Reply To: General thought on old coal mines.

[nemmart]

Okay — let’s dream for a minute. Suppose FF works… (all posts should start with that).

Think about ports:
– there are limited places for ports – requires a coast and deep water
– shipping is damn slow
– the busy ports often have long unload queues
– a lot of freight just passing through the port — only because there is not a direct route from source to destination.

Imagine a different world:
– all major freight transport goes by air — because it’s fast and the fuel is free
– airports to handle freight get built everywhere
– trucks are only used to get the goods from the local airport to the final destination
– use a point to point air traffic control system, handled locally by each plane instead of the centrally managed mess
– imagine instead of all these truckers having a truck they were all pilots, owning their own freighter and controlling their own route

So what would this enable?
– much shorter supply chains (that’s a huge huge win right there)
– it completely changes food distribution, you’d actually get fresh produce that was out of season 😉
– you could probably reduce the amount of highway maintenance and rail maintenance dramatically, you just wouldn’t need it
– it’s really decentalized, a bit like PCs replacing mainframes.

I love it!