Quad-rotors: How the 1% will control the 99% in dystopia

qz.com

11 points·rrggrr··4 comments

The author posits (melodramatically) one very compelling economic question, which is: How will the 99% provide economic value when the 1% do not need them and do not fear them.

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Parts of this, especially the democratizing nature of guns as the primary weapon, read similarly to [this essay](http://www.george-orwell.org/You_and_the_Atomic_Bomb/0.html) by George Orwell, "You and the Atomic Bomb". It's an interesting read, and somewhat prescient.

While no country that possesses atomic bombs has attempted to use them as weapons of repression, drones are surely far more tempting to tyrants with much less collateral damage.

A very scary premise, but it's also possible that the future will be more egalitarian, with technology liberating us into an age of abundance.

I also wonder if the future of armed conflict is really going to look like robot warfare. In the near future, it probably will be the case, but if I was one of the fortified 1%, I'm not sure I'd feel all that secure. I suspect there's a coming age of biological engineering that will completely transform warfare away from robots and into things like targeted viruses.

There's one counter-argument that I thought of right away, that kinda dispels this whole scenario:

What if there's one hacker in the 99% who is smart enough to re-program the killer robots to kill the controlling part of the 1%? There's a good chance at least one will be found...

Maybe it's because I'm a grumpy old man, but I really do think that our species is doomed to unhappiness and poverty.

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