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 implicatio

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.