Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/

Just what it says.
--
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On 9/14/2022 10:10 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
> Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
> https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
>
> Just what it says.

I have read the awesome Shards of Honor several times. Nothing on the
others.

Lynn

In article <tfsqt6$6v7$1@reader2.panix.com>,
James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
>https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
>
>Just what it says.

Saunders' Commonweal seems to be that, although since the Commonweal
does not permit great wealth, the contrast between the poorest and the
richest is quite small. (There is the side note that those who "won't
work" may find themselves with only raw turnip to eat, which suggests
some notion of poverty.)

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

In article <tft8cp$1815$1@usenet.csail.mit.edu>,
Garrett Wollman <wollman@bimajority.org> wrote:
>In article <tfsqt6$6v7$1@reader2.panix.com>,
>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
>>https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
>>
>>Just what it says.
>
>Saunders' Commonweal seems to be that, although since the Commonweal
>does not permit great wealth, the contrast between the poorest and the
>richest is quite small. (There is the side note that those who "won't
>work" may find themselves with only raw turnip to eat, which suggests
>some notion of poverty.)
>
>-GAWollman
>
>--
>Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
>wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
>Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
>my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

(Hal Heydt)
Plus several points for citing Saunders...both places. I am
eagerly, and somewhat impatiently, awaiting book six of the
series.

The "only get raw turnips if you *won't* work" is, at least, a
voluntary decision. There is a rather strongly ingrained ethic
of working. Near the beginning of _A Succession of Bad Days_,
the protagonist is upset over the idea of being young and healthy
and being fed out of tax money, i.e. not working for his own
upkeep.

On 14/09/2022 10.10, James Nicoll wrote:
> Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
> https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/

Glad to see Banks in there. The Culture was the first example
that came to my mind. The second was Diaspar, in ACC's _The
City and the Stars_. Everybody in Diaspar seems to spend their
lives creating new art forms or going on VR dungeon crawls.

--
Michael F. Stemper
The FAQ for rec.arts.sf.written is at
<http://leepers.us/evelyn/faqs/sf-written.htm>
Please read it before posting.

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 4:45:55 PM UTC-4, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 14/09/2022 10.10, James Nicoll wrote:
> > Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
> > https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
> Glad to see Banks in there. The Culture was the first example
> that came to my mind. The second was Diaspar, in ACC's _The
> City and the Stars_. Everybody in Diaspar seems to spend their
> lives creating new art forms or going on VR dungeon crawls.

Though not a book, the Star Trek Federation seems to be post-Scarcity
as well. I've heard it described as 'Utopian Space Communism'.

pt

On Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 2:15:16 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> On 9/14/2022 10:10 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
> > Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
> > https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
> >
> > Just what it says.
> I have read the awesome Shards of Honor several times. Nothing on the
> others.

I would recommend "The Player of games" as a start on the Culture novels. "Use of Weapons" is a novel you may like or may hate. I can't even guess which.

I started late in the series with "Look to Windward". It might be reasonable to start at the end with "The Hydrogen Sonata".

It took me two tries to read "The Dispossessed" but I am glad I came back to it. There is a bit of (to me) clumsy writing early in the book which caused me to believe that this would be a boringly didactic work. It isn't. It's a very good novel which makes no firm judgments on any of the societies in it.

William Hyde

In article <27e014e3-b368-414b-b79a-6d0abcedb87bn@googlegroups.com>,
pete...@gmail.com <petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 4:45:55 PM UTC-4, Michael F. Stemper wrote:
>> On 14/09/2022 10.10, James Nicoll wrote:
>> > Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
>> >
>https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
>> Glad to see Banks in there. The Culture was the first example
>> that came to my mind. The second was Diaspar, in ACC's _The
>> City and the Stars_. Everybody in Diaspar seems to spend their
>> lives creating new art forms or going on VR dungeon crawls.
>
>Though not a book, the Star Trek Federation seems to be post-Scarcity
>as well. I've heard it described as 'Utopian Space Communism'.
>
>pt

TOS era, not so much. TNG era, yes.

--
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..

On 9/14/2022 1:15 PM, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> On 9/14/2022 10:10 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
>> Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
>> https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
>>
>> Just what it says.
>
> I have read the awesome Shards of Honor several times.  Nothing on the
> others.
>
> Lynn

BTW, one of the serious problems with Beta is that they expected people
to be even minded and would enforce that by drugs and confinement. When
Cordelia Naismith came back to Beta after encountering Aral Vorkosigan
on the Barrayaran space dreadnought and in the prison camp, she was
forcibly detained on Beta for mental treatment when she decided to go to
Barrayar to find Aral. Aral Vorkosigan was known on Beta as "The
Butcher of Komarr" and nobody should want to go see him. She escaped by
physically defeating the proctors and catching the next space ship to
Barrayar where she marries Aral.

However, their son Miles spent many happy times with his grandmother on
Beta. His bodyguard Bothari, not so much.

Lynn

On 15/09/22 09:51, William Hyde wrote:
> On Wednesday, September 14, 2022 at 2:15:16 PM UTC-4, Lynn McGuire
> wrote:
>> On 9/14/2022 10:10 AM, James Nicoll wrote:
>>> Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
>>> https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
>>>
>>>
>>> Just what it says.
>> I have read the awesome Shards of Honor several times. Nothing on
>> the others.
>
> I would recommend "The Player of games" as a start on the Culture
> novels. "Use of Weapons" is a novel you may like or may hate. I
> can't even guess which.
>

He will understand neither. Therefore I would recommend _Consider
Phlebas_ which in comparison is a straightforward action adventure story
and an earlier Culture novel.

I read Robertson Davies' The Cunning Man and loved it thank you. The
doctor protagonist in Eversion by Alastair Reynolds is also a disciple
of Paracelsus seeking to provide mental as well as physical care but
there the similarities end.

William Hyde wrote:

>I would recommend "The Player of games" as a start on the Culture
>novels. "Use of Weapons" is a novel you may like or may hate. I
>can't even guess which.
>
>I started late in the series with "Look to Windward". It might be
>reasonable to start at the end with "The Hydrogen Sonata".

I read "The Player of games" first, and I didn't care for it. As a
result, I didn't read any Culture books for some time. Then some time
later, after discussion here, I read "Look to Windward". I liked that
pretty well and ended up reading the rest of the books. Some I liked,
some I didn't much.

That included a reread of "The Player of games", which I liked better
the second time through, possibly because my increased exposure to the
background made me appreciate some the Special Circumstances issues.

Brian

James Nicoll wrote:

>Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty

The Jack McDevitt Alex Benedict/Chase Kolpath fit well into this
category. The basic dole on the human planets seems to be pretty
generous, to the point where some just live on that to pursue artistic
efforts.

In "The Five-Way Secret Agent" by Mack Reynolds, there's a Meritocracy
that is the government in the US. Those that are unemployed or
underemployed have their income brought to a base level by a negative
income tax. This level seems to be relatively comfortable and the one
city center we are shown seems fairly clean and safe. However, voting
is based on income, so to be collecting the NIT means
disenfranchisement.

Brian

On 2022-09-14 9:10 a.m., James Nicoll wrote:
> Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
> https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
>
> Just what it says.

Ordinarily Beta reserves its brainwashing for the people who get prison
terms or execution in modern civilizations. It made an exception for
Cordelia only because they were operating under the illusion that she
had already been brainwashed and hence was incapable of giving or
withholding informed consent.

On 2022-09-14 2:45 p.m., Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> On 14/09/2022 10.10, James Nicoll wrote:
>> Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
>> https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
>>
>
> Glad to see Banks in there. The Culture was the first example
> that came to my mind.

I was thinking about the The Culture when, in a discussion of Star Trek
TNG's faux post-scarcity, I wrote a screed about the key to achieving
post-scarcity is to manage your population's desires. You can never
have unlimited resources so you have to effectively indoctrinate
everyone so they'll never want more than you can afford to give them.
If you can keep everyone's desires manageable, tada! "Post-scarcity!"

On Sunday, September 18, 2022 at 7:52:42 PM UTC-4, David Johnston wrote:
> On 2022-09-14 2:45 p.m., Michael F. Stemper wrote:
> > On 14/09/2022 10.10, James Nicoll wrote:
> >> Five SF Works That Imagine Societies Without Poverty
> >> https://www.tor.com/2022/09/14/five-sf-works-that-imagine-societies-without-poverty/
> >>
> >
> > Glad to see Banks in there. The Culture was the first example
> > that came to my mind.

> I was thinking about the The Culture when, in a discussion of Star Trek
> TNG's faux post-scarcity, I wrote a screed about the key to achieving
> post-scarcity is to manage your population's desires. You can never
> have unlimited resources so you have to effectively indoctrinate
> everyone so they'll never want more than you can afford to give them.

Sounds like the Universe 25 experiment, also searchable as "mouse utopia."

> If you can keep everyone's desires manageable, tada! "Post-scarcity!"

Youtuber Isaac Arthur has coined the term, "Post-discontent society" for that. A rather dark view of it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g807KawBOq0

It should also bring up a link constellation of related topics, including finding purpose in post-scarcity.

--
-Jack

On Sunday, September 18, 2022 at 5:52:42 PM UTC-6, David Johnston wrote:

> I was thinking about the The Culture when, in a discussion of Star Trek
> TNG's faux post-scarcity, I wrote a screed about the key to achieving
> post-scarcity is to manage your population's desires. You can never
> have unlimited resources so you have to effectively indoctrinate
> everyone so they'll never want more than you can afford to give them.
> If you can keep everyone's desires manageable, tada! "Post-scarcity!"

You don't need to manage everyone's _desires_, you merely have to
manage your definition of scarcity.

If you're using the _economists_ definition of scarcity, that everyone can't
simply have everything they want just by snapping their fingers, so you
still have to have such a thing as "money" to allocate resources, yes,
post-scarcity appears to be impossible to achieve.

However, if you use a more reasonable definition for the present purpose -
one in which everyone has, if not _everything_ they want, at least enough to
live a reasonably comfortable life - while only being expected to work in
return if it's been verified that they're genuinely capable of working in a
useful manner (i.e., there's time while they are checked for hidden medical
problems) - that's definitely a post-poverty society. And with sufficient
technological advancement, to make productivity high enough, that should
be possible. In fact, some would say it already is.

John Savard

On 2022-09-19 9:42 p.m., Quadibloc wrote:
> On Sunday, September 18, 2022 at 5:52:42 PM UTC-6, David Johnston wrote:
>
>> I was thinking about the The Culture when, in a discussion of Star Trek
>> TNG's faux post-scarcity, I wrote a screed about the key to achieving
>> post-scarcity is to manage your population's desires. You can never
>> have unlimited resources so you have to effectively indoctrinate
>> everyone so they'll never want more than you can afford to give them.
>> If you can keep everyone's desires manageable, tada! "Post-scarcity!"
>
> You don't need to manage everyone's _desires_, you merely have to
> manage your definition of scarcity.
>
> If you're using the _economists_ definition of scarcity, that everyone can't
> simply have everything they want just by snapping their fingers, so you
> still have to have such a thing as "money" to allocate resources, yes,
> post-scarcity appears to be impossible to achieve.
>
> However, if you use a more reasonable definition for the present purpose -
> one in which everyone has, if not _everything_ they want, at least enough to
> live a reasonably comfortable life - while only being expected to work in
> return if it's been verified that they're genuinely capable of working in a
> useful manner (i.e., there's time while they are checked for hidden medical
> problems) - that's definitely a post-poverty society. And with sufficient
> technological advancement, to make productivity high enough, that should
> be possible. In fact, some would say it already is.
>
> John Savard

I would prefer for people not to use the word at all when they don't
mean what it means. Guaranteed basic income is not post-scarcity.

On Sun, 25 Sep 2022 17:06:05 -0600, David Johnston
<davidjohnston29@yahoo.com> wrote:

>On 2022-09-19 9:42 p.m., Quadibloc wrote:
>> On Sunday, September 18, 2022 at 5:52:42 PM UTC-6, David Johnston wrote:
>>
>>> I was thinking about the The Culture when, in a discussion of Star Trek
>>> TNG's faux post-scarcity, I wrote a screed about the key to achieving
>>> post-scarcity is to manage your population's desires. You can never
>>> have unlimited resources so you have to effectively indoctrinate
>>> everyone so they'll never want more than you can afford to give them.
>>> If you can keep everyone's desires manageable, tada! "Post-scarcity!"
>>
>> You don't need to manage everyone's _desires_, you merely have to
>> manage your definition of scarcity.
>>
>> If you're using the _economists_ definition of scarcity, that everyone can't
>> simply have everything they want just by snapping their fingers, so you
>> still have to have such a thing as "money" to allocate resources, yes,
>> post-scarcity appears to be impossible to achieve.
>>
>> However, if you use a more reasonable definition for the present purpose -
>> one in which everyone has, if not _everything_ they want, at least enough to
>> live a reasonably comfortable life - while only being expected to work in
>> return if it's been verified that they're genuinely capable of working in a
>> useful manner (i.e., there's time while they are checked for hidden medical
>> problems) - that's definitely a post-poverty society. And with sufficient
>> technological advancement, to make productivity high enough, that should
>> be possible. In fact, some would say it already is.
>>
>> John Savard
>
>I would prefer for people not to use the word at all when they don't
>mean what it means. Guaranteed basic income is not post-scarcity.

Something like in /This Perfect Day/, perhaps?
--
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."