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Are you implying we are approaching a post-scarcity world now?

verdverm 4y ago
we are not getting further away, closer, so this would be "approaching" GP may be more referring to the reduction in need for physical labor based jobs as robotics and automation increase, more than "post-scarcity," a "post-labor-scarcity" should arrive beforehand But to GP's point, transitions take a long time and we are already seeing the early changes. It's not like it has not started
zackmorris 4y ago
Dunno about the parent, but for me, post-scarcity means that struggle exists for synthetic reasons that aren't due to resource constraints. For example, billionaires running 3 companies (poorly) is an indicator that they could stand to pay higher taxes so the rest of us don't have to pay their share. Oil companies with a combined worth of trillions of dollars would do just fine without their subsidies when we already have cars like Aptera and Lightyear 0 getting over 40 miles of range per day on solar alone. Factory farming has not prevented us paying $5+ for a dozen eggs. And so on. By these kinds of metrics, I would say that we passed into post-scarcity sometime between the late 60s and the rise of Reaganomics in the early 80s. Certainly by 1990 with the fall of the USSR. Everything since, and especially pivotal events like the Dot Bomb, 9/11 and the Housing Bubble popping, were due to the post-truth reality that filled the void left by scarcity. This was all fairly obvious by the time The Matrix and Fight Club came out in 1999. Similar movies like In Time are practically documentaries now IMHO.
adolph 4y ago
As the sibling comments' note, post-scarcity is the direction of progress even if not yet the position. Scarcity's object is a moving target, of course. For example, instead of abject starvation, the primary focus becomes food security. This is progress to be celebrated. At the same time as things like basic foodstuffs are becoming ubiquitously available, there is also a dematerialization of humanity. A prime example are household goods, like phone book, encyclopedia, cookbooks, typewriter, checkbook, phone and answering machine, etc that are made redundant by inexpensive compute and connectivity. In addition to the basics being non-scarce the highest intellectual achievements of the world are simultaneously delivered in better quality for less than ever. Are we approaching a post-scarcity world now? Yes and, as always, the future isn't evenly distributed. A society that can afford to hold labor pools un-utilized indicates one that is rich in basic needs. For it to be a crisis that their labor is not required indicates a society poor in imagination.

we are not getting further away, closer, so this would be "approaching" GP may be more referring to the reduction in need for physical labor based jobs as robotics and automation increase, more than "post-scarcity," a "post-labor-scarcity" should arrive beforehand But to GP's point, transitions take a long time and we are already seeing the early changes. It's not like it has not started

zackmorris 4y ago

Dunno about the parent, but for me, post-scarcity means that struggle exists for synthetic reasons that aren't due to resource constraints. For example, billionaires running 3 companies (poorly) is an indicator that they could stand to pay higher taxes so the rest of us don't have to pay their share. Oil companies with a combined worth of trillions of dollars would do just fine without their subsidies when we already have cars like Aptera and Lightyear 0 getting over 40 miles of range per day on solar alone. Factory farming has not prevented us paying $5+ for a dozen eggs. And so on. By these kinds of metrics, I would say that we passed into post-scarcity sometime between the late 60s and the rise of Reaganomics in the early 80s. Certainly by 1990 with the fall of the USSR. Everything since, and especially pivotal events like the Dot Bomb, 9/11 and the Housing Bubble popping, were due to the post-truth reality that filled the void left by scarcity. This was all fairly obvious by the time The Matrix and Fight Club came out in 1999. Similar movies like In Time are practically documentaries now IMHO.

adolph 4y ago

As the sibling comments' note, post-scarcity is the direction of progress even if not yet the position. Scarcity's object is a moving target, of course. For example, instead of abject starvation, the primary focus becomes food security. This is progress to be celebrated. At the same time as things like basic foodstuffs are becoming ubiquitously available, there is also a dematerialization of humanity. A prime example are household goods, like phone book, encyclopedia, cookbooks, typewriter, checkbook, phone and answering machine, etc that are made redundant by inexpensive compute and connectivity. In addition to the basics being non-scarce the highest intellectual achievements of the world are simultaneously delivered in better quality for less than ever. Are we approaching a post-scarcity world now? Yes and, as always, the future isn't evenly distributed. A society that can afford to hold labor pools un-utilized indicates one that is rich in basic needs. For it to be a crisis that their labor is not required indicates a society poor in imagination.