2 ms·

If we can have communism in the solar punk sense without surveillance and all the scarcity, then I am in. If not, then that idea better dies in hell.

• int_19h 4y ago
  The idea is that it's not something that we can really choose to try or not. If/when we get to the stage where enough is produced to allow post-scarcity even in theory - i.e. the technology and the logistical science is there - it implies an extreme degree of automation. But if we have that, how would a traditional capitalist economy even work, if all that automation is concentrated in relatively few hands as it is now? It works today because the owners of capital need workers to make that capital produce something useful, and even with all the economic rent fleeced from them, those workers still retain enough to then buy the products (if not their own, then that produced by somebody else). This enables money to cycle in the economy. But the more things are automated, the more people are unemployed, and - in capitalism - effectively excluded from the productive economy. So it's a question of how many people you can so exclude before the whole thing crumbles down.
  • refurb 4y ago
    Post-scarcity will never happen. How do you pay for the latest medical technology unless you have the money to develop it? How about other technology? Maybe capitalism will be replaced at some point but you and I will be long dead before that ever happens.
    • tunap 4y ago
      Capitalism may well become as dirty of a word as Communism or Socialism in our lifetimes. When food, healthcare & shelter become unaffordable to enough people, this legal fiction, too, will fail into untold suffering and revolt. History does indeed rhyme.