Afternoon, folks. 💫
Behind my time today - hope you're exactly where you want to be with yours!
This week's first newsletter explores zero-sum and positive-sum thinking by diving into economic history and... Star Trek. Because why *do* we configure speculative fiction so narrowly?
Imagine how creatively we could dream, if we saw political theory as a kind of world-building too.
#BetterWorldsTheory #SFF #StarTrek #Economics
https://open.substack.com/pub/mlclark/p/on-zero-sum-versus-positive-sum-thinking
@MLClark fantastic write-up! I have a couple comments. Smith's positive sum naivete is on worst display when we consider that the most unforgivable depredations on humanity have stemmed from multiple standing armies waging war (particularly those of the West).
It is also not clear that we could ever achieve an equitable post-scarcity economy/society, even if we developed or were *handed* the technology. The elite/wealthy/corporations would control and limit its access like all else.
@MLClark how would you define "technically in reach"? If we drop all political barriers and unite the nations of the world to a common purpose there would still be extreme if not insurmountable technical challenges to feeding, clothing, and housing 10B+ people in the next 100 years.
I take it you follow sustainable / green growth models, or the techno-utopia pathway, when you imagine insurmountable technical challenges?
When I say "technically in reach", a kind of post-scarcity is most certainly possible within degrowth parameters. But as you also noted, those who are very comfortable with the starkly unequal material benefits of a growth-oriented economy will never allow any degrowth model to come to pass - so it's technically possible, but politically moot!
@MLClark I'm sure you've written about this but I find it very difficult to imagine how we tread the techno-utopia path even in the absence of our current geopolitical and economic systems. I think we would still be inextricably bound by our biological imperatives and evolutionary history, our ids and superegos. Attempts to monkey with these *before* achieving post-scarcity would likely be ruinous. We've only had 20 years of social media manipulation and we're already headed that way.
@LSWellesley @MLClark well that looks like an interesting plot!
Oh, I'm not at all a techno-utopian. I have been very critical of the scams of longtermism and the hyperfixation on tech as a solution.
I'm on the degrowth side - I think what's being proposed with respect to returning democracy and direct agency to average citizens, and constructing hyperregional communities where people need less to feel connected & build rewarding lives, is a wonderful idea.
It's just not going to be permitted under neoliberalism either. So we're a bit stuck.
@hallmarc
Thanks for reading!
Your first point is bang-on: when it came to a standing army's superiority to a militia from a proficiency perspective, he was right - but he didn't anticipate that a standing army would become a "supply" looking for a "demand" if not put to equivalent peacetime use. Ergo the ruin of our military industrial complex.
As for "post-scarcity", it's already technically in reach, which illustrates your point: artificial barriers always crop up.
Thanks for this!