what is the goal?

Mike-

Well, first of all of course your opinion has weight, you after all are one of 3 active users at this point, and you did found the forums.

With respect to religion, I consider myself to be an atheist-Agnostic (differing capitalization intentional), in that since as I see it there is scant evidence for any deity, I put this deity on par with faeries and ghosts and vampires, IE effectively nonexistent.

With respect to this goal for the society, I imagine that in some senses it would function perhaps in a similar way to Constitutions as they are currently seen. This is only a suggestion.

But anyway, to get back to the point: Philosophically we may not actually be deriving our goal or goals from a universal perspective (Assuming that is even possible), but rather deciding that these will be our goals. This will make further discussion much more effective and much more likely to actually settle things because we know what the ideal society that we want to create is.

Once we know what we want to do, we just have to do it. If we decide ends here, all we have to do is means elsewhere. If you take a look around, we've been mixing the two or even ignoring the first entirely, which is certainly suboptimal.

Anyway, we're coming up to another important thing here: Precision vs. Comprehensibility. The longer and more complex our list of goals is, the "better" it has the potential to be. On the other hand, the less complex it is, the easier it will be for the average citizen to understand. Hopefully better educational system could make this double bind somewhat easier, but of course it will still exist. That's an issue for another time I suppose.

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The idea is to have a free-enough and smart-enough society that you don't have to worry so much about these things anyway.

Sounds like something to add to the list of goals.

Right now, we have:

1) Ultimate survival of the human race or derived sentient beings, specifically with respect to the CSCS because that is what we're designing, but of course having a general good will to every sentient being. The really long term goal of this would be to have some sort of sentient being survive to the end of the universe and if there is one to follow then somehow surviving the singularity into that one. If progress continues for the next 100 billion years I feel that this will become possible.

2) As I said above, good will to all human or otherwise sentient or intelligent beings, specifically in the CSCS but also everywhere. I would rate this at 95% as important as the above, although I suppose they could both be restated as goodwill to all humans, past and present.

3) Intelligent society- since you were the first proponent, I will leave you to define and suggest an importance rating for it.

4) Maximum freedoms- since both you and NoMoreLies are proponents of this, either of you can suggest a definition and importance rating.

We also need some way to portray the interconnectedness of these different goals. For example, as I have said before, freedoms are an effective strategy to keep a government from becoming tyrannical, which can have negative effects on the future survival of humanity and upon the happiness and intelligence of the people (through indoctrination).

Just some things to keep in mind, but how does that seem as an unfinished, preliminary goal list?

What if people want to choose ignorance? What if they want to do something that will harm them, and as a consequence reduce their total happiness? If they chose these two things, it would be going against goals (2) and (3) that you suggested, but restrcting them from doing these would be violating (4).

If you choose maximising freedom as the first goal, (1) follows logically, assuming not everyone chooses to die. As does (2), assuming most people will choose to be happy. However, I've pointed out the flaw in Utilitarianism.

I'm sure I've said before, I believe that education should be free, but it shouldn't be funded by extortion (taxes).

I'm a firm believer that there is no single one best solution. As an example, when mankind first set's sail for the stars, we will probably not all be using fusion drives. Some ships will, but others will sail on laser light, others on beams of Ions, and yet more will travel from comet to comet, dropping colonies off along the way. In this instance, there is one goal (interstellar colonisation) that is approached from different angles (solar sails, fusion drives, stepping stone colonisation etc).

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What if people want to choose ignorance? What if they want to do something that will harm them, and as a consequence reduce their total happiness? If they chose these two things, it would be going against goals (2) and (3) that you suggested, but restrcting them from doing these would be violating (4).

You choose a course of action based on the relative importance of the goals. I left the relative importances for 3 and 4 blank because those were not my proposals, and the point here is collaboration, so I wanted your suggestions. Thanks for being both specific and helpful in that regard.

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If you choose maximising freedom as the first goal, (1) follows logically, assuming not everyone chooses to die. As does (2), assuming most people will choose to be happy. However, I've pointed out the flaw in Utilitarianism.

I believe I partially addressed this:

I wrote:

We also need some way to portray the interconnectedness of these different goals. For example, as I have said before, freedoms are an effective strategy to keep a government from becoming tyrannical, which can have negative effects on the future survival of humanity and upon the happiness and intelligence of the people (through indoctrination).

This is what is called a "win-win": One action can play into more than one goal, and the more the better.

I don't think that is a flaw, really. While it technically fits with Utilitarianism, let's look at the de facto aspect of it. Humans are not evil creatures. It pains people to see others' pain. For people to really be happy, it's ineffective to do that by making others miserable.

Might I introduce you to the humanitarian disaster that was America before
December 6, 1865 (The day that the 13th amendment was adopted banning slavery)? Human slaves, concentrated particularly in the south, were 13% of the total population of the US (48% in the south, source). The effects of this can be found in the autobiography of Frederick Douglass, Frederick Douglass. He talks about how slaveowners become less than human somewhere in the process of dehumanizing their slaves, as is necessary to keep them obedient. Slavery could and fortunately was ended both for the mercy of the slave and the slaveowner.

I apologize, I forgot to reply to the rest of your post. Here is my reply:

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I'm a firm believer that there is no single one best solution. As an example, when mankind first set's sail for the stars, we will probably not all be using fusion drives. Some ships will, but others will sail on laser light, others on beams of Ions, and yet more will travel from comet to comet, dropping colonies off along the way. In this instance, there is one goal (interstellar colonisation) that is approached from different angles (solar sails, fusion drives, stepping stone colonisation etc).

Well, firstoff, for technical reasons I disagree with your analogy, based on what level of technology you're at and what your budget is there is going to be one clear best propulsion technology, but we are so far away from a mission at present that all we can do is speculate. And while there may be an infinite number of answers to any question, there is a finite number of questions for any given answer. That's what were doing here, when you get down to it. We're writing the questions that will become the foundation for our society.

wrt taxless education, I can think of two ways. One is socialism and the other is donations to government. I'm sure you dislike the first one, and I consider the second one untenable, but since that is beyond the purview of this thread I'm not going to continue on this.

So, in lieu of a response, I think I'll refine my proposal for a goal list for the CSCS.

General Welfare to all Sentients at the present is set to an importance value of 1, with people outside the CSCS taking a relative importance of about .1. I say this because the CSCS should focus primarily on itself, because they can do the most for themselves, and less for others, thus to some degree effort to better others is less fruitful than effort to better oneself because it is possible that they repudiate those efforts.

Furthermore, there is a relative importance based on time, because given more time, there will be more time and hopefully (with continuing progress) more ability to deal with the problem.

The Relative importance of General Welfare to all Sentients at any given point in the future can by found by the equation:

RI=25/(t+25)

Where RI is Relative importance and t is time in the future in years. Basically the point of this equation is that RI is 1 right now, and will halve every 25 years.

Then there is having an intelligent society, which I will denote a present-relative importance of .5, and .05 for the rest of the world, and then freedoms, which I will denote .25 and .025 respectively. Both are subject to the same equation of change over time.

Freedom comes in last in your opinion?

I think there is a big difference between third and last- there are an infinite number of values that I didn't put on the list at all, many of which are potentially important. But yes, it is third, if you mean freedoms as they were conceived during the enlightenment, ie de jure restrictions on action as opposed to de facto (de facto would implicitly include economic and social restrictions, all the way down to interpersonal interactions if necessary).

Since you voted against this goal list in the other topic (and I'm not even close to crazy enough to even consider calling exactly 50% a win), causing it to not pass, what do you think would be a good compromise list? (#1 in my list ie utilitarianism is necessary for my approval, #2 was an offhand proposal by mike more or less, and #3 is up to you)

I also fail to see how something can become less important as time progresses... so freedom was twice as important 25 years ago?

No, if you were to put -25 years into the "importance" equation (25 years ago), you would be taking 25/(-25+25), or 25 over 0, ie what my graphing calculator would presumably call a "domain error".

50 years ago, yes technically it would get an importance of -.5 what it is now- but -.5 is an impossibility. This system is intended as a guide for action, not a way to measure the past.

I did that because 25 years is a long time, and in 25 years there will be time to correct the mistakes that may be made now. While it is no less important, the people of that time will be able to compensate. Basically, I'm trying to answer the question: How far in the future should we plan for?, Do we save 1 life now or 2 lives in the future (say 25 years)? I would say that if we save that 1 life now, we have 25 years to save those other 2 lives, and in 25 years hopefully we can come up with something.

No, if you did the calculation for today 25 years ago, you'd end up with today's value being half what it was 25 years ago.

No, you wouldn't. The formula is:

RI=25/(t+25)

Where RI is Relative Importance, and t is the number of years in the future. IE, future=positive, past=negative.

25 years ago would mean t=-25. Plugging that in:

RI=25/(-25+25)

RI=25/(0)

RI=Error

If you have a graphing calculator, try graphing it. If you don't, there are many online that you could use, just google "online graphing utility".

Of course values for negative X are irrelevant because it is physically impossible to change the past.

Since Relativity confuses the definition of time a little bit, I will define t as time in years for whoever would be doing the actions that are decided on, minus the lightspeed delay.

Note that I'm not doing Ri=1/2^(t/25), but the formula given above. I don't really care which we use, they're functionally the same, but I think the above is simpler.

Er, yes you would.

NoMoreLies wrote:

No, if you did the calculation for today 25 years ago, you'd end up with today's value being half what it was 25 years ago.

Okay, say as a thought experiment you do the calculation today. Does this mean that in 25 years, the matters which are important today will only be half as important.

No, they're just as important, but in terms of priorities to deal with today is more important because you have 25 years to deal with what happens in 25 years.

How about this, to make you happy I'll add a limit on it, that T≥0, that way you violate the equation by putting in values less than zero, which was understood but probably my fault for not saying.

Hello everyone!? Assuming, that we, humans, now know enough to do a better job, here are some of my thoughts.

Goals?

Ethics!

Ethics (also known as moral philosophy) is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and bad, noble and ignoble, right and wrong, justice, and virtue.

Major branches of ethics include:

* meta-ethics, about the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions and how their truth-values (if any) may be determined;
* normative ethics, about the practical means of determining a moral course of action;
* applied ethics, about how moral outcomes can be achieved in specific situations;
* moral psychology, about how moral capacity or moral agency develops and what its nature is; and
* descriptive ethics, about what moral values people actually abide by.

How will we define morality? Who's morality do we subscribe too? What is truth? What is right and what is wrong?

Do we use religious morality? If so, which religion? Or, are we atheists, than, what will be our ethics. Do we divest ourselves, our culture, even our thought process, completely from this world?

Most of the languages of the world are polluted with untrue memes, are bias in many respect, and more so dangerous, have many inbuilt negatives. Will we need a knew language, a true unbiased, means of communication? After all, our very thought processes are based on the words. With out knowing the right words, how will we be able to express ourselves properly.

But, with out a set of all encompassing authoritative ethics, that All MEMBERS agree upon, this new society is stillborn.

So, that being said, here are some goals.

Goal, number one.

Free or very cheap, unlimited energy. It should be clean, safe, in harmony with earth and people and their surroundings.

The development of new energy storage technologies should be a priority. A battery, that is clean, safe, easy to manufacture and recycle, that lasts a long life. That has a huge energy storage capacity, that quickly can be charged and discharged millions of times with out damage, will alleviate most of the problems of this new city state.

Goal number two.

Easy, private, simple transportation system, availably for all people and adaptable for all needs. Sustainable, and has a symbiotic relationship with the city and it's inhabitants. Most likely based on the clean room transportation systems.

Goal number three.

Development of highly advanced medical systems, that actually cure people! As always, it should be, safe, no side effects, cheap and easy. Possibly based on the production of stem cells in vitro. Or simple any advanced medical technology that cures people .

Goal number four.

The production and growth of clean healthy organic foods. Using natural organic farming methods that heal the soil, sequester carbon , and preserve the farm land for future generations. This technology should focus on the recycling of all organic waste in a manner that is sustainable and beneficial for the food chain, farms and people.

Goal number five.

Should be the focus on the development of clean all purpose manufacturing technology, that at the same time recycles everything.

By and large, I can agree that those are all very good policies, and I agree in general with your post. However, in this case I think a "list of goals" needs to be rather more abstract- Essentially, this list of goals is society saying "These are the things we value." This is the central aspect of our social contract.

The list supports life, so it in fact says I value life. To be alive is too be human, so I in fact value humans. The struggle to live is all we have, is all we know. As long as we are fighting death, the list will never become abstract.

Would you agree with the principle:

I wrote:

General Welfare to all Sentients

?

Depends. What's "general welfare"? It's a rather woolly term...

I'm of the opinion now that the basics of energy, food, shelter, clean water, and basic healthcare (vaccination and antibiotics) can be provided pretty much free to everyone. I say pretty much, because TANSTAAFL, but volunteering/civic duty (it would sort of be voluntary; everyone's free to refuse to work, but they just don't get anything in return) can take care of the cost. Say about 1-2 hours a week required from each person, and in exchange everyone eats. Anything beyond this (sweets, non-basic healthcare, TV's, computers...) would cost - but with no money being required for the essentials, people will be free to earn enough to cover this.With peoples free time available to innovate, we can expect the cost of production to drop, until the point at which they'll be included in the basic package

Maybe I'm just feeling optimistic about humanity at the moment, even while everything's on Terra is going in a hand basket for a one way ticket to hell and back.

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Depends. What's "general welfare"? It's a rather woolly term...

Yeah, true, it could probably be well served by clarification. By this I mean greatest contentment or happiness for every being capable of emotions.

Free food etc. is great- but that's not a principle. That's policy. IE, why are you giving them free food?

By the way, it's more efficient to tax people, and then pay other people to do things. In an extreme example, I don't think you want a car mechanic spending their community service time as a doctor, do you? It makes much more sense to pay a doctor to be a doctor, to pay a full-time farmer to be a full-time farmer, etc.

By the way, in most of Europe much of this is already done. It's called the welfare state, and it takes up way more than the equivalent of 1-2 hrs per person*week. For example (even in one of the least developed western welfare states), Agriculture in the US is practically socialized, we've made great steps towards guaranteed healthcare, etc.

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Everything's [sic] on Terra is going in a hand basket for a one way ticket to hell and back.

This pessimism is totally unnecessary. Worldwide, standard of living is rising, life expectancy is rising, even world GDP is rising. Yeah, population and climate are a bit troublesome but are very soluble and are unlikely to end up causing problems in the longer term considering that steps are being taken to alleviate these problems.

Reminds me of an xkcd, actually: "'More harm has been done by people panicking about societal decline than societal decline itself has ever done'"

Actual comic (btw, xkcd is hilarious):

Spoiler:

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TANSSAAFL

This acronym is obscure and unnecessarily long. I presume I'm not alone in not knowing it.

There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. A favorite phrase of Heinleins.

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It's called the welfare state, and it takes up way more than the equivalent of 1-2 hrs per person*week

That's because of (a) an inefficient beurocracy, and (b) technology isn't being utilized to it's fullest extent. Besides, I said basic healthcare, which is limited to vaccination and antibiotics. I've explained before how technology can produce food, energy, clean water and cloth in abundance for very little work.

If we are going to have a tax - and we'll need one in some form to provide for policing, courts, military, prisons, and other essential services - I favour a progressive business tax that results in small businesses paying 0% for up to 3 employees, 5% for the next 5 employees, another 10% for the next 10 employees... the idea is to create an upper limit for the size of corporations, limiting them to small- and medium sized ones.

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There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. A favorite phrase of Heinleins.

I googled it, but nevertheless why use an acronym that nobody could be expected to know?

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That's because of (a) an inefficient bureaucracy, and (b) technology isn't being utilized to it's fullest extent. Besides, I said basic healthcare, which is limited to vaccination and antibiotics. I've explained before how technology can produce food, energy, clean water and cloth in abundance for very little work.

Do you really think so? Maybe it's just that those things are expensive. You want to provide:

• energy
• food
• shelter
• clean water
• basic healthcare

A good idea. However:

• Energy: The US uses 2.9e13 kWh of energy per year. That's 100,000 kWh per person*year. Remember that, by and large, the energy intensive aspects of the US economy take place in China and so the energy related to them is not included in this figure. The CSCS would want to approximate autarky, or at least self-sufficiency, so energy use per person would probably be higher. The average energy cost in the US is 12 cents per kWh (In big cities such as New York, it's actually closer to 20 cents per kWh, but whatever). Say 1 cent per kWh, due to less being guaranteed, some great breakthroughs in energy technology, whatever. That's $1000/person*year. There's no clear way to reduce the cost, especially since the CSCS would go green, and green energy is generally more expensive than coal/gas (with the exception of Nuclear energy). Contest my figures if you want, but I divided the most realistic cost estimate (~20 cents per kWh appears to be almost universal in US cities) by 20, so put your objections into that huge margin.
  
  
• Food: 2% of the US population works on farms. The food stamp program provides a minimal amount of food to people who really need it, but I have heard that it is nowhere near enough, not even half enough. The average food stamp recipient in the US receives $133.12 per month. Say $250/person*month. That's $3,000 per year, and remember: Food costs are higher in cities, generally.
  
  
• Housing: Well, the average american pays $633 per month on housing. I don't know how many people this is for. Say $200 per month without demand. That's $2,400 per year.
  
  
• Clean water: Fairly cheap, to my understanding, actually, though perhaps not so much if we have to revert to desalination or reverse osmosis. I think if we go to vacuum desalination (A term I may have just made up involving lowering the pressure until the water boils, and sticking the vessel in the ocean which will supply the heat. Convective solar energy in a way.) Say $250/person*year, in the absence of real figures.
  
  
• Basic health care: Well, what do you define as "Basic"? Obviously cosmetic things are excepted, but then again, I'm not even sure insurance covers that. If someone breaks a bone, are X-rays and a cast and proper treatment "Basic"? Is heart surgery "Basic"? I don't know what counts as basic and what doesn't, but I do know that it's about 10% of GDP in most countries with quality health care systems. That's about an additional $4,000 per year, assuming that the CSCS will have a fairly high GDP.

So, for a sum: $10,650 per person per year. In the US, that's 23% of GDP. In the UK (at Purchasing Power Parity as opposed to nominal exchange rate) that's 31%, and for the EU at large it's 36% of GDP (PPP). In Russia and Mexico, it's 71% of GDP and 73% of GDP respectively. In Brazil, it's 101% of GDP.

That's a good list of goals. But it's not cheap, and that's the facts. Seems like you're a European conservative- by American standards you still favor an extensive social security net, but you don't like the one that you have now.

Of course, this is still not a goal/value so much as a program or platform. A good one, but not a subjective universal value.

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If we are going to have a tax - and we'll need one in some form to provide for policing, courts, military, prisons, and other essential services - I favour a progressive business tax that results in small businesses paying 0% for up to 3 employees, 5% for the next 5 employees, another 10% for the next 10 employees... the idea is to create an upper limit for the size of corporations, limiting them to small- and medium sized ones.

Based on my above post, that probably won't be enough. I actually like the idea of an income tax, in principle It should certainly be simplified, though. A simple, progressive income tax. No loopholes. The problem is that this requires the government to know what's going on in the economy, which is a logistical problem.

Taxation has been a problem since civilization itself existed, though, I would be very surprised if we solved it.

I defined basic healthcare before - vaccination and antibiotics, along with things like fractures. Nothing more, unless you can find me another problem that is (a) common and (b) cheap to treat.

I thought the entire idea was for a Cleanslate society? You can't use figures from one way of doing things to argue against another way of doing things...

Something like flour could be provided by Algae, in flat bioreactors. Cattle farming is near enough automated already - no-one except the Amish milks cows the old fashioned way, they use automatic milking machines in some places. Chicken farming doesn't take much time to do. So you've got eggs, milk, meat, and flour. We cold probably find someway of automating sugar production. That's the food sorted for everyone.

Energy? I'm quite confident we can get this issue licked, through both energy efficiency and cheaper methods of producing it. Remember, the key word here is basic standard of living. The energy allowance goes on things like heating, cooking, refridgeration, and lighting, not TV's, iPods, computers etc. If they want more energy, they have to pay for it. Anyway, I don't think energy's going to be a deal breaker. Say everyone needs 1kW. That's 8760kW-hr/year. At $0.01/kW-hr, that's $87.6/person*year. A far cry from your figure of $1000/person*year.

As for housing - we'll just have to adopt cheaper methods of construction then, won't we? Underground housing and hobbit holes removes the need for expensive insulation. A big issue in most developed countries is land cost - solve this and you're well on your way. There's other things involved in building a house, I know. Still, underground housing seems to be comparitively cheap compared to more orthodox means of housing. Besides, compare housing prices in Britain with those in America - here in the UK, my parents have spent nearly twice as much on a small, two-bedroomed terrace as my aunt and uncle in America have spent on building a 5? bedroomed house on an acre of land, which is quite large by European standards. If someone was willing to settle for a European build in Maine, they'd struggle to spend over a grand, that's what I'm thinking. We can get housing licked, definately.

Clean water. Now, depending on where we are, there's either plenty of options or very few. If we can't dig a series of wells, we may have to resort to bioengineering. The Baobab can hold quite a lot of water in it's trunk; if we could modify some to thrive in salt wate and grow fast, we could simply tap them all. If not, we could distil the water quite easily.

Okay, how about this as a goal for ya - to reach a post-scarcity society, in which people no longer have to work to get the basic neccesities of life. It's certainly possible.

I made a large post, and then lost it. To summarize:

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I defined basic healthcare before - vaccination and antibiotics, along with things like fractures. Nothing more, unless you can find me another problem that is (a) common and (b) cheap to treat.

That's inhumane and a waste of human capital.

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I thought the entire idea was for a Cleanslate society? You can't use figures from one way of doing things to argue against another way of doing things...

The two factors that affect the price of a product: The laws of physics and the cost of labor. The laws of physics are invariable (some things work, some don't but there's no particular reason why the CSCS would be that much cheaper than the US, really. We have to manipulate the government and the economy so that people are better able to pay.

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Something like flour could be provided by Algae, in flat bioreactors.

Lemme see a source that shows that this is actually more economical than growing wheat in fields, then turning it into flour.

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Cattle farming is near enough automated already - no-one except the Amish milks cows the old fashioned way, they use automatic milking machines in some places. Chicken farming doesn't take much time to do. So you've got eggs, milk, meat, and flour. We could probably find someway of automating sugar production. That's the food sorted for everyone.

If you're not really changing anything, why would the price go down? Food is comparatively easy now: 2% of the american workforce is engaged in agriculture, and we are a food exporter. Nevertheless, the cost is still the cost. I hold with my figure of $3,000/year.

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Energy? I'm quite confident we can get this issue licked, through both energy efficiency and cheaper methods of producing it. Remember, the key word here is basic standard of living. The energy allowance goes on things like heating, cooking, refridgeration, and lighting, not TV's, iPods, computers etc. If they want more energy, they have to pay for it. Anyway, I don't think energy's going to be a deal breaker. Say everyone needs 1kW. That's 8760kW-hr/year. At $0.01/kW-hr, that's $87.6/person*year. A far cry from your figure of $1000/person*year.

I used 1 cent per kWh for margin, not because I consider it to be a likely price for energy. A Refrigerator uses 800 watts, lighting 400-500 watts per room, and an ipod a cent if that per charge. The industry required to obtain that standard of living takes a real crapload of energy, especially if it's not based on crude oil. Please, give me specifics including calculations, of how you plan to reduce the cost of energy by twice an order of magnitude, or give me a reliable source that shows how. Then, please find me a non-conspiracy theory explanation of why that solution is not already used extensively. Since the CSCS will be an urban environment, urban prices are the best analogue. Electricity costs $0.20 per kWh in most American cities. How would you reduce that to $0.01 (hint: Figure it out, and you will be a multimillionaire at worst).

My figure accounts for actual energy usage- not just an approximated household usage of 1 kW. IIRC, a majority of energy is used outside the house- right now, more energy than anything else is used in the factories in China that sustain our way of life.

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As for housing - we'll just have to adopt cheaper methods of construction then, won't we? Underground housing and hobbit holes removes the need for expensive insulation. A big issue in most developed countries is land cost - solve this and you're well on your way. There's other things involved in building a house, I know. Still, underground housing seems to be comparitively cheap compared to more orthodox means of housing. Besides, compare housing prices in Britain with those in America - here in the UK, my parents have spent nearly twice as much on a small, two-bedroomed terrace as my aunt and uncle in America have spent on building a 5? bedroomed house on an acre of land, which is quite large by European standards. If someone was willing to settle for a European build in Maine, they'd struggle to spend over a grand, that's what I'm thinking. We can get housing licked, definately[sic].

The reason for that is that land is much more available in the US than anywhere else. Besides, the CSCS will primarily be an urban environment, and the fact is that in urban environments, rents are actually much higher than $2,400 per year. Sure, we can make housing for everyone. It just won't be cheap, and that's a fact. By the way, do you have a source showing that digging houses underground will actually be any cheaper than the traditional method?

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Clean water. Now, depending on where we are, there's either plenty of options or very few. If we can't dig a series of wells, we may have to resort to bioengineering. The Baobab can hold quite a lot of water in it's trunk; if we could modify some to thrive in salt wate and grow fast, we could simply tap them all. If not, we could distil the water quite easily.

Seems like modern technology does okay with water. We will certainly want to have a sustainable policy wrt water, but shouldn't be too expensive compared to everything else.

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Okay, how about this as a goal for ya - to reach a post-scarcity society, in which people no longer have to work to get the basic neccesities of life. It's certainly possible.

Perhaps "goal" is not the correct word to use. How about "principle". Basically, I think that this list of goals should be things that you can never say "I have done this"- no matter how well-off people are, they can be better-off, but post scarcity either is or isn't, and if it is, then what?

I think post-scarcity does follow from "general human welfare", though.

How about we make our goal to transcend our life of survival?