The blogger formerly known as IOZ, who has resurrected himself at some point in the last year as Blogarach, is one of my favorite bloggers – not just because I am sympathetic to his unapologetic marxism (if I can't always agree), but because he is a brilliant stylist, as I've observed before.
In a recent blog entry, he discusses the possibility of a post-scarcity society, and concludes our current problems with poverty and inequality are ultimately little more than a "supply chain problem." This both understates and oversimplifies the problem, and yet I think he is fundamentally correct.
He quotes Buckminster Fuller, who made post-scarcity arguments way back in the 70's. Here is the quote – I think it's interesting, as does the blogarach, in part because of how long ago the argument was made.
We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.
But the most intriguing thing about his essay is the title: "The Culture."
That title is the only reference, except in the tags at the foot of the blog entry, to the recently deceased author Iain M. Banks' stunningly fascinating and deeply-wrought science fiction concept of post-scarcity in his "Culture" novels, launched in 1987's Consider Phlebas. I like that kind of subtlety. Anyway, my recommendation is: read Blogarach's blog entry; read Buckminster Fuller; read Banks' novels. That is the path to understanding my core optimism for humanity's long-term future.
Even if I sometimes end up foregoing that same style of optimism vis-a-vis the narrower futures that pertain to my own existence.
[daily log (1145 pm): walking, 5 km]