[Space] and [UT] for New Space Opera

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Post scarcity can be seen in the background in some 40s and 50s Heinlein too. Beyond This Horizon for one example.

That's more post-industrial than post-scarcity. The marginal value of human labour as such is so low that people have to be given a public dividend to survive, but no-one has unlimited consumption.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

That's more post-industrial than post-scarcity. The marginal value of human labour as such is so low that people have to be given a public dividend to survive, but no-one has unlimited consumption.

No, that's not how things worked in Beyond This Horizon. People didn't work for a living and have their income supplemented to a survival level. Rather they were given a basic lifestyle and earned extra money to upgrade their lifestyle if they desired i.e eat at restaurants instead of communal tables.

[whswhs]

The real argument in Beyond This Horizon wasn't that the dividend was needed to keep people from starving to death—apparently food production was quite high—but that the economy was in serious danger of overproduction/underconsumption, and means had to be found of enhancing demand. This was an expression not of Keynesian economics but of the earlier and less reputable theories that Keynes found a kind word for in the General Theory. They could have spent the newly created money on all sorts of things, and in fact they did so—for example, the Pluto expedition—but subsidizing the basic standard of living was one way of soaking up excess productivity.

In fact Heinlein starts out by explaining this, in the very first chapter, when Felix asks Clifford what would happen if the entire apparatus of macroeconomic planning were shut down, and Clifford says, in effect, "old-style boom and bust capitalism." Though Heinlein wasn't so clear about it.

But I agree that it wasn't a post-scarcity society. I think that Heinlein, as a Darwinian, would have considered that impossible.

Bill Stoddard

[Agemegos]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

No, that's not how things worked in Beyond This Horizon. People didn't work for a living and have their income supplemented to a survival level. Rather they were given a basic lifestyle and earned extra money to upgrade their lifestyle if they desired i.e eat at restaurants instead of communal tables.

Same thing. They had income from work and from a public dividend; which was "basic" is undecidable. Both were necessary to maintain their consumption (or standard of living, if you prefer to call it that) at the level that society thought desirable and necessary.

It was not a post-scarcity setting. It was a setting in which the productivity of machines had made the value of labour so low that a wage alone could not support a person at a socially-acceptable standard of living, and therefore it was post-industrial but not post-scarcity.

[VulpesFulva]

In my mind, any space opera has an overall more optimistic outlook than a lot of current fiction. The Good Guys get to Win, even if the Bad Guys get away or are continually replaced.

And yet, the "Good Guys" aren't necessarily as "pure good" as the rock-jawed football players who luck into sci-fi tropes loosely based on colonial fiction. Take Guardians of the Galaxy: the "good guys" are convicted felons. Nuance and moral relativism are still things, they're just not the driving force.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by johndallman

There are always exceptions: John W Campbell's story Forgetfulness, published in 1937 (as Don A Stuart) has post-scarcity.

That's nice. But Forgetfulness wasn't space opera. It lacked both cosmic scope and the element of being an adventure story. The same thing applies to the Midas Plague. So while there might be exceptions those aren't it.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Same thing. They had income from work and from a public dividend; which was "basic" is undecidable. Both were necessary to maintain their consumption (or standard of living, if you prefer to call it that) at the level that society thought desirable and necessary.

It was not a post-scarcity setting. It was a setting in which the productivity of machines had made the value of labour so low that a wage alone could not support a person at a socially-acceptable standard of living, and therefore it was post-industrial but not post-scarcity.

Your analysis if false to my memory and I do not find your arguments compelling.

It was quite clear to me that one could live off the dividend and many did. I think Felix's friend the mathematician did that due to an indifference to most things that weren't math.

Felix's work as a game designer (think pinball machines for those who haven't read the book) was a way to avoid boredom and what he produced helped other people avoid boredom. Avoiding boredom does not meet my definition of "economic need".

The government certainly suffered from no scarcity except possibly a scarcity of worthwhile projects to spend their money on.

No, I simply do not agree with your viewpoint.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by whswhs

The real argument in Beyond This Horizon wasn't that the dividend was needed to keep people from starving to death—apparently food production was quite high—but that the economy was in serious danger of overproduction/underconsumption, and means had to be found of enhancing demand. This was an expression not of Keynesian economics but of the earlier and less reputable theories that Keynes found a kind word for in the General Theory. They could have spent the newly created money on all sorts of things, and in fact they did so—for example, the Pluto expedition—but subsidizing the basic standard of living was one way of soaking up excess productivity.

I believe Beyond This Horizon was using the Social Credit economic theory, just without the endless lectures about it that were in Heinlein's then unpublished For Us the Living.

Somewhere (Grumbles From The Grave, I think.) Heinlein said that his starting premise was "If we solve the problems of economics and politics, what will people care about/fight over/etc?" He didn't want to write about the obvious choice of love, so he choose eugenics.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

It was quite clear to me that one could live off the dividend and many did. I think Felix's friend the mathematician did that due to an indifference to most things that weren't math.

Felix's work as a game designer (think pinball machines for those who haven't read the book) was a way to avoid boredom and what he produced helped other people avoid boredom. Avoiding boredom does not meet my definition of "economic need".

I don't think "a functioning welfare state that does not increase poverty or generate social pathology" is the definition of "post-scarcity." It may be utopian, at least by our standards, but its achievements are more modest than that. No one called Sweden "post-scarcity," even when Sweden wasn't dealing with the side effects of a financial crisis.

Bill Stoddard

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

The government certainly suffered from no scarcity except possibly a scarcity of worthwhile projects to spend their money on.

No, I simply do not agree with your viewpoint.

Your dispute is based on different interpretations of the concept of "post-scarcity"...but it doesn't matter. That wasn't a space opera story either