Thulean Economics III

I am spending some time on Yuval Noah Harari's Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (London, 2017) because it is a newly published non-fictional treatment of issues that Poul Anderson, who died in 2001, had addressed in several works of fiction. As HG Wells' Time Traveler visited an evolutionary future determined by Victorian class stratifications, Anderson transports his readers into future societies determined by AI and nanotech.

Yuval writes that the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny elite could cause:

"...unprecedented social and political inequality." (Chapter 9, p. 376)

My way of summarizing this here was to refer to "...poverty and powerlessness for everyone else..." but, of course, this was the old way of thinking. Powerlessness, yes. However, Yuval continues:

"The coming technological bonanza will probably make it feasible to feed and support these useless masses even without any effort from their side." (p. 381)

- provided that the powers that be see fit to do so. In that case, these "useless masses" (!) would not be poor in the old sense. But poverty is relative. The "poor" in a welfare state are rich when contrasted with many previous generations. If the former "use" of the "masses" was to earn their living, then we might conclude that "living" in its fullest sense, not enforced drudgery, is what life is about.

Yuval asks what these unemployed masses will do. That question was part of the reason for the Humanist Revolution in Anderson's much earlier Psychotechnic History.