Is a Post-Scarcity Society Possible? - aka Star Trek World

[Olhelm]

See thread title.

In my opinion, a P-SS is inevitable, especially considering the coming advent of certain technologies and sciences, such as CRISPR and the EM Drive. Once humanity takes to the stars, and can change their bodies to be effectively immortal, what would be the point of money anymore?

 

[Coconut Gun]

Is it possible eventually? Sure, given enough time a lot of stuff is possible. Possible within 1000 years? Who knows.

 

[Quack]

Calhoun's mice- the study made it to the level of metaphor.

 

[AnOminous]

Only by growing wheat on the Moon.

 

[Woodcutting bot]

Won't be possible without hard population limits

Only by growing wheat on the Moon.

everyone knows only cheese grows on the moon

 

[Positron]

People will be chasing status symbols once sustenance is no longer a problem. There will still be cheats, bullies, oppressors, strife and wars -- and their reasons will look extremely silly in our eyes.

 

[Audit]

A post-scarcity society is quite possible in much of the Western world as we speak. In the US alone, if the wealth of the nation were divided equally, each family would have roughly $600,000. The problem is that for most countries the resources are being accumulated by a small handful of people and thrown away on useless crap like the Iraq War (+ $2 trillion) or hidden in offshore bank accounts (+$21 trillion worldwide).

The question isn't whether or not a welfare state is possible but rather if a universally educated society is possible. You can't have a post-scarcity society when the people fall for propaganda and work against their own interests. Only once the common man can be trusted not to allow tyrants to rise up and enslave the common will can we expect to see a society that allocates resources for the common good.

 

[polonium]

If there is absolutely nothing that is scarce, then there's no reason to do anything. We'd vanish into our own bellybuttons in the singularity.

 

[AnOminous]

As soon as the remotest possibility of such a society emerged, enraged assholes would converge on it and drop nukes on it and otherwise make sure we continue to be as miserable as we currently are, or even more miserable.

This is because humans are shit.

 

[ICametoLurk]

Short Answer: lol no

Long Answer:

In Star Trek, and other fictional post-scarcity societies, there was usually a major event of some kind (alien invasion, post-apocolyptic war, etc.) which not only killed 75%+ of the planet population, but ALL of the dregs of society as well (Roddenberry explained, explicitly, multiple times in TOS, the TOS movies, and early TNG, that the utopian future exemplified by the federation was the society that rose from the ashes of a humanity that engaged in nuclear war and widespread eugenics and genocide and spent the entirety of the 21st century and a bunch of the 22nd living more or less in Mad Max conditions.).

The only people who survived were the ones who were either ruthless enough to survive, or banded together with others and helped one another (as human tribes tend to do, really). Welfare Queens, Hobos, useless eaters, NEET's, Transgenderqueerkins? All dead as should be. Unless you find a way to deal with trash, you're gonna have nothing but a societal breakdown that will end up causing the Human species to stagnant and never move forward.

There's also the cycle in which civilized people get wiped out and get replaced by savages which has been documented and written about by sociologists since the Middle Ages starting with Ibn Khaldun. Can you imagine what a post-scarcity society of Salafists would look like?

And what do you think the Elite will do once the people they view as slaves, necessary parasites at worst, no longer benefit them? You think they will pool their resources in a post scarcity society that result in less power and resources for them, or will they just cull the beings they view as useless and maintain all the influence, power and resources with fewer people to question them?


Also we had an entire fucking series built around all the reasons why the ideal Star Trek society doesn't fucking work and isn't suited to handle all the tough problems of the galaxy... and it was the best series in the franchise.

 

[AnOminous]

The only people who survived were the ones who were either ruthless enough to survive, or banded together with others and helped one another (as human tribes tend to do, really). Welfare Queens, Hobos, useless eaters, NEET's, Transgenderqueerkins? All dead as should be. Unless you find a way to deal with trash, you're gonna have nothing but a societal breakdown that will end up causing the Human species to stagnant and never move forward.

The kind of people ruthless enough to survive in Mad Max society, though, are called something else in times of civilization. They're called the "dregs of society" in civilization, and tend to end up ruling prison blocks.

 

[Tranhuviya]

No.

 

[Mysterious Capitalist]

It's not possible for the same reason that Communism is not possible: human greed will always prevent a fair distribution of resources.

Which I don't mind. I'd never want to be at the same level as the welfare scum that plagues civilized societies nowadays.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

See thread title.

In my opinion, a P-SS is inevitable, especially considering the coming advent of certain technologies and sciences, such as CRISPR and the EM Drive. Once humanity takes to the stars, and can change their bodies to be effectively immortal, what would be the point of money anymore?

I think it is far from being inevitable in the next century. Please note that I'm not saying it won't happen, just that where we stand in 2017 is seemingly a long way away from it. But my sense that if something does happen to trigger such a thing that "something" is going to come from so far out of left field no credible source would have or perhaps even could have predicted it.

And I can even see people being hurt by predictions of this sort. Houses in the 1950s and I believe into the 1960s were built with electric heat because at the time there was a wide-spread belief that electricity would ultimately become so cheap you'd pay for it on a flat fee/unmetered basis. And then the 1970s oil shocks hit.

I'm not even opposed it, I'm just skeptical. If it happens I'll cheerfully admit I was wrong then head to the beach and drink margaritas, I guess.

 

[Sergeant Politeness]

I can't see society being driven by much else. Scarcity is the big motivator; if you don't have everything you need or want, you'll go make it happen. If you do, why bother doing much else? Businesses and individuals need scarcity, it's a necessary evil.

Until someone can find me an equivalent motivator, I'm gonna say no.

 

[WW 635]

The kind of people ruthless enough to survive in Mad Max society, though, are called something else in times of civilization. They're called the "dregs of society" in civilization, and tend to end up ruling prison blocks.

Or mods on Kiwifarms

 

[Organic Fapcup]

No.

 

[Guardian G.I.]

In my opinion, arguments about "human nature" and whatever it makes possible or not are rather silly, because the notion of "human nature" is very subjective and heavily depends on the person's culture and traditions. A person in an individualist society like the US and a person in a collectivist society like China would differ a lot.

Anyway, achieving a true post-scarcity society would require an enormous technological jump - after all, the goal is to provide the maximum of all needed goods for all members of the society, without running out of resources. That would require either a colossal jump in manufacturing technologies (and something like the universal constructor), or thinning out the population to make the resource load bearable*. In an especially bad scenario, both things at once.

The former variant is not something that can be achieved even in the next century, and the latter... I'm not sure anyone would like to see that coming.

---
*That's what many nutty Russian leftists/nationalists/etc think — the Western elites are planning to purge most of the world's population in order to secure a comfortable existence for themselves. Obviously those Rotschilds, Rockefellers and Soroses want to see the Russian people wiped out with extreme prejudice. Only the renewed Cold War and mass executions of liberal traitors would save the Motherland, of course, because it worked so well the last time!

 

[Secret Asshole]

The problem is that even in a post-scarcity world (Trek), there are still avenues of power. Look at the Federation. Sure, they didn't have any money, but they had power. Plenty of Starfleet members were corrupted by it; either to implement their version of law, science or morality. To be the prevailing opinion gave you power and influence on how to govern. TNG has a ton of this. Picard squares off against Starfleet plenty of times.

There will always be those that chase power. There will always be sociopaths. Not even the elimination of money or competition will eliminate this. There will always be something to chase.

Short Answer: lol no

Long Answer:

In Star Trek, and other fictional post-scarcity societies, there was usually a major event of some kind (alien invasion, post-apocolyptic war, etc.) which not only killed 75%+ of the planet population, but ALL of the dregs of society as well (Roddenberry explained, explicitly, multiple times in TOS, the TOS movies, and early TNG, that the utopian future exemplified by the federation was the society that rose from the ashes of a humanity that engaged in nuclear war and widespread eugenics and genocide and spent the entirety of the 21st century and a bunch of the 22nd living more or less in Mad Max conditions.).

The only people who survived were the ones who were either ruthless enough to survive, or banded together with others and helped one another (as human tribes tend to do, really). Welfare Queens, Hobos, useless eaters, NEET's, Transgenderqueerkins? All dead as should be. Unless you find a way to deal with trash, you're gonna have nothing but a societal breakdown that will end up causing the Human species to stagnant and never move forward.

There's also the cycle in which civilized people get wiped out and get replaced by savages which has been documented and written about by sociologists since the Middle Ages starting with Ibn Khaldun. Can you imagine what a post-scarcity society of Salafists would look like?

And what do you think the Elite will do once the people they view as slaves, necessary parasites at worst, no longer benefit them? You think they will pool their resources in a post scarcity society that result in less power and resources for them, or will they just cull the beings they view as useless and maintain all the influence, power and resources with fewer people to question them?


Also we had an entire fucking series built around all the reasons why the ideal Star Trek society doesn't fucking work and isn't suited to handle all the tough problems of the galaxy... and it was the best series in the franchise.

Yeah, pretty much. Elites will never let post-scarcity happen either. That would mean giving up their wealth and influence. And there are plenty of lazy elites, most wealth nowadays isn't created, its inherited. Post-Scarcity means they have to sacrifice that. And no fucking way they do that without a culling.

As @ICametoLurk said, post-scarcity does not happen without some sort of catastrophe. There has to be something to basically destroy the existing social structure and replace it with cooperation. That means a lot of blood and death, if humanity could even survive such an event. You'd have to have people band together rather than seize power for themselves. And even then, there's no guarantee it would work out well.

I guess some sort of AI revolt ala Skynet or the Reapers would band humanity together. But even that is so far off who knows.

 

[Ruminous]

In my eyes a 'post-scarcity' society not possible. This is because there's always people that are willing to push the bar higher, or simply do the ridiculous for it's own sake. Humans survive fine on three meals a day. Maybe the utopian 'post-scarcity' society can support millions of meals per person. Yet if some moron demands to have 10^200 cheeseburgers built into a pyramid, and the society cannot fulfill this wish, then a point of 'scarcity' still remains.

To actually fulfill the definition of "post-scarcity", every fantasy must be able to be indulged. Every member of the post-scarcity society must be able to be masters of their own universe if they so choose, to have subjects that are indistinguishable from other humans, to have their subjects be able to have their own universes. And so on and so forth. Failing that, power and resources must in some way be divided, else the entire society collapses as the infinite cheeseburger pyramid is attempted.

Once you involve transhuman fantasies the entire project of "post-scarcity" is self-evidently impossible, as people could simply add desires to themselves.

Say authoritarian controls are placed upon the social body to preserve them in a current human state or otherwise restricted state and benevolent AGI is created singularity-style. Only such an invention could manage to outpace the desires and imaginations of the public, but even then it doesn't stop points of scarcity from remaining. A world without war, famine, or disease is much, much simpler a proposition than one with absolutely no resource scarcity.

Perhaps you could create a world under these conditions where the AI ignores the explicit requests of the society but fulfills the illusion that these requests are fulfilled, and simulates a world surrounding their senses where anything and everything is possible. Where there is not actually an infinite number of cheeseburgers in the pyramid, but as far as the eye can see and however far the user travels they can see and touch cheeseburgers. You would still need to ban or restrict addition of new members to the 'post-scarcity' society, but under these conditions you could simulate the experience of living in a 'post-scarcity' society.