[m_fayer]

Agreed it’s a tolerable vision, it could be worse. But it’s also a vision of humanity mostly living in enormous disenfranchised structural underclasses - corporate-authoritarianism in the asteroids and subsistence-UBI for all those unnecessary humans on Earth.

It’s a vision of incredible technological progress without any growth in our ability to justly and humanely govern ourselves or move past violent conflict.

I agree with GP this is our current trajectory. I’d live in that world and hope I’d get lucky, but what a disappointment if that’s all we can manage.

[XorNot]

I don't know that there was a lot wrong with Earth under the Expanse though.

The problems there were kind of organic: they just didn't need that many people, but they did have UBI, but even if you wanted to better yourself and were exceptional at your job... You could still be 50,001 in the queue of the 50,000 they needed.

Earth in the expanse desperately needed places to expand too and send people, but the solar system just wasn't that habitable.

[m_fayer]

One of the reasons I love the Expanse so much is how deftly it wove subtle economic and resource dynamics into the plot, while also integrating so many other themes, genres, and styles.

I agree with your analysis of the cause of Earth's troubles, though I'm not sure that adds up to not much being wrong with it. The Earth in the Expanse never figured out how to deal with "excess humans" and the result was planet-Baltimore, that seems pretty wrong to me. And I don't think it's too soon for us to be taking a hard look at how this is likely to work out on the real Earth.