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Fine-grained points in a bulk economyWe live in a macroscopic, capitalistic economy which is very fine-grained at certain points, and highly automated at certain points. Thirty years from now, we will still live in a macroscopic, capitalistic economy which is very fine-grained at certain points, and highly automated at certain points. There are some industrial processes which involve making microscopic structures (the prime example, of course, is computer chips). Such fine-grained processes exist in the midst of the macroscopic economy. In other words, a machine that makes microscopic circuits exists in a factory, and the factory exists in a vast network of other factories, most of which operate strictly at the macroscopic level. In the coming decades, as industrial processes become more and more fine-grained, some factories will operate at the atomic level. They too will exist in the midst of the macroscopic economy. The economy already contains very fine-grained replicating entities (cells) within it. Large industries such as forestry and agriculture use cells. In the future the economy may contain new kinds of very fine-grained replicating entities (various nanodevices) within it. This will not alter the situation in any essential way. The economy will still contain both nanoscopic processes (e.g., growing wood cell by cell, or growing diamondoid material atom by atom) and macroscopic processes (e.g., shipping lumber by truck to the site where it will be used, or shipping diamondoid structural shapes to the site where they will be used). Suppose you want a new dining room table. You go to a furniture store and buy it. They put the table on a truck and deliver it. Before it came to the store it was on another truck, or possibly a railroad car, where it came from the factory or workshop where it was made into a table, and before that the lumber came from a lumber mill. This whole business is occurring on a macroscopic level. However, if you go back to the beginning of this process, there was a tree, where things were happening on the atomic level. The wood grew cell by cell, and the cells grew atom by atom. At that point, the economy is very fine-grained. But from that point on, after you cut the tree down, you treat it as a bulk object. This is true of any object manufactured from organic materials. At first things happen on a very fine-grained level, and then the rest of the process is done in bulk. Suppose for the sake of argument that at some time in the future common objects are made by atomic assemblers, i.e. "molecular manufacturing" is a reality. That too will exist as a point of fine-grainedness within a bulk economy. This time your dining room table will be made out of diamondoid material, coming from an assembler, which has been programmed to produce tables. From there on it will be treated as a bulk object all the way to your house, and then you will use it as a bulk object. In other words, we are right back in the same situation we were in. The basic pattern of the situation is still the same.
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