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#scifi idea...
Someone makes a "replicator" [star trek not star gate] and one key thing it can make is another of itself.
Set up to make food, drink, clothes, medications, soap and stuff. With some security (prescription drugs if you show a prescription, alcohol if you show an ID, all good).
How quickly would it spread (replicates itself).
How quickly would all fast food, supermarkets, restaurants, all see sales go to zero, and go bankrupt.
Would any governments dare to try (LOL) to ban it?
@revk Replicators are not service industries, so full service restaurants may well be safe, along with other concierge services, tailors (someone has to measure you for your clothes), and so on.
Also, what are its energy and feedstock inputs, and what pollution (if any) does it produce? How large is it? These are all important issues ...
It has been done in SF a number of times, which is no reason not to do it again. An early example was the later stories in the "Venus Equilateral" stories George O. Smith wrote in the 1940s.
Yes, there is enormous economic disruption. No physical objects have value anymore, except for whatever feedstock the replicators need. Services and land still have value. Money would have to go all electronic unless un-replicatable paper is invented.
Bans would be *tried*.
हिति , in Nepāl Bhāṣā, is the word for a shared community water tap. Even in modern Newar cities, these ancient structures still pour out fresh mountain water piped through ancient underground filters and conduits. They are a place to wash, to talk, to drink, to meet the locals: a nourishing, refreshing social-ecological place.
