General Comment On Post-Scarcity

Tue, 02 Nov 2021 21:30:56 +0000

I have a problem with post-scarcity as a term. It's more accurately called post-need. Nobody starves, nobody is deprived of education or opportunities. But some things are always going to be scarce: custom original literature or artworks, a night of passion spent with the hottest person on the habitat, weapons of mass destruction, ginormous starships, habitable planets… You can't get everything in a "post-scarcity" society and you shouldn't get everything in a "post-scarcity" society. Some objects or services are going to be rare due to difficulty of manufacture or acquiring the general trust of society to access such things.

So the civs in SA are definitely post-need but their metrics for what constitutes a basic need certainly differ. An average citizen of the Tao Of History has Metatech 5 which is basically mind control powers. Such a citizen could wreak havoc in a habitat belonging to the Disciples Of The Void. Their civilisational Metatech has a maximum of 2. How do the Disciples protect themselves from being subverted by a malicious Taoist or missionary Unionist?

Also, how do these Civs with these different attitudes to what are basic tech police themselves within their own societies and without?

EDIT: Looks like I misunderstood the term post-scarcity. Looks like it means post energy and resource scarcity.