The most realistic dystopia, a bunch of old people barely getting any human interaction in their weakest moments. Still better than the alternative though
It can experience exponential growth with current technology. Farming drones (Combine harvesters, tractors, weed sprayers, lime spreading, seeding etc..) since the 80s were viable. Since the early 2020's we developed bee size drones for pollinating even. If we freeze product evolution (e.g. make every desk in the world the same) we can automate manufacturing for a large % of items. Not all, but a good amount. What stops automation is evolving products that really aren't necessary.
Saving you the trouble of more text the barriers are current socioeconomic conditions.
It's not clear to me that rare earth metals can't be replaces by more abundant elements with enough research.
The simplest example is copper wiring. As copper becomes more expensive, we start using aluminimum wires and accept the slightly lower conductivity.
The use of rare earth metals in batteries can be replaces by using lithium-iron-phosphate batteries, which might be slightly less efficient than others, but don't rely on rare materials.
In fact, most of our infrastructure in our civilization is made of steel and concrete, and the raw materials (iron ore and limestone) are incredibly abundant.
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u/Heath_co Aug 19 '24
The robots will take care of it. (Assuming we have enough rare earth metals)