this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2024
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There are exactly two paths for humanity post singularity, the Adeptus Mechanicus, or a cyberpunk metaphor for capitalism where the author forgets to address that even becoming space fairing just within our own solar system would propel humanity to an effective post scarcity economy.
We already are post scarcity.
They're even further post scarcity in your average cyberpunk story, and yet the wealth gap grows, poverty grows, just like it does for us, now.
Just like, try. Try real hard to figure out why worker productivity keeps rising but worker wages don't in real life, and why a cyperpunk writer might create a world with even better technology and productivity but rampant poverty.
No we're not? Maybe with regards to food, but even that might change back with climate change.
Also oil.
Post-scarcity is a state where all basic needs can be met with minimal human labor. It is not a state where there is no scarcity at all, but rather a theoretical productivity point where, say, the average worker could produce three, four, maybe even five times more goods and services than they consume over their lifetime.
Generally speaking, GDP per working hour compared to the average wage is considered one of the best (simple) methods of measuring this. Makes sense, right? If the average worker produces goods worth five times more than the average wage, one worker could support themselves and four other people. Heck, a society should be doing pretty good with 1:2.
Would you like to take a guess at what the current GDP per working hour of the average American or average European worker is?
Hint: I'm bringing it up because it helps my case.
Not op but I would very much like to know the figure and the source, because I want as many people to know about this as possible
https://www.statista.com/statistics/418800/united-states-gdp-per-hour-worked/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States
It's pretty simple math from there. The average worker produces about $220k in goods and services per year, the median individual income is about $40k, mean $60k, but, quite frankly, definitely don't want mean there because it is clearly skewed by the parasite class to a fairly sizable degree, even before they start double dipping into better benefits and such.
Now, obviously it's a very complex system being reduced pretty significantly, for example I don't believe it takes material costs into account.
But not that significantly, and if you follow the timelines back you can see it get worse. There are certainly many nations that seem to get along just fine with a far lower ratio somehow.
Definitely not enough that there's an excuse for any reasonable society to have one single homeless person who doesn't damn well want to live with his balls hanging out in the cold, or let kids go hungry, or make single moms beg for GoFundMe to pay their medical bills.
Thank you. I think this is a really important point to make re: inequality and social system.
I think artificial scarcity can be effective even in a space fairing society.
Yeah but that's only possible in a system where only a few entities are in total control of the space fairing, otherwise anyone could just go find their own unclaimed asteroid or comet to strip down for parts and come back with the entire net worth of a country.
A society where only a few entities are in total control of space exploration is literally where we live, right now.
Space is hard. You need incredibly long supply chains and tons of bespoke parts, materials, infrastructure and experience just to get a few kg to a low orbit. All of those things, and the means and contacts to procure those things, are in the hands of the elite, and they're not letting go.
For a person or small collective to be able to independently carry out space missions would first need a complete overhaul of our society to the point where it's semi-utopian.
Yeah but space fairing implies it's about as difficult for such a society as getting a home made car on the road is for us, or at the most how hard it is for a merchant ship to be chartered in mercantile times.
Once you open the door that is figuring out how to make resource retrieval from deep space affordable to the point of profitablity, you've knocked down those barriers to entry since those are what makes getting to space for such a purpose financially unfeasible at present.