Economics and SF/F

[Fried Egg]

Im not talking ideology. Im talking practicality. My point was that all goods would not be "immediately accessible." I find it impossible that anyone could dig a hole and fine every single mineral that they would ever need. Some things a person needs will be in another's territory. Obviously I meant trade. As in "I have a bunch of this. You have a bunch of that. Ill trade you this for that." That is economic activity, yes?

Have you read Michael Moorcock's Dancers at the End of Time? They live their lives in the absense of scarcity (or near as damn it). Anything the want is made immediately availabe by the mere twist of their power rings. Even time is no longer scarce for them since they are immortal. That is until the universe itself ends and there is no more energy to draw upon...

By the way, another interesting book with economic themes is The Silicon Man by Charles Platt. It explores themes such as virtual reality and the computability of consciousness but also imagines how an anarcho-capitalist utopia might be achieved. Not quite what bloggeratf was after I realise but interesting nonetheless.

Interesting because when utopias are depicted in SF, they are normally anything but capitalistic. When capitalist futures are portrayed, they are normally dystopian visions; exagerating all the flaws of our current system and diminishing all the good points. [bThe Silicon Man[/b] achieves a utopian capitalistic future which has all the good points of capitalism without all the flaws.

 

[Omphalos]

Ah. OK. We are probably talking apples and oranges here. I have read that Moorcock book, a long time ago. Seems that what you are talking about is a fictional world or two where someone can magically or technolgoically conjure up whatever it is they need or want. I get that exists in some stories, and in those cases, sure, there is no real need for trade. Gotcha.

Never read any of Platt's fiction; just his interviews and some old articles and such. Wasnt Silicon Man a cyberpunk kind of book?

 

[Fried Egg]

Never read any of Platt's fiction; just his interviews and some old articles and such. Wasnt Silicon Man a cyberpunk kind of book?

I think so. I haven't really read much from that era.

 

[chrispenycate]

No-one seems to have noticed the other standard economic model, the military one, where the only consideration is survival, in any form, and all individual needs are subjugated to those of society.

Hey, I didn't say it was a pleasant model…

 

[blacknorth]

Mack Reynolds made some interesting social and economic extrapolations in his novels. I think he was one of the few SF writers who was openly a Communist and his futures tend towards Cold War.

 

[Blackrook]

The reason you're not going to find a working Communist society in real life is that people naturally want to keep their possessions and when the government takes them away, people resent it.

Some people will simply stop working because there's no point to it or they will work only as much as the government can force them to.

Other people will resist and the government will have to violently put them down.

I don't see any realistic way to get around this in a fictional tale.