It doesn’t matter. Whatever the institutions of this totalitarian government might look like, there will still be the usual human zero-sum struggle for status, and whatever goods (material or not) are necessary to gain status will be the object of this struggle, just like they are now. Even under the assumption (entirely impossible for a human society) that material zero-sum goods like land are distributed strictly equitably and the population is kept low enough that the amount per capita is large, status is still scarce by definition.
In practice, all intelligent writers of post-scarcity economies realize that status will still be scarce. Doctorow has his post-scarcity economy run almost solely on status-units (whuffies, or whatever); and I think there is a line in Bank’s Culture novels somewhere to the effect that ‘the Minds could give humans everything they wanted—except to matter’.
I think its more a way to get those who talk about a post-scarcity economy to realize that people don’t really care that much about material resources. Its surprising but people do indeed need to be reminded that social animal’s lives are about status.
It doesn’t matter. Whatever the institutions of this totalitarian government might look like, there will still be the usual human zero-sum struggle for status, and whatever goods (material or not) are necessary to gain status will be the object of this struggle, just like they are now. Even under the assumption (entirely impossible for a human society) that material zero-sum goods like land are distributed strictly equitably and the population is kept low enough that the amount per capita is large, status is still scarce by definition.
I don’t think “post-scarcity economy” is intended to be to do with status.
The word “economy” suggests material resources to me—space/time/matter stuff.
In practice, all intelligent writers of post-scarcity economies realize that status will still be scarce. Doctorow has his post-scarcity economy run almost solely on status-units (whuffies, or whatever); and I think there is a line in Bank’s Culture novels somewhere to the effect that ‘the Minds could give humans everything they wanted—except to matter’.
I think its more a way to get those who talk about a post-scarcity economy to realize that people don’t really care that much about material resources. Its surprising but people do indeed need to be reminded that social animal’s lives are about status.