I think you are right to point to the underlying shift in incentives as various constraints are relaxed and others become binding. I also think you could probably increase the Public Choice/Political Economy insights here. What would/are the impacts to policy and politics and government structure/services/role under these types of changes.
Still, I don’t think it really leads to as bad an outcome as seems implied here. In the duplicator case, a limit/extreme, it is clear even in most expected scenarios of “fabricated” scarcity in the collective sense we will be at a much higher production frontier and everyone having a much greater real income/consumption standard. I think the scenarios where that is not the case (think most of the dystopian ScFi worlds) are unlikely.
I think the rat races does change a bit here, but clearly the constraints will be on intellectual and innovation/design (and possible the coordination margins you’ve already identified). I do wonder if there is more scope for the old “tune in, turn on and drop out” with the emphasis on dropping out of the race and economy (autarky is possible).
I think you are right to point to the underlying shift in incentives as various constraints are relaxed and others become binding. I also think you could probably increase the Public Choice/Political Economy insights here. What would/are the impacts to policy and politics and government structure/services/role under these types of changes.
Still, I don’t think it really leads to as bad an outcome as seems implied here. In the duplicator case, a limit/extreme, it is clear even in most expected scenarios of “fabricated” scarcity in the collective sense we will be at a much higher production frontier and everyone having a much greater real income/consumption standard. I think the scenarios where that is not the case (think most of the dystopian ScFi worlds) are unlikely.
I think the rat races does change a bit here, but clearly the constraints will be on intellectual and innovation/design (and possible the coordination margins you’ve already identified). I do wonder if there is more scope for the old “tune in, turn on and drop out” with the emphasis on dropping out of the race and economy (autarky is possible).