For us, the living

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1. anonemouse145Mar 2017
   Read Heinlein's For Us The Living. Robots make all essential goods, and everyone has a minimum basic income. People only work to get extra income for nice things. That is a societal wide post scarcity society- no one who desires a basic living will ever lack anything they need.

   But post scarcity happens all the time. It used to be the domain of nobles, who had easy access to basically anything they could desire. Now it belongs to middle to upper class first world residents, a growing class of people who can lean on mommy if they ever get in trouble and who generally are never more than an Amazon Prime delivery away from any good or service they need.

   People will say oh but a feudal lord didn't have an iPhone it's all relative. And sure that's one argument, but I'm sure you can see the point being made.

   You can work a lousy job, and play video games, eat pizza, and be basically happy. Or you can take on tens of thousands in student debt to work a much more stressful job, and wish you had enough time to play games, and stop eating pizza because it doesn't fit your lifestyle. A growing number of people can't rationalize the latter option. There's no need to endure that hardship, goods aren't that scarce. Hence, people bring up post scarcity.

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2. Alexqw85Nov 2016
   Neither are new books, but this year I both read and subsequently gifted

   * 1491 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1491:_New_Revelations_of_the_A...

   * Stranger in a Strange Land (the "Original, Uncut version") https://www.amazon.com/Stranger-Strange-Land-Robert-Heinlein...

   1491 is about the societies in the Americas prior to European contact. And if anyone knows of any books on the topic that have been written since then (and thus are even more up-to-date with the current state of the field), I'm very, very interested.

   Stranger in a Strange Land is just... excellent. I really appreciate Heinlein and I like his world view. Though I've never read the traditional "cut" version, I've talked with people who have read both and I'm sold on the unabridged version. As an aside, if you enjoy Heinlein, then I also recommend reading "For Us, The Living: A Comedy of Customs." It was Heinlein's first book, but was never published (until recently, of course). It's not polished, but it is very interesting to see how he had already formed in the 1930s a lot of the ideas that would dominate his writing for the rest of his career. A good and enjoyable read.

   ---Alex

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3. hobsAug 2013
   I like Heinlein's use of this in "For Us, The Living", he breaks out the Public and Private spheres and addresses how anything done in the private sphere is effectively heavily tabooed to inquire about, and could even become a criminal penalty. Politicians having a much smaller private sphere of course.
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4. justncase80Jul 2013
   This reminds me of "For Us, The Living", by Robert Heinlein. Where he discusses a very similar society and explains the economics of how it might work: http://www.amazon.com/For-Us-The-Living-Customs/dp/074349154...
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5. jjburkaApr 2009
   'For us the living' is also another interesting book by him. Sorta the anti-Atlas Shrugged.
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6. amysoxApr 2026
   Robert Heinlein proposed something like that in his "lost" novel For Us, the Living: instead of declaring war, Congress would authorize a war referendum, in which only those eligible for military service could vote. The catch was, everyone voting "Yes" would thereby automatically sign themselves up in the military for the duration. If a further draft was needed, it would first be composed of those that didn't vote, and lastly those who voted "No."

   (In the book, the "future" Congress had called war referenda on three occasions; each time, the vote was overwhelmingly "No," and historians believed those decisions were justified.)

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