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To: Above My Pay Grade
Also, in a society with technology like replicators, that could “magically” produce just about anything, anyone needs out of thin air, and with very cheap energy sources, socialism would not be quite as impractical as it is in the real world, today.

The operative word is "magically." How would these magic machines be invented, built, operated, maintained? What would be the motivation for anyone to go through all that trouble for the benefit of someone else? There could be only one motivation: Profit.

Think of the depth and complexity of economic relationships that would be necessary in any society that could possibly produce these machines. Even if the machines seemed magical, the economic structure would be entirely understandable to certain people, at least, of our own time.

Just consider the things we enjoy today that could only be called "magical" to someone of one or more centuries ago!

If we turn our historical telescope to the future instead of the past, what fundamental principles about humanity and the real world might no longer hold?

Of course, we are speaking here of speculative fiction, whose bedrock principle is to break one or more of those assumptions and to create a ripping good yarn. But they have to gloss over how you get from here and now to then and there.

Economics is about how scarce resources are disrtibuted, so when there is no scarcity, economic systems become far, less relevant.

Quite correct at the beginning. But by human nature there can be no such thing as "no scarcity." In the real world, unfulfilled human wants will always exist; therefore an economic system of some kind, efficent or inefficient, will always exist.

87 posted on 09/27/2012 8:30:54 AM PDT by Erasmus (Zwischen des Teufels und des tiefen, blauen Meers)
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To: Erasmus

>>>Economics is about how scarce resources are disrtibuted, so when there is no scarcity, economic systems become far, less relevant.

Quite correct at the beginning. But by human nature there can be no such thing as “no scarcity.” In the real world, unfulfilled human wants will always exist; therefore an economic system of some kind, efficent or inefficient, will always exist.<<<

Well said. I tried to express that idea in some of my other posts, but not as eloquently as you did.

Even in an ideal world where there is no real “scarcity” it is our nature to imagine or create it.


90 posted on 09/27/2012 8:34:54 AM PDT by Above My Pay Grade
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