Income-less, post-scarcity society, where the limits of what goods/services you can access are so much higher than you could ever need that the only limitations put in place can be set democratically?
That, or just increase typical socialist democratic welfare state principles, tax the hell out of the .01% and invest in public goods.
This is part of what I'm wondering: how much do you have to give? Simply providing for basic needs is clearly unacceptable (in my opinion). Heck, try suggesting that someone go without cable TV to balance their budget and you'll get a bad reaction. Anyway, I think it would be undesirable to have a society in which there were two clear castes of haves and havenots even if the havenots did have all of their needs (medical, shelter, food. . .).
And then the problem becomes: as we move into this new economy, how do we parcel out this socialism? Majority rule would simply be tyranny and we can't have a functional society where there are two groups and one is 100x more wealthy than the other in a caste-like fashion. Still, those who produce need some reward and incentive. So, how would we do it?
The only thing that I can think of is land: land is the one thing that we can't actually produce with labor (despite Boston's Back Bay real estate). If the cost to produce a television is essentially nothing, there's no sense in restricting who gets one even if the design has to be done by an "upper-caste" person. However, land - and land in "cool" areas like Seattle or San Francisco - is in limited supply. Only certain people can live there. So, even if all goods and services can be provided for near $0, land can't.
To be honest, I think that this future will be kinda cool. I mean, if most/all of our material wants and needs are taken care of, we could hack away at projects we thought were interesting/fun. Our jobs could be what we find joy in - whether that be local theater or web apps. And I think that we would create value that way. Potentially not in the focused, reward-driven way that we do today, but lots of people come together around no money to do things even today. I'm not saying that we can replace our current economy like that, but at the point that we have wants and needs met for essentially $0, it seems like it would be fun. Frankly, in that kind of future, there doesn't seem to be a need to force people into things they might not like.
A post scarcity society is likely to be inerently more libertarian than communist, true post scarcity does not need a centrally managed economy.
Communism doesn’t simplify the human condition as much as it replaces it, the scary part of communism isn’t the economy but the eradication of the self in favor of a group identity.
Human greed pretty much takes over. Social pressures won't work because people will always want to "keep up with the jones" or show off what they have done. The only way you could have post scarcity is if everything and anything in the living reality could be created, which of course is just highly improbable if not impossible due to the emotional nature of our species as well as differences in individual needs and wants (I.e. Not everyone can fall in love and be married or be just as popular or be just as good I sports). Personally, I don't think there is a reason we can't have a better welfare system, I just don't think we should care about those who do not contribute to society. If all people in Star Trek are now in it for the bettering of the human race than that would mean not a single person is thinking of themselves, which much like greed, is a natural human state of mind. Do we know what/who is going to better society, no we don't. However, with capitalism people democratically choose what does and doesn't. To have government subsidize specific items/ideas we leave capitalism and start having a centrally governed panel who picks the winners, or at least subsidizes them. Let the free hand of capitalism decide who can contribute the most to society and let the people also decide who much they should be rewarded. If anything it's not economics that needs to be changed, rather the human psychology that needs to be reformed.
I don’t think the infrastructure required for the scarcity free society necessarily has to be a global / universal one. The political angle seems more anarcho-socialist to me which would lead to a decentralized model enabled by technology. Think self sufficient city states.
Someone has to provide necessities to society. In absence of government directly providing it, we force companies to do it. What you want is, essentially, socialism, with a little bit of the market carved out for market capitalism. Sounds good to me!
I'm more reflecting the general consensus. That's communism, which is generally seen as a failed economic system, and difficult to practically enforce. Although maybe that all changes in a post-scarcity economy, like is Star Trek technically communist? Should the goal actually be GINI-0?
One possibility is total cooperation on the basic needs (free for all) and a "capitalistic" system on the luxury needs. See https://lorenzopieri.com/post_scarcity/
An option besides socialism though that looks interesting is the Venus Project, or Resource Based Economy -- where all goods and services are available to all people without the need for money, credits, barter or any other means.
Ah, there you got me wrong. I said that only capitalism has made post-scarcity even remotely possible. We're seriously discussing the possibility and implications of full automation within the next fifteen years; that never happened in the Soviet Union, their government collapsed first. In principle, any society with enough scientists and engineers could implement full automation.
As a side note: post-scarcity is really only possible in virtual worlds like MineCraft. There's a limited amount of land, people's time is limited, people's attention is limited, and what other people will participate in is constrained by their desires and their ambitions. Unless somehow compelled, there's nobody who will set me up with a nice automated farm where I can live out my days playing mandolin and reading mathematics as I would like when they could set themselves up and not have to hear my racket across the fence. Though it's counter to our desires, we are forced to compete for resources ... even if most of us aren't struggling for survival.
I think that capitalism's endgame may be a post-scarcity society, where technology allows us to have almost free energy, and very cheap everything that we may require for survival, with minimum human work.
#3 is impossible because you are talking about lot of value and lot of motivations. If we stop, as example, China is not going to stop, etc. This is like the arm race, no one will stop developing and whoever limit itself, will lose big at the end
#1 is tough one. Two issues, human need to be busy with something. While not needing to work seems great, but long term it makes us depressed, drug addict, and we lose our skill and become weaker and dumb. Second issue is whoever pays you, can tell you what to do or not. A huge wellfare system moves power from people to state, and can kill democracy. However,in limited version is generally better than starving people. #2 seems to be a decent option
There are post-scarcity examples in human history (see gift economies and potlach societies - common among native americans and in the pacific islands) where social pressure caused any accumulation of wealth to be shared with the entire society (this is a bit similar to Andrew Carnegie's dictum that to die rich is to die disgraced, now leading to the billionaire's pledge). Of course, this only worked because the societies were individual tribes/villages and fit within Dunbar's number, where every individual knew every other individual in the society.
If post-scarcity is brought about by automation, then there will be no need for most people to work, and socialism won't be the appropriate economic model (since people will not be directly involved in production). At this point we'll probably need to return to a gift-like economy.
I think both. However, I'm talking about if someone doesn't have to work for anything but isn't necessarily rich - the second generation after a post-work automated society. There would still be some constrained resources. Will a democratic society have the necessary understanding to control their consumption, or will they realize they have the keys to the treasury without understanding the natural limits? If not in a democratic society, would the people tolerate and understand the limits that were set for them? And of course we also get into the premise behind that game with solid snake in it - if nobody has to fight in a fully mechanized war, then will that lead to more wars over resources?
I think people should be given a stark choice - either eat government provisioned rations, take public transport, and live in public housing (socialism) or contribute to a fluctuating capitalist economy and roll the dice a bit. Then likely make a bit more money on average, although less predictable (capitalism)
Do you guys think, maybe a capitalist, but more social system will be more maintainable long term? Similar like in Sweden or in Finnland? As I know these modern countries reallocate some part of extreme revenue to other part of the society who in needs and the whole population is more equal.
That, or just increase typical socialist democratic welfare state principles, tax the hell out of the .01% and invest in public goods.
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