Post scarcity motivations

[Locrian]

I've been thinking about post scarcity societies in which nobody needs to work. I'm not concerned in how to get there, I have a clear idea of that for my WIP, but what happens next? What are your thoughts on such a situation, particularly what people do with themselves once they don't need to work? What motivates them? How do different people deal with this?

As I see it, on one end you have Star Trek/Culture style utopias in which everyone dedicates themselves to things like pursuit of knowledge for it's own sake or self improvement. On the other end you have situations such as Wall-E where nobody does anything, or even for example when Agent Smith talks about how the original utopian Matrix was unstable due to human nature.

What are your thoughts? I'm interested in hearing different perspectives on this.

 

[Locrian]

Oops, I meant to put this in General Writing Discussion, would a mod be able to move this please?

Thanks

 

[Nick B]

I believe it would advance the sciences, arts and so on incredibly. Imagine a world where anybody who wanted to could learn anything they wanted, or spend as much time as they wanted on their art, or craft. People could explore. Create. Experiment. Without limit.

Yes, there would be some who would still sit and watch Jeremy Kyle and Big Brother 24 hour reruns while stuffing themselves with junkfood. But they already exist anyway. I think the benefit to mankind in increased knowledge, thinking and art would outweigh an increase in people who will simply waste their lives.

To put a little perspective in - who are currently the healthiest people, happiest people nowadays? Who goes exploring? The wealthiest people. Why? Because they don't have to work 8 hours a day, and have the ability to persue fitness, art, or whatever else they want, without being limited by lack of money.

Fat, lazy, wealthy people are rarer than fat, lazy poor people (as a percentage, since there are obviously so many more poor people) So take away the money problem and less people will be lazy.

Also worth noting that being poor AND fat/lazy is very much a first world problem.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Oops, I meant to put this in General Writing Discussion, would a mod be able to move this please?

Moved, as requested.

I've been thinking about post scarcity societies in which nobody needs to work.

Personally, I struggle to see it happening. Inequality appears to be biologically hard-wired into the human need to have hierarchical social groups.

Additionally, I'm not sure that there's an argument that "the rich" don't work - I don't think it's common for people with money to ever think that they have enough, and so work harder to make more.

 

[NbDawn]

When you asked this, I immediately thought of my parents in retirement and the two different ways they went. My dad got bored. He already had a problem of watching TV all day and this became even more of a problem when he retired. Needless to say, he gained weight and has been increasingly unhappy with his life but has absolutely no motivation to change it. My stepmom, on the other hand, took the opportunity to delve into her quilting. For me, I don't work. But I am very creative and use my spare time for writing, drawing, and learning.

So I think to be realistic you are going to have both types of people. Perhaps in your new world, there is a divide between the ones who zone out on entertainment, such as tv, drugs, video games, and ones who pursuit knowledge, religion, or artistic pursuits that machines can't duplicate.

 

[HareBrain]

I have a friend who believes fervently that in a post-scarcity society everyone would make art. However, last year he had almost the whole summer off without money worries, and what did he do with it? Eff all.

 

[RX-79G]

Personally, I struggle to see it happening. Inequality appears to be biologically hard-wired into the human need to have hierarchical social groups.

With the means of production at the hands of everyone, there wouldn't be an economy to create or enforce economic inequality.

However, I do think that people do enjoy their hierarchies, and some people would be motivated to climb the social ladder through the quality of their art, hospitality, sports skills, personality, etc. With more time for socializing, people will get very good at all its aspects.

I also think fake economies of handicrafts will pop up, and seemingly replace actual needs based economies, with people attaching emotional importance to wood carvings and acoustical music recordings that they used to attach to food and shelter. However, the "trade imbalances" and "wars" to follow would be just as fake, just discussed as if they are similar.

Crime would also shift to thefts of provenance, fame and attribution. With the demise of corporations fewer people would have reason to create security products and processes, so what would follow may appear to be an intellectual wild west of person-on-person espionage. This and the social media trend might lead to a collapse of privacy, with any privacy minded people leaving for the wilderness until that gets saturated, too.

It would likely be an era of great stability, where few people would be interested in violating the status quo by running risks or creating pollution. Groups interested in scientific or space exploration may be forced to leave the earth first before being allowed to play in immunology, nuclear physics or anything else.

People would follow the general habit of civilization in growing more tolerant, but would also have an even greater ability to indulge increasingly exotic belief systems. It will just depend if they can form communities quickly enough to maintain some semblance of social standing - probably causing secret societies to form as a counter to a loss of normal privacy.


It would seem to me that there is a great likelihood of entirely new philosophies arising in this environment. It is also a possible reason that the singularity won't happen, or that it will take an entirely different form that currently predicted.

 

[LittleStar]

The way I see it happening (may be different for your story) is through automation. And we are sign it happening even now, (supermarkets dispensing with checkout staff etc). In 20-30-40 years I don't think we'll be far off a fully automated society.

If money is still a thing to trade for food and clothing etc, then there must needs be some kind of universal credit. So if everyone is on a wage enough to live a decent life, then I think there would be a huge increase in things like the arts and scientists. Isn't there a saying about how many einteins and newtons lived away there lives in sweatshops or something along those lines?
I think there would massive decrease in things like depression. With all days to do what you want, with no pressures to do anything, far fewer people would be unhappy. Ive never met anyone who flat out said they wouldnt want to travel the world, visit family in foreign countries, try new foods and experience new things... And As Quellist said, very few people can do that without any thought to money right now.

Personally for me, if I could make the same, slightly above minimum wage, amount of money I do at the moment, without working the 8 hours a day, I'd write full time, I'd play music and learn more instruments, take up drawing, and sports, gardening, watching the sunrise, I'd visit more places. And I'd be that much happier for it. If someone was perfectly happy spending their days working in a shop or as a telemarketer etc, then good for them, they can keep doing that and make a bit of extra money. Maybe work would be an incentive to improve stations, not a nessecity for continued living.


On the flip side, there will (surely) always be some kind of human input needed... as people have said, I don't know if you can completely remove the human elements, such as greed, power, hierarchy. instead, I might suggest that in this automated world, maybe mechanics and those who build and maintain the robotics of society might become the oil barons and business tycoons.

 

[RX-79G]

The way I see it happening (may be different for your story) is through automation. And we are sign it happening even now, (supermarkets dispensing with checkout staff etc). In 20-30-40 years I don't think we'll be far off a fully automated society.

So you see the corporate owners of automated production processes committing economic suicide by putting all their potential consumers on welfare? Why would they invest in the infrastructure of their own demise?

 

[Phyrebrat]

I think if you've already worked out the logistics, then you're talking about a utopian society. If that's the case, then you only really have one direction in terms of marketing a novel with current preferences; introducing a conflict of some design.

pH

 

[RX-79G]

I think if you've already worked out the logistics, then you're talking about a utopian society. If that's the case, then you only really have one direction in terms of marketing a novel with current preferences; introducing a conflict of some design.

pH

Isn't there always a conflict in storytelling? Or are you saying having the backdrop of a stable utopian society, like the Culture, would be rejected?

 

[Ihe]

I think human nature wouldn't allow a utopia to exist, nor would we be comfortable living in one. I'll side with Agent Smith on this one.

 

[ralphkern]

If the currency of your post-scarcity is knowledge and attainment then that in itself will create a hierarchical stucture.

If the smartest, most well-educated, most artistic, most athletic etc etc are looked on as being socially higher, than those who are lower may view it as aspirational to be like them.

There would likely be a class who is happy to ride on the coat-tails of the 'elites'. Or those where that aspiration turns to jealousy... or even a Micheal Gove style (Govian? *) railing against the 'experts' creating a rebel class.

* I came up with that on the spur of the moment... I'm so going to use 'Govian' in a book somewhere as a political phillosophy.

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

To see how it would work, simply look at any teenager or post-school young adult still living at home. Get up, eat breakfast, watch TV, second breakfast, video games, lunch, go to mall, hang out, dinner, watch TV, bed.

Seriously, though, some people will settle into a life of indolence, some people will get obsessive about something--video games, snowboarding, bungee jumping, etc--and some people will do creative/challenging things--writing, computer programming, inventing, woodworking.

You'll also still get the sociopathic types. Bullies won't stop bullying just because they have enough to eat. Kids will still go about sh*t-disturbing. There might even still be break-ins, but more for fun and the feeling of danger than for profit.

Fame (or at least notoriety) will become more important, as things you can't 'buy'. Being the best chess player on the planet can only be achieved one way. Okay, two, you kill everyone who's better than you. But people will talk...

 

[RX-79G]

In a post scarcity society corporations won't exist, so there is a very good chance that most forms of mass media won't exist or be advertised and distributed. Movies won't have budgets, but they will still rely on the efforts of lots of people who are no longer working because they have to. So the gross scale of fame will likely come down a few notches when there is no label to arrange Bono's tour.

Imagine if everything was on the scale of youtube home movies and clip art. No BBC, no 20th Century Fox, no CNN or New York Times. No city or country needs you to come spend your tourist dollars. No major news agency that is sifting through events to decide which ones you should find important. No regulating agencies because there is no one to fine for pollution or other abuses. No mass merchants to order the spring line from a fashion designer and market those products.

 

[tinkerdan]

There are a number of possible conundrums that hound the Utopian society that bear some thought though maybe not to much because it could cause all sorts of headaches, which wouldn't be a problem for the abundance of medication for that; however who chose which medicine or if there might be all type of medicines and how do we determine how much is stored and where it is stored and how everyone gets to that place or perhaps how does it all get delivered and does everyone get those deliveries in their own house where they have at least one of everything, the ipod, the ipad, the iphone, the icomputer, the itelevision, the icar the i...well you get the picture, the i's have it and you get one and who's to say you only get one and how do upgrades work do you deliver your old for the new or does someone deliver the new and take the old back to the factory or for that matter, what if you want to keep the old and have the new, can you do that or is there a rule or something that might prevent that and then what about all the things you don't want, is there a place where they story your items that you don't use for just in case you decide you want it or is there a way to ticket it out to someone else who might want two or three of those blenders or meat processors or toaster ovens or microwaves or nose hair trimmers and don't get me started on health care....

 

[Stable]

people do enjoy their hierarchies

So much this. Some people are desperate to be on top and are charismatic enough to convince other people too. More time give people much more chances to make and rule their little cliques.

OTOH I'm quite skeptical about a post scarcity society. They kind of exist in the UK - some council estates are almost totally filled with the full time unemployed. Mrs Stable did some volunteering in one and found kids saying things like "I'm going to be unemployed and have loads of kids for welfare, just like my dad." It was kind of heartbreaking for her. I imagine that happening on a massive scale - the amount of people who are self-motivated enough to become artists etc. is probably less than 50%. Reality TV makers would have a great time though, so that's something.

The only chance to avoid that is to have a society that is well educated in how to spend their time wisely for happiness. Philosophy lessons from kindergarten onward perhaps. Even then laziness is one of the strongest human drives.

 

[Biskit]

"I'm going to be unemployed and have loads of kids for welfare...

Two loosely related thoughts follow on from that
1: Would they have the 'loads of kids' if it weren't a prerequisite for getting the welfare?

2: If a significant number of people in this post scarcity society indulged a desire for 'loads of kids' (which seems to be a common desire, even without the prospect of oodles of welfare income) then the post scarcity society is going to collapse under an unsupportable population explosion because no matter how fancy your technology, something is going to run out.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

To see how it would work, simply look at any teenager or post-school young adult still living at home. Get up, eat breakfast, watch TV, second breakfast, video games, lunch, go to mall, hang out, dinner, watch TV, bed.
..

I unschool and as a result know a number of people who do. I don't know many children who have never been to school who do that. You actively have to train them into a life of video games and TV. Although the teenagers do tend to sleep late whilst they're growing once they come out of that phase they get more active and raise early again.

Even my middle child who has a variety of learning difficulties and is computer game obsessed spends his afternoons den building, bouncing on the trampoline and will come away from the computer to draw the characters or make costumes and dress his brother up so they can play outside.

I also find bullies in the group a scarcity. We have a couple of autistic children who have a specific way of doing things but they tend not to lead the pack and they tend to choose the most experienced at a particular activity to be the "leader" but the next activity will have a different leader.

 

[Biskit]

a desire for 'loads of kids'

And a third thought, if the desire to produce loads of kids weren't common, we would probably have died out as a species.