some of the time. Preferably divorced from the fixing of blame for the present and obvious inequities which clearly imply: Some homo-sap is 'worth' a million times what some other homo-sap is worth. (I don't know how to make it simpler than that, without being simplistic too)

Again, my recently discovered book "Anthology of Dystopias" called, Science Fiction and the New Dark Age (Harold Berger '76) categorizes in relevant ways:
(Gross categories)

I. The threat of science
II. The new tyrannies
III. Catastrophe


Under II. appears, Commerce and Exploitation

I'd say we are well within that last category, and (science need not be prepended) fiction writers have tried to see some way of acknowledging the diminishing need for 'workers' - whether building their own machine-replacements, servicing same or .. related: we 'need' fewer of such (in Murica say, such as it is: today). This even before we see that we don't actually 'need' a fraction of all the crap we sell each other -- thinking we have to have Something too do..

When the entire planet is tallied however, from stone-age lifestyle through the solopsistic antics of Scott McNealy and his brethren - it's clear that 'our' position is irrelevant.. so long as most of the world is much nearer the cave than the UAV.

Still, most such what-ifs postulate 'techno' as the immutable and inexorable path >>> er forward. And the entire speculation is rendered much wider when one contemplates another sub-category from above: population. This facet is not even discussable in many Popular religious corporations (and at least one book reviewed: deals with massive crowding forced by the Theological mindsets which demand brain-deadness on the topic).

Etc.

We haven't the foggiest how to distribute wealth with some minimal concept of mere adequacy nor do any but the outliers even worry pretty little heads about the above questions / er Questions. If the religious bugaboos do not trump application of reason: the now political connotations [cf. communism/socialism/sharing = horrors!] will deter any but the brave -- from serious considerations.

Our shibboleths about forbidden topics + a decaying regard for keeping language safe from the cupidity of bizness lying as a way of life: may be all it takes to guarantee that

Science Fiction and the New Dark Age shall become our epitaph, while later readers from proxima-Betelgeuse muse over the fact: Hey.. some of this asshole species saw this coming and.. still! they fucked up their planet terminally, along with our buddies the Porpoises with a Purpose...

{sigh} Worrying won't help. What me worry? Alfred E. Neumann Gets It / We Don't.



Ashton
just watching.
doing is out of the questiion.