I think building a post-scarcity society would be incredibly profitable, so then the question is why we're not just doing that. This is from last week's outro

I think building a post-scarcity society would be incredibly profitable, so then the question is why we're not just doing that. This is from last week's outro of a fantasy fiction podcast I enjoy. It says it better than I ever could: Musings on art being the seat of the soul feel particularly timely in this, the year of our generative-AI pyramid schemes. I doubt I am alone among this audience in feeling like the only time I transcend my brief, mortal self is when I create something that did not exist before–that, ironically, I only feel connected to eternity when I create something ephemeral, be it a story to be read, loved then forgotten, or a photograph to snatch at time’s relentless march, or even a moment of roleplay among friends. The one thing that dims that flame is the contemporary capitalist urge to monetise–to derive economic value from every moment of our lives and every movement of our souls, to view everything through the lens of content. It’s perhaps strange to state this from the outro of a pro-paying market, I guess–I never was any good at knowing when not to run my mouth–but then I think there is a difference between that pressure to proffer everything up to the free market, versus us paying writers and narrators so they can afford to devote the time to their art, in a world where there is, haha, relentless pressure to earn money, a pressure primarily created through artificial scarcity and the coercive threats of starvation and homelessness. -Matt Dovey https://podcastle.org/2023/09/19/podcastle-805-the-somnambulant/ https://podcastle.org/2023/09/19/podcastle-805-the-somnambul...