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For public use goods (which we'll talk about soon), however, there would not be any real need for this
kind of customization. These types of goods would be essentially identical, in order to minimize the
expenditure of resources on items that have no need for superficiality.
So, in an RBE, all products would be created from scratch, without the need for human labour,
with the highest quality possible, recyclable or biodegradable wherever possible, and standardized;
universally upgradeable for electronics, and completely customizable for personal goods such as
clothing. This would result in a manufacturing system that is far less wasteful, far more efficient, and
far more personalized than anything seen today. However, we've only covered one half of the equation;
goods. Now, let's talk about how services would look in an RBE.
Services
It takes more than just material goods to run a society. Continuing with our philosophy of
freeing humans from labour whenever possible, nearly all services would also be automated. This
might sound like an impossible task at first, but we have to keep in mind that many of the services
which exist today would not exist in an RBE. Any occupations having to do with finance, law,
advertising, business, or politics would no longer be around, since there would no longer be any need
for them. If you are confused by that last sentence, just wait a few more paragraphs. By the end of this
chapter, all will be explained; we just need to cover a few more things first.
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So, what services would still exist in an RBE? We would still need medical services, an
educational system, a research sector, an arts community and...well, that's pretty much it. Less critical
services, such as automated restaurants and food vendors, would still exist in order to give people
social hubs in which to gather and eat together, since social interaction is a critical need for producing
healthy humans. In fact, automated restaurants and robotic chefs exist today, and so automation would
likely become a staple of food preparation in an RBE, whether at home or in public places (24,25,26).
Now, let's talk a bit more about each of the major kinds of services, and how they would operate.
As of today, it is unlikely that medical services could be entirely automated, but it would still be
possible to drastically reduce the workload of medical practitioners by ensuring that society as a whole
is much more physically healthy than it is today. In addition to the removal of unhealthy polluting
energy sources, an organic diet tends to create organisms that are more resilient to disease (27). By
having education freely available to all people, it's likely that people would be more knowledgeable
about maintaining their own health. In addition, each human would be more capable of monitoring
their own health, thanks to inventions like the mirror which will be able tell you your heart rate, blood
pressure, blood oxygen levels, and respiratory health just by standing in front of it (28). The logic is
quite straightforward; by creating a society where people are much less likely to get sick, we would
reduce the workload for medical practitioners.
That being said, the idea of increasing the automation of medical services is not as farfetched as
one might think. Currently, needle-bearing robots are able to give precise injections (29). Miniaturized
swimming and crawling robots are able to move through our body in order to monitor our health from
the inside (30). Robotic surgeons are able to perform invasive surgeries with more accuracy and
precision than is physically possible for a human surgeon (31,32). In an RBE, we would therefore
maximize the use of automated robotic medicine in order to minimize the workload for human doctors
further, which would be possible without the constant need to worry about how much medical
equipment 'costs', money-wise. Humans would still probably be needed for specialized cases, and for
general operation of the medical robots, but the need for human intervention would continually
decrease as technology improved, and could theoretically become unnecessary in the future. Already, it
is possible for human doctors to act through fully articulated robot 'avatars' which allow a doctor to
interact with a patient without being present in the same room (or country) (33).
So, during the early stages of an RBE, automated robots would mostly take the role of medical
assistants and nurses, performing basic tasks such as patient monitoring and uncomplicated diagnoses,
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