do you think states can wither and die in post-scarcity societies?
No, probably not, although we will need to dissolve post-scarcity first, as some people would take that to mean a basic income guarantee and others would imagine an anarchist paradise where everyone has their own nanotech printer and others would say that the very concept is impossible due to human desire for positional goods, fame, status, and non-replicable authenticity.
How about this:
Soft material post-scarcity:
Providing the material necessities to people is so easy that it can be guaranteed with a negligible burden to the economy; currently theoretically possible materially but impossible socio-politically
Hard material post-scarcity:
Providing the means of acquiring material necessities to people is so easy that everyone can be made materially effectively independent from others’ input (imagine a nanotech fabricator that can take in waste matter and trivially available energy and output any good, including another fabricator, limited only by the availability of elements and isotopes); currently impossible but theoretically possible in the future
Hard absolute post-scarcity:
Impossible in a world of more than one person
And a natural way to shorten this is to ignore the absolute sense and just focus on the material, so we get “soft post-scarcity” (for example, what the traditional socialist claim basically is: that human cooperation would be able to provide everyone what they need) and “hard post-scarcity” (quite fantastic), and we can add a level of “medium post-scarcity” where quite a significant abundance can be provided but it’s nowhere near limitless (the “new economy” of Eclipse Phase fits this one pretty well) to granularize the distinction
(via socialjusticemunchkin)
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argumate reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:Right. Providing basic income is already post-scarcity modulo healthcare, and that may come in the next few decades from...
socialjusticemunchkin reblogged this from socialjusticemunchkin and added:And a natural way to shorten this is to ignore the absolute sense and just focus on the material, so we get “soft...
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