Will consumer electricity be too cheap to meter by 2100?
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"Too cheap to meter" refers to a situation when a unit of something is so cheap that it makes more sense to provide it for free or for a flat fee than to charge by the unit. This is e.g. the case with broadband internet in large parts of the world.

Will electricity be provided to most private households worldwide free of charge or for a lump fee by 2100?

See also the consumer/business market and the 2050 market:

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bought Ṁ100 NO

People would also start bitcoin mining at home etc.

bought Ṁ50 NO

No. There are too many things to do with electricity: it will be needed for cooling, carbon dioxide removal, hydrogen production etc. And if it would be free, people would start producing their water from the air, producing hydrogen at home and selling it etc. For these reasons, electricity will remain scarce.

bought Ṁ10 of NO

We're probably dead in 2100, but if we're not we're either in a cycle of civilizational collapse and recovery or we're able to convert electricity into happy lives and in neither case are we going to give away electricity for free.

bought Ṁ10 of YES

@MartinRandall Interesting argument. Would you endorse that, conditional on at least 7 billion humans being alive in 2100, we are more likely than not to have over 70 billion humans alive?

For reference, here's our world in data with the UN model.

predicts NO

@BoltonBailey I'm too clueless about 2100, particularly within that conditional, to endorse either side of that claim. We could end up converting electricity to non-human lives, or to richer trans-human lives.

However, I've realized that I don't fully understand the resolution criteria. If I pay for electricity based on peak usage (GW), rather than per unit (GWh), is that "unmetered"? What if I can buy "unlimited electricity" for typical domestic usage, but there's an acceptable use policy or the like that prevents me from using it to simulate universes?

predicts NO

@PS resolution questions are to you, not Bolton.

predicts YES

@MartinRandall Yeah to me what makes this pretty funny is the "private household" stipulation. Even assuming our glorious transhuman future arrives, for some definitions of "house", it's hard to imagine what appliances you could add to it that would take up enough power that anyone would be worried about it.

predicts YES

@BoltonBailey I should probably think about this more from a societal than a technological lens though. For example another possibility is that everyone has their own solar-power roof and a long-term huge capacity battery and no one pays an energy company for power simply because people value their independence.

predicts NO

@BoltonBailey I'm going to need a lot of air conditioning to cool down my universe simulator.

sold Ṁ20 of YES

@MartinRandall But do you keep your universe simulator in your house, or do you keep it in the jointly-owned server farm down the street where the air conditioners can keep the temperature at a point optimal for computation rather than optimal for human life?

@MartinRandall A fee based on peak usage or acceptable use would mean "yes"; this is very much like a fee for a certain peak speed and acceptable use in the broadband example today.