What do you think will happen if we found a source of free energy?

[Thphan75]

My opinion:  It will never be free energy for end-user. Hungry government needs money supply and they will always find the way how to cover their lost. For example by higher taxes or flat charges. They will outlaw any non-certified home generators. Certified ones will have meters.  Same like with alcohol. It would be much cheaper to make it at home yourself but the law forbid this.   Next think is what society will do with that. Will they fight for to be free?? Not sure. People loosing testosterone over the centuries and getting lazy and manipulated.

Now imagine how many millions of people will loose job from energy industry. That is another army of people for social benefits. Collaps on share market will close even more companies= more people will lose their jobs. This can finish in civil war.

Question is how that energy can be used in industrial sector. The economical brake to dig-over all planet will be gone, and hunger for precious metals will destroy big territories. Yes,solid pollution will be reduced and substituted by electro-magnetic.

Sorry for my negative point of view

Thanks, I welcome all points of view.  My biggest fear is the loss of jobs, imagine the current economics for oil & gas, so many people are losing their jobs in this industry right now.  Wait, could this be related? Could it be someone did find some type of free energy making device hence we have this surplus that's why the price of oil/gas is in such a decline?  To be honest, I was thinking it was due to over projection by greedy folks and now we're paying the price for it.  Either way, thanks for your POV. 

[conradelektro]

My biggest fear is the loss of jobs, imagine the current economics for oil & gas, so many people are losing their jobs in this industry right now. 

Almost everyone will loose his job. If technology progresses, automation will make most jobs disappear. The concept of "working for a living" will then be an impossible way of living for about 80% of all people on earth.

It is highly unlikely that this "problem" (automation makes most jobs obsolete) will be solved. There will be chaos and destruction because the "under privileged" (the ones which will no longer be needed by the "economy") will revolt. And because there is no solution, it will end in total destruction (see Future A in my last post).

If we can solve the "problem"  (automation makes most jobs obsolete), we will live without jobs. Most people will have "nothing to do", which will cause "other problems" I can not even imagine. It would need a total rethinking of what "living" means. Some very highly skilled and highly educated people (may be 10% to 20%of the population) will maintain the infrastructure and drive the technological development on. The rest has to find a new way of "living", which a small mind like mine can not imagine at all.

Therefore, be ready for Future A (a new stone age with very few people on earth).

Greetings, Conrad

[sm0ky2]

I see two possible long term futures (and future A is more likely):
...
Greetings, Conrad

I see a different future. Unrestricted by the current monetary distraction.
where we have the energy to master the elements, the earth and space.
a future where everyone has electricity, and internet, clean water and food.
the building of space stations and colonies to accommodate the hundreds of millions of people the earth is popping out.
and ships to travel to and fro

robots, automated labor, electric transportation, electric weaponry that needs no bullets.

we have these technologies already, the only thing holding us back is the cost of energy.

[conradelektro]

we have these technologies already, the only thing holding us back is the cost of energy.

Humankind always was in this "very good situation" you hope for in the future. Humans always had enough resources and energy to feed all people for free and to give a decent life to everyone. But no one ever did do that.

With more and more people on earth, technology had to become more and more sophisticated and it really happened. Over the ages the "powers of man" have become more, and more and more people could survive. Now we are at 7 billion.

But what we never managed was to organise ourselves to live in peace without harming each other. That only works on a very small level.

Since we never could organise ourselves for thousands of years, one has to expect that it will not happen in the next thousands of years.

Technology was always a consequence of world population (technology advances with the number of people). But what never advanced was the way we treat each other.

Technology is and was never a solution, it is only the outcome of population growth. Do not confuse cause and effect. Technology can not change human nature, it just empowers bad and good people to do more bad and good things per minute. With a sword you can only kill one person at a time. With an atomic bomb you can kill much more in an instant.

So, technology was always used to advance the power and the wealth of a few (and only very rarely to help all people). And why should that change? The inequality on a space ship will be like the inequality on a big war ship of today or on the merchant fleets of today. The inequality in Lunar Capital will be the same as in New York. I am sure it will be even worse.

Why should going into space change the striving for power and wealth?

We do not have a technological problem, we have a political problem (better said a "psychological problem").

There is no indication that human nature is changing. To the contrary, technology enables human nature to do the power game and the wealth game on an ever higher and more gruesome level.

I know, people who like "science and technology", always like to think that science and technology is driving humankind. But this is a terrible misconception. Humankind is driven by power hunger and greed. And technology always helps power hunger and greed. Even worse, technology was developed to make power and greed more efficient. That was the only goal, all other goals are mere fairy tales for the masses to keep them calm.

Only such technologies are paid for, which give some people more power and more profit.

So, going into space or having a better technology does not give us a better way of life, it just makes a few more powerful and richer.

Your "space age" (if it ever happens) will produce crimes and atrocities of unimaginable proportions.

Greetings, Conrad

[forest]

Future is completly different. Around year 2039 climate change will destroy current society .Floods , famine, wars, nuclear - total disaster. Because free energy was not released to the public. Because renewable energy was never a solution - too costly, too slow , to 'economic' to stop the changes.
Humanity can only survive if its social behaviour would change totally.