[cardanome]

> The last part is why all the most socially realistic depictions of societies like this are post-scarcity where they've mastered some kind of sci-fi energy source (cheap easy fusion, antimatter, tapping the zero point, etc.).

Yeah, Marx already had these kind of discussions in the 19th century.

It is very interesting that you arrived to similar conclusions while employing a very different methodology.

Marxism evolved out of a criticism of what they call utopian socialism. Marx realized that socialism could only be build upon the massive development of productivity forces that would lead towards a post scarcity society.

Which is also why actually existing socialism struggled so hard. A revolution is more likely to occur in the least developed parts of the world but that also means it will be one of the hardest places to implement socialism in. Especially while having to defend itself against the rest of the world.

Many Marxists didn't even believe it could be possible to build socialism in such a condition but the Soviet Union proved otherwise. It brought many millions of people out of poverty but also had to make some hard and maybe sometimes wrong choices.

The good news is that these days even the least developed parts of the world are vastly more developed than they were in the 19th or 20th century. Modern actually existing socialism will look vastly different. Plus the rot of the latest stage of capitalism is showing more and more.

So socialism might be closer than we might think.

[api]

Not really. Marx didn't know anything about game theory. But he did come up with some adjacent ideas.

> the Soviet Union proved otherwise. It brought many millions of people out of poverty but also had to make some hard and maybe sometimes wrong choices.

I think that's giving the USSR way too much credit. Had they had, say, a more boring democratic revolution and joined social democratic Europe they'd have done a whole lot better.