frede

I was thinking more of something like mechanical watches - more expensive than a quartz watch and less accurate.

It becomes easier when science can be millions of years ahead.

If all major governments keep it secret, the conclusion would be that the phenomenon wants it that way. The US wouldn't be in charge. But apparently something changed.

There may not be much of a difference left then between machines and biologicals. Generations would alternate like a jellyfish does between polyp and medusa. No need for generation ships.

It could be the phenomenon that has the astonishing competence.

In the country I work it goes like this: the employers are members of an IT association, once a year each employer sends over the anonymous salaries for each job title. The associations aggregates them and sends back the distribution, which HR then uses as a reference. Similar result, but no direct collaboration between employers needed. You can even buy the report for each position as an employee for a fair price.

The system survived the partitions, there was no widespread blackout. Further, the system is not organized by the EU, but the ENTSO-E and contains e.g. countries from North Afrika.

Switzerland a notable exception.

Energy is cheap, power is expensive - you can already get energy for free sometimes on the intraday market, but you still pay if you need delivery at a certain time and the grid fees for peak power consumption stay expensive. I am looking forward to Tesla's million-mile battery!

The research institutions would of course save money on the journal descriptions that could then be used to pay for open access submissions.