The hairless apes that are in charge have a very long and consistent history of power abuse.
[spoiler alert]
Everyone has a remote kill switch in their spinal cord. Once the goverment decides to be evil, any rebel will get their legs instructed to walk to a pea facility for "reeducation".
Compared to this scenario, 1984 is almost as optimistic as Equilibrium.
Who selects the questions people vote? What happens when they get something like this in the screen in the middle of a football match:
> We have preliminary evidence that XYZ is a terrorist and we are sending him to a nice special house with a swimming pool to protect everyone until the investigation finishes. [OK] [Ask me later]
They have some chips they insert into your spine to read your thoughts and other similar stuff.
But personally the “dystopia” to me feels very much like something we could end up with -it’s much more a warning. Meanwhile the fantastic nature of the utopia doesn’t really matter in contrast, because the idea of sharing society’s abundance with everyone is clearly possible.
It's possible if we believe human nature to be sufficiently malleable. Why can't we all just get along. Perhaps the mountains that need to be moved for such a thing are as daunting as some of the physical laws we try to hurdle instead
There are nations and societies very different from the United States. In the United States, we can see the distrust in our neighbors play out politically, contrasted with other societies trust. You can even see it play out across various states and regions. Perhaps they’re not mountains imposed by human nature, but our perception of society.
Other nations have socialized healthcare, where anyone can be treated. Other nations have calm safe and clean public transit. Other nation’s redistribute wealth and provide strong safety nets. Other nations don’t have mass violence. Other nations guarantee retirement and pensions. Other nations trust their governments.
The fantasy physics aren’t what’s holding people back.
> Other nations have socialized healthcare, where anyone can be treated. Other nations have calm safe and clean public transit. Other nation’s redistribute wealth and provide strong safety nets. Other nations don’t have mass violence. Other nations guarantee retirement and pensions. Other nations trust their governments.
I feel like this is very much in flux, and not a constant anywhere. And it's something that is contested over continually. In some places there have been generations of rising quality of life, but not everywhere, all at once.
Is that genuinely what you think sharing means? Everyone everywhere has everything? Obviously that’s not the case. And even if it was, why can’t independent inventors create thing in the meantime?
Have you heard anyone genuinely espouse this view? Is this what you think socialized healthcare means too? Everyone gets the exact same medical procedure at the same time too?
Just be clear, that’s not even what “communism” is. This feels like a misinformed understanding of “sharing” based on American propaganda. That’s just American propaganda derived from Soviet era rationing. Read the story this thread is about first.
Sorry, I'm not sure if you're replying to someone else - I didn't mention socialised healthcare or communism.
> the idea of sharing society’s abundance with everyone is clearly possible
This is what I was replying to. I'm saying that discovery comes with "inequality" in some sense, because it takes time to distribute and refine processes for making things. Only rich people 100 years ago could afford what would now be classed as the worst cars in the world. Now almost anyone can buy a car, at least in developed nations. But you don't need to think of it as "sharing", but rather as "markets". Goods and services that are worth scaling, and can be scaled, will be.
[spoiler alert]
Everyone has a remote kill switch in their spinal cord. Once the goverment decides to be evil, any rebel will get their legs instructed to walk to a pea facility for "reeducation".
Compared to this scenario, 1984 is almost as optimistic as Equilibrium.