[lkbm]

This seems more optimistic than I usually hear. Do you mind going into what you mean by "post-scarcity" and how we'd achieve it? Does it just mean a living UBI, or is there tech/infrastructure (extensive solar, e.g.) to be developed/built out as well?

[ap22213]

Our current global scientific and engineering output is staggering, and it is continuously accelerating. If there was a global 'manhattan project' focused on this, then it would happen.

Global economic output is $80 trillion. There are 100s of millions of scientists, engineers, programmers, technicians in the world. Aside from the ideological complexities, which are probably intractable, it seems like it would be pretty easy to me.

What would it really take to provide basic housing, food, water, clothing, energy, and medicines to 7 billion people? Robotic automation, free / cheap energy, and access to natural resources.

[LesZedCB]

we bulldoze away houses, we throw away food. meanwhile, people are homeless and hungry. Clearly we already live in a society of overproduction.

The difference is that the owners of the capital aren't willing to lose on their investments, and it's cheaper to bulldoze and throw away than to give it away or provide work maintaining the communities that these properties exist in/on.

[chmln]

> we bulldoze away houses etc

People can do whatever they want to their property, no?

Do you personally allow homeless people into your house?

Problems you mentioned are real and tough, but the objections are very simplistic. Its very easy to demand others to do something, and distance yourself away.

[LesZedCB]

appealing to individualism won't solve systemic problems. I don't have to house syrian refugee immigrants in my home personally to realize that europe has an ethical problem by refusing them and treating them the way they have been.

There is a long and historical precedent for demanding that people with excess amounts of capital owe a greater portion than those who own relatively little. There are material differences between the capitalists and all the rest of us, and those allow us to demand specific concessions from them.