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The Box is a SocietyImagine the entire industrial economy, scaled down to the nano level. Each machine at the macro level has its counterpart at the nano level. Each power plant, each factory, each mine, each warehouse, each truck, each railroad, each computer, each bookstore, and so forth, has its nano counterpart. The whole thing is contained in a desktop manufacturing facility -- known as a "box" to nanotech cognoscenti. This box can make anything that the world economy can make. In the macro economy there are hundreds of millions of jobs that are done by human beings. How are those jobs going to be done in the nano economy, aka the box? They still have to be done. So, imagine that the same people still do the same jobs, but instead of being on site, they sit at nanotech workstations which give them a window into nanospace. There are sensors which tell them what's going on at the nano level, and they do their jobs by remote control. Now suppose, for the sake of argument, that human beings can be miniaturized. Then take the previous scenario and imagine that all the people who are sitting at workstations are miniaturized into nanobots, and then they carry on just as before, doing the same jobs they originally did in the macroscopic economy, but this time they are on site, i.e. they are down there at the nano level. My point is that all those jobs still have to be done, either by humans, or by nanobots with human intelligence. The box isn't just a machine, it's a society. If you scale the economy down to the nano level, it's still an economy. Could all those jobs be eliminated? Well, let's try another thought experiment, going in the other direction. Suppose that a complete economy exists at the nano level. In other words we have a "box" that can produce anything the world economy can produce. Suppose this economy is autonomous. Everything happens automatically, with no human input. There are no human beings sitting at workstations, and no on-site nanobots with human intelligence. Imagine this nano-economy being scaled up to the macro level. Now we have a macroscopic economy which runs by itself with no human input. All the decisions that would be made by human beings in our ordinary economy are still being made -- but how? The answer must be -- by central planning. There must be a computer that runs the whole economy. The question of whether an economy can be run by central planning is independent of the scale of the economy. If an economy can be run by central planning, then an autonomous nano-economy is possible. If not, not.
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