Delete comment from: Captain Capitalism
I think you oversimplify. The renderings of post-scarcity economies I am familiar with acknowledge that there will still be scarcity of a sort: it's simply the necessities of life that will cease to be meaningfully scarce. Even if we manage to create a replicator, there will still be the edges of scientific knowledge to fill out and new technologies to develop. The difference is that people will pursue these things for social capital and personal fulfillment rather than simply for base survival. If I want something that has never been made before, I'll still have to invent and create it myself. If I want to colonize another planet, I'll still have to go out and settle it myself. I see this sort of dynamic play out all the time in the open source world. Many people do, as it turns out, value more than just sex. And there's more to increasing sex appeal than building muscle and staying well-groomed. One could in fact argue that as the supply of attractive, virile humans rises, the value of differentiating traits such as unusually high intelligence would rise in relation.
Apr 23, 2015, 7:33:05 PM
Posted to Why Post-Scarcity Economics is Scary