into living pods.
This would violate human wealth flaunting instincts.
Economic growth will require new small nuclear power plants. This is both a technical and a democratic problem. Among other things US politicians have arranged for their good friends the trial lawyers to be paid about a trillion dollars before the construction can be completed. Every American will pay thousands in legal and bureaucratic fees through higher taxes and utilities.
Most countries have hipster Green movements. Obama banned the safe burial of nuclear waste under a desert, after billions were already spent on the facility. Trump of course never reversed the order.
Mass-produced solar cells automatically shrink-wrapped onto existing roofs would take immense breakthroughs to invent.
The real problem is that science and engineering are literally incomprehensible for most people. Better than a new energy source would be a new education method, instead of the ancient techniques still used in classrooms. I've been waiting my whole life for that. It's just not happening.
If mankind can't be made smarter, it might be made to behave.
This includes passive skills: not wasting money, plus minimal planning and basic negotiation abilities.
Mankind is less than sane when it comes to rivalries, as in the Cold War. Any change seems bad, even if it's an improvement.
Just visit any supermarket or fast food place with its wasteful, environmentally unfriendly, and delicious factory-farmed meat products. Perfectly serviceable synthetic meat can be manufactured cheaply from processed soybeans, fungi, and grains, and tastes almost as good as the real thing to quite a few people. Those meat substitutes that do exist are way overpriced, however.
If Middle Easterners became less boring, the Middle East would become more boring, which would be very good.
Strangely, a more advanced world would appear less civilized. Less effort would be spent on appearances. But the news would become stranger.
In this imaginary future, more people could spend their days relaxing, instead of being forced to work themselves numb.
At long last freedom. All the suffering of history will have been worth it to them. For a while, all will be well.
Sadly, every solved problem will eventually be replaced by unimaginable new ones.
The best hard SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
Buy the book
Read free chapters