The key is to set up that support system, not to try and stall the march of technology. If we did that we’d still have milk men and dozens of farm hands per square acre.
I recently reread “Beyond this Horizon” by Heinlein, after reading “Progress and Poverty” by Henry George. I had no idea at the time how much RAH was pulling from Georgian political economy while simultaneously writing about a future where 95%+ is fully automated and has only high level human oversight. That’s the kind of forward thinking we desperately needed during the early 1900’s, and are now in a state of emergency over. He refers to our current model as “Pseudo-capitalism” and illustrates in the first conversation of the novel how automated capitalism and collectivism are functionally only “culturally relevant” since the automated capitalist model of the novel includes a UBI and most of the basic needs of society are met for free. He then explains that even purely socialist societies still require some system of finance externally and therefore a requirement of internal financial tracking and accounting. Thus both societies are fundamentally the same in practice despite their ideological differences.
He’s most famous for ideas like “TANSTAAFL” but he also ideated much more progressive societies that people don’t talk much about if they’ve even heard of them.
The key is to set up that support system, not to try and stall the march of technology. If we did that we’d still have milk men and dozens of farm hands per square acre.
I recently reread “Beyond this Horizon” by Heinlein, after reading “Progress and Poverty” by Henry George. I had no idea at the time how much RAH was pulling from Georgian political economy while simultaneously writing about a future where 95%+ is fully automated and has only high level human oversight. That’s the kind of forward thinking we desperately needed during the early 1900’s, and are now in a state of emergency over. He refers to our current model as “Pseudo-capitalism” and illustrates in the first conversation of the novel how automated capitalism and collectivism are functionally only “culturally relevant” since the automated capitalist model of the novel includes a UBI and most of the basic needs of society are met for free. He then explains that even purely socialist societies still require some system of finance externally and therefore a requirement of internal financial tracking and accounting. Thus both societies are fundamentally the same in practice despite their ideological differences.
He’s most famous for ideas like “TANSTAAFL” but he also ideated much more progressive societies that people don’t talk much about if they’ve even heard of them.