This is a bit of a tangent but even in an ideal future I can’t see how this wouldn’t just be shifting the problem one step away. After all, who would get to define what the ‘needs’ are?
If it’s defined by majority consensus, why wouldn’t the crowd pleasing option of shifting the baseline to more expansive ‘needs’ be predominant?
I mean, people seem to assume here when discussing an “ideal future” some kind of post-scarcity utopia in which there’s enough to satisfy anyone’s wildest needs ten times over.
I agree that I’m personally not a big believer in this being possible at all. You can have enough abundance to provide everyone with food, clothes and a house, or even more, but at some point you’ll probably have to stop. Currency might be replaced by some analogue system, but yes, at the end, you need some way to partition limited resources, and unlimited resources just aren’t physical.
This is a bit of a tangent but even in an ideal future I can’t see how this wouldn’t just be shifting the problem one step away. After all, who would get to define what the ‘needs’ are?
If it’s defined by majority consensus, why wouldn’t the crowd pleasing option of shifting the baseline to more expansive ‘needs’ be predominant?
I’d assume that people themselves would define what they need, within the limits of what is possible given the technology of the time.
So it would be exactly the same as how ‘needs’ are recognized in present day society?
I guess my point is the standard one: in many ways even poor people live a lot better now than royalty 300 years ago.
Well, except now just saying “I need this” wouldn’t get the need satisfied if you don’t have the money for it.
How’s that different from the future?
There clearly will still be resource constraints of some kind and they will very likely need some unit of currency to carry out their activities.
I mean, people seem to assume here when discussing an “ideal future” some kind of post-scarcity utopia in which there’s enough to satisfy anyone’s wildest needs ten times over.
I agree that I’m personally not a big believer in this being possible at all. You can have enough abundance to provide everyone with food, clothes and a house, or even more, but at some point you’ll probably have to stop. Currency might be replaced by some analogue system, but yes, at the end, you need some way to partition limited resources, and unlimited resources just aren’t physical.