Poul Anderson continues to spell out the implications of his premise until the end.
Gold has become an industrial metal, conductive and inert. A new world-wide man-hour credit standard will replace money. Meanwhile, in New York, New Jersey and New England, the chief administrator, Mandelbaum, issues scrip to be exchanged for goods and services. He and a food-factory superintendent converse in Unitary, made public only a week before, which has maximal logic and minimal redundancy.
Food synthesis plants, when built, will feed everyone without charge. However, it will take time to build robot construction workers. Meanwhile, human workers want to work for less than six hours a day because driving nails, mixing concrete etc are too boring. Mandelbaum suggests beamcasting talks, symphonies etc that they can listen to while working.
Hundreds leave the city every day. When weather-turning force screens are in full production, Mandelbaum will move his office to the country and work outdoors.
2 comments:
Kasor, Paul!
Gold is already used in many cases for industrial purposes. And we have long had the kind of "credit" mentioned here, it's called fiat money and credit cards are used to borrow to be repaid later. And I distrust how most states incompetently manage fiat money.
Ad astra! Sean
"beamcasting talks, symphonies etc that they can listen to while working."
I listen to podcasts while doing fairly mindless tasks like washing dishes.
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