Still cannot xpost to Dreamwidth

[james_davis_nicoll]

I think every writer has a genre or subgenre that they admire, but find baffling. Like a snake charmer watching a trapeze artist. Yeah, yeah, the snakes are poisonous, but you've been handling them for years. But that flip? Those heights? That drop? That's scary.

Well, for me, one of those genres is post-scarcity SF. To my mind it's one of the most difficult to pull off. Scarcity has been a fact of the human condition for more or less ever, and once you remove it you have to figure out what it means to be human aside from that endless parade of want. Before you start chapter one. On top of that, it's damnably hard to fashion a sympathetic protagonist out of someone who has never struggled in the way we struggle in our own lives, to present someone who does not come off as a monster of privilege. My hat is off to those who can manage it, to me it seems a miraculous mid-air twist without a net.

Comments

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Snakes are venomous, not poisonous.

[caper-est.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that depend on which part of them you ate?

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

Not really. You can eat snake venom with no real problems (unless you have ulcers or other open wounds along the path, of course).

In general: if you bite it and die, it's poisonous; if it bites or scratches you and you die, it's venomous.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

I just want an author to explain where people in post-scarcity worlds get their hair cut. Just because you have some miraculous nano-factory that can produce any physical good you want, that doesn't get rid of the need for services. Sure, some stuff can be automated (I mean, if you have miraculous nano-factories, why not miraculous trash collecting AI) and some stuff people will do for free (software, art) but that doesn't account for all services. Who wants to give an unruly five year old a haircut, pull an eighteen hour ER shift, or mediate a child custody dispute if there's no economic incentive?

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Who wants to give an unruly five year old a haircut, pull an eighteen hour ER shift, or mediate a child custody dispute if there's no economic incentive?

Off the top of my head, I can think of more than one person I know for whom the first and third things there would be satisfying enough to be things they'd spend chunks of their time doing in a post-scarcity setting; the second is the sort of thing that would seem possible to alleviate in many other ways along the way to post-scarcity.

[avram]

Are you in a social stratum where it's typical for parents to pay someone to give their five-year-old a haircut, rather than doing it themselves?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

That's where your story comes from, and why there's still an economy, and why it's not necessarily a world of endless tedium.

I recall a discussion at the Boston Worldcon years ago at which Benjamin Rosenbaum and Cory Doctorow spent a lot of time talking about how, from the perspective of, say, 1400, our society is a post-scarcity society. We don't spend all our time doing what medieval peasants did. But we still do stuff.

[seawasp]

In the effectively Post-Scarcity society of _Grand Central Arena_, your medical nanos will keep your hair -- or feathers, if you prefer -- trimmed to the length you want.

But services and performances and such are indeed some of the remaining trade goods.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

If there's scarcity in human services, there's obvious potential for trade in human services. I cut your hair, you cut mine, or cook a nice meal. Yes, this is often handwaved or ignored. The whole definition of "post-scarcity" really needs to be pinned down better.

Of course, a lot of post-scarcity societies do in fact have post-scarcity medicine: regeneration, nanites, autodocs, abandoning the injured body and resleeving in a new one.

And the Culture has 'automation' in willing drones or Mind avatars for pretty much everything.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

If I had the skills, I'd be happy to do any of those three things without monetary pay.

And, indeed, people DO do those things, or similar things, for no pay. You don't work in an ER for free, but there are volunteer fire departments, volunteer EMT services, and other volunteer emergency response situations. My mother gave haircuts to my sister and me when we were each five, even when we were unruly. And a LOT of nasty family situations are mediated by friends and family.

I'm not convinced that that means that there wouldn't be an economic incentive, though -- it's just that we'd be working more with a "gift economy" than a "market economy".

You perceive software as a thing that people will create for the joy of creation, and/or the respect of their peers. "Respect of one's peers" is, really, a form of coin in itself, and that's how a gift economy works. You do things because people appreciate it, and it gains you respect.

So perhaps there's a thing to look at: does a post-scarcity world switch (back?) to a gift economy?

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and who's going to be the ones to, on a moment's notice, put aside whatever they are doing (which they might actually be getting paid real money for) to rush off to someone else's aide, and risk their lives when they get there by strapping on a large amount of gear and walking into a house-sized oven in zero visibility? And for minimal or no financial compensation?

Other than the 71% of American firefighters (and 78% of Canadian) who do that all the time.

And for the vast majority of the paid firefighters, getting paid is simply a way for paying for the necessities so they can do what they really want to do. I don't think I've ever met a firefighter who went into the job because they wanted to make money at it.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Define "some stuff people will do for free":

There is:

* Do for free because I enjoy it and feel no need to share but don't care about specifically keeping secret

* Do for free because I enjoy it and I want everyone around me to appreciate how brilliant I am

* Do for free because I enjoy having it done to me and expect that if I do it to you, you'll do it to me (much primate and human behaviour falls under this category: dinner parties, tick removal, sex)

* Do it for free because you'll appreciate it and want to respond by doing something to me that I appreciate (other than just the kudos) -- barter of personal services, IOW.

Hair cuts may well fall under the fourth category -- essentially exchanges of personal services.

Working an 18 hour ER shift isn't going to happen because that goes well past most humans' fatigue tolerance, but working a 6 hour ER shift is another matter. And if not for lousy management practices aimed at reducing payroll expenditure one may surmise that the 18 hour ER shifts would go away.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

Star Trek's post-scarcity society only functions as long as writers ignore the glaring holes in it. There are all sorts of things that can't be replicated -- dilithium, androids, and all the bits of unobtanium the Enterprise was always ferrying around -- and even the stuff that can be isn't as good as the real thing (how many times did you hear a character complain about replicated food not tasting right)? How does Robert Picard distribute his wine if there's no market economy? Is it first-come-first-serve? Space travel is ubiquitous but still limited by scarcity, so there must be some cost for getting a freighter to take my products from Earth to Alpha Centauri -- and the Federation must have some way of trading with the Ferengi and other societies that still use money.

Not to mention, why do starships have political officers disguised as counselors to make sure the crew isn't committing crimethink?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Better known, but a lot of people think the Culture is better. Though it's not particularly well-described. _The Cassini Division_ might be even better, with less super-AI and more visible trading of human services.

ETA: Star Trek is approximately post-scarcity in goods and the means to live. They're still baseline human, deliberately so.

The Culture makes Orbitals, has AI both human and superhuman, and its humanoids live to 400 on their own and have medical or digital immortality options. It is thus much more post-scarcity in lifespan, intelligence, and location.

One thing that'll become scarce: children.

[andrewducker]

Hmm. I'm not having a problem with DW crossposting. You haven't changed your LJ password or anything like that, have you?

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Could it be an lj-server-specific glitch? There'be been enough of those in the past, often affecting handling of html and the like.

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

"I think every writer has a genre or subgenre that they admire, but find baffling. Like a snake charmer watching a trapeze artist."

I actually had a situation like that in real life once. Myself and a shipmate got a chance to sit down and discuss life on submarine with a pair of guys who worked on a carrier's flight deck. Each pair left the discussion convinced their lifestyle was perfectly normal... and the other guys were screaming batshit insane.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

THere was a Gordy Dickson juvenile SF novel whose title escapes me at the moment where the two young protagonists, upon discovering each other's hobby/internship jobs were horrified at the risks the other one seemed to be taking while being blase about the perils of their own work. I only remember the girl used to "walk" sharks in an aquarium pool at a marine reseach lab to keep them alive after anaesthesia, something she regarded as no big deal.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

"Still cannot xpost to Dreamwidth"

Crossposting FROM Dreamwidth has always worked smoothly. That's what most people do. When LJ is under DDOS attack, DW can keep trying the crosspost till it goes through.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

I am guessing the problem was that the date on one entry somehow got set to March and changing the time for a later post whose date was in Feb didn't help.

Medical Personnel

[nathan helfinstine (from livejournal.com)]

There's a lot of discussion above about medical personnel. I believe a world in which human intervention is needed to save lives, is not a post-scarcity world. "Human attention" is a limited resource no matter how large the population is, and if the scarcity of something effects lives, then it's not really post-scarcity at all. So a post-scarcity world is one in which nanobots automatically repair your body, or you get downloaded into a new body without anyone having to oversee the process, or something like that. If you want a haircut, sure some human might be willing to do it... or you could have a computer controlled haircut whenever you want, or instruct the nanites in your pillow to shape it while you sleep, or whatever.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

"On top of that, it's damnably hard to fashion a sympathetic protagonist out of someone who has never struggled in the way we struggle in our own lives, to present someone who does not come off as a monster of privilege."

Really? Telzey Amberdon, Nancy Drew, Peter Wimsey, Nero Wolfe, Perry Mason, Lambert Strether, Sherlock Holmes, Judge Dee, Tarzan, Sybil Coningsby.

[dbdatvic.livejournal.com]

And John Stuart Mill nearly went mad because he couldn't turn pages fast enough to keep up with his reading speed...

--Dave, different people struggle in different ways. Holmes was using the cocaine for SOME reason, after all. Lord Peter Wimsey had a definite case of PTSD, a strong one. Telzey kept getting caught up in these PLOTS that other beings entangled her in... Wolfe had some back history with the separatists in or near Montenegro, if I recall right. And Tarzan? Raised by APES, hello?

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

Bertie Wooster. He and his peers are aware of it, too, having the Drones Club. (Well, they are; Bertie's not the brightest fellow in England.) Bertie was raised from birth to be a monster of privilege, but that doesn't keep the reader from sympathizing with his struggles to help one of his even more dim-witted friends or evade the wrath of one of his fire-breathing aunts.