How should Production of High-Tech look?

[protoporos]

One thing that has to be explored deeper, is how high tech can be produced without a massive footprint and how the internet can be run while consuming less energy. Both on the assumption that the system is a network of communities, where basics are produced locally (like food, clothing, water, housing) by using globally designed concepts. While producing low-tech like the mentioned basics is easy in such an environment, where the means of production are collectively owned by the community. It's hard to imagine them produce high tech products, like computers, solar panels, batteries and electric vehicles. Of course existing technology can be used for low-tech solutions but on the long run, such technological progress must be ensured.
There are a couple challenges that have to be confronted first:

• how to gather financial resources to build production plant for high tech?
• how to ensure that whole supply chain functions to provide material for above?
• how to prevent exploitation, design the economy to tread all humans fair?

So how should production be designed?

[protoporos]

Full self-sufficiency in communities is impossible.

Communities can only meet a share of their needs by themselves. Thus a community will be reliant on the market and people have to work in enterprises to afford the purchase of otherwise not accessible products like solar panels and computers, and creating them in the first place. Furthermore, in the case of medical treatment, I don't see any way that communities can come up with ways to compensate the value of our healthcare system. So people still have to participate in a economy that is market-based, uses a currency so the government can raise taxes and finance healthcare and general infrastructure. All in all, it doesn't seem like, this new system of how humanity lives on this earth will be any different from today's, or is it?

• Yes, like it has been said: because communities can satisfy basic needs of their members more cost-efficient (mostly by sharing and in-sourcing production), the overall stress on people is reduced because they have a security that basic needs are met no matter if they will hold on to their job or not. And most probable, they will pull out of meaningless jobs as a results, thus be happier. But also engage in less consumption. Because why would you waste your time by working on a job you don't like, to spend your money on materialistic things to reduce your stress and increase your lost well-being.

• But the decentralized form of production posses some difficulties, since production won't be as cheap compared to industrial production, therefor more labortime is required to produce the same quantity. But the products will be of a different quality for sure. Because production will be a lot more sustainable since regenerative practices can be applied while producing locally and since money is scarce reusing existing materials is the first way to try.

• Living in such communities reduces the activity on markets, since most of your needs are satisfied by commonly produced products, I suggest as a result of having less money to spend on market, unnecessary and harmful industries are scaled down too.

• But what persists are sectors of the economy that can't be replaced by generative common-based production in communities, that locally produce globally designed products.

As results, we will see degrowth momentum's that help us bring us back into planetary boundaries. Scaling down harmful industries like the car industry, stepping back from polluting shipments of a globalized economy and drastically reducing spending on arms industry as a result of fewer tax revenue as well as other effects. But industries producing useful technologies will likely persist as result of the lasting demand. Such as tech to produce energy from renewable sources, computers in general, public transport, medical instruments, electricity storage devices and much more. Technological progress wont come to an hold!

[protoporos]

Trade-off between energy efficiency and resource efficiency?

LEDs are very energy efficient compared to classic light bulbs but light bulbs are much easier recyclable and thus pretty resource efficient. Is this trade-off real? Or do we already see recycling practices emerging which solves this issue? Because otherwise you would have to decide how the bigger good is achieved. Using very efficient tech that can't be recycled or using low-tech that can easily be recycled?