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It's very interesting to consider what kind of social structures could eventuate in a post-scarcity society.



The obvious example of an extreme post-scarcity society is, of course, the Culture from the novels of Iain M. Banks.

Interesting to note the emphasis in both BNW and the Culture on drug taking. In the case of the culture their bodies are engineered to produce a wide variety of drugs on demand:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture

You could argue that the humans in the Culture are effectively kept as pets by the god-like AIs that run that civilization. However, this is probably less threatening than it sounds as the Culture seems to be quite open to people (or AIs) leaving for whatever reason and seems to be slightly reticent about encouraging immigration as they are aware that it looks like a form of disguised colonialism.




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