> Once it became trivially easy to obtain food, water, and shelter
I would argue that the average human being doesn't consider these things easy to acquire. For society it COULD be easy to distribute these things if we decided that was a goal of ours, but we haven't gotten there yet.
I would be very interested in seeing the ideas (or problems?) invented by children born into a world where this was true, but unless things get very interesting very quickly, I doubt we'll get the chance.
It's also inconsequential for everyone who has a data cap on their phone plan. Running out of data 20% sooner isn't a win for people who can't afford a luxury plan.
I use it for as few things as possible and it does them very well. I only want notifications for things that may be immediately relevant (phone call, text msg, calendar event reminders) so when I walk away from my phone I'm not worried about missing something important. It works with Smart Lock on Android so my phone stays unlocked when I'm close and locked when I'm not. Vibrating alarm clock that won't wake the whole house, sleep & exercise tracker without needing to carry my phone. I don't actually "use" it very often, but it is a very passive yet essential part of my routine and keeping myself on track. I am very forgetful and used to have entire weekends pass by where I forget to check my phone unless something reminds me to and the Pebble helps make sure I get only the essential information when I need it without unnecessary interruption. It also shows time and weather at a glance ;)
Untie a person's ability to survive from their employment status. If we had universal healthcare and basic income then the necessity of most of the employment laws would cease to exist.
Also "Bitcoin traders have been less than pleased with the realization they have to pay taxes on any of their earnings" isn't a fair statement. I have spent a lot of time reading on crypto currency forums this last year. I think most people (aside from some of the more libretarian / anarchist "taxation is theft" folks) were aware that that would be some kind of capital gains tax on what they cashed out. What people didn't realize was that you would get taxed per transaction on unrealized gains.
If your debit cards info gets stolen, they take YOUR money and the bank may not necessarily be in as much of a hurry to get it bank. In the mean time, you have no cash, maybe for days or weeks.
If your credit card info gets stolen, the thief had access to credit card company money, not yours, and you still have access to all your cash as long as you personally can refuse to pay for fradulent charges. It is the banking institutions money they have stolen access to, and the CC company has incentive to shut down the fraud ASAP.
It's not about the morality of supporting credit card companies or controlling spending impulses, it's about whose money the thieves have access to and wither or not you have the ability to pay rent 2 days after your card gets stolen.
I think your wildly over dramatic metaphor is still wildly optimistic in assuming that the explosions are already done. I agree the fallout will continue, but I seriously doubt we have seen the worst of how bad this can get.
They said discovered AND reported, not just discovered. It is entirely possible someone discovered it much earlier and didn't report, but we won't ever know if evidence is never found.
How far do you think a hand held battery powered radio can transmit it's signal? Unless you are talking about a HF radio using skywave propagation (to include some maths & carefully positioning an antenna that might be several meters long) it won't be very far, especially in a city or rough terrain. The benefit of having a vehicle mounted radio relay system means that it runs on vehicle power (or a generator) and can carry a lot more antennas. Radio retransmission teams who do exactly this with vehicles fitted for this exact purpose are prevalent in the military, most units will have several of these teams/trucks permanently assigned, and if not, their local signal unit can lend them.
I'm not arguing with the rest of your post, I'm sure there is way more fraud, waste and abuse then we can imagine going on. But the laws of physics still apply and if you want transmit a signal far, you need a power source bigger than what people can carry. Even a vehicle mounted and powered radio wouldn't be able to transmit 10-20 miles unless you were sitting on top of a hill in otherwise perfect conditions.
Yes there is. At least with frequency assignment. There are very strict policies that any frequency usage within 50 miles of an international border must be approved by the appropriate authority on both sides. The rules may not apply to non-communication based sound (which is an obvious failure), but it's not like there is no framework for this kind of thing, it just doesn't extend far enough.
I went to school and worked for a while studying spectrum management. It boggles my mind to this day that drones get in the way of fire fighting and emergency services because an obvious first step world be to allow emergency vehicles & helicopters to jam the frequencies of drones. There are plenty of other vehicles with this ability (military, secret service, etc) so it's not like the technology to solve the problem is unobtainable or non existent.
I would argue that the average human being doesn't consider these things easy to acquire. For society it COULD be easy to distribute these things if we decided that was a goal of ours, but we haven't gotten there yet. I would be very interested in seeing the ideas (or problems?) invented by children born into a world where this was true, but unless things get very interesting very quickly, I doubt we'll get the chance.