[peppers-ghost]

To me at least it's hard to imagine a good future because I understand climate change will ruin quality of life for most of humanity. I know what must be done to combat it will not be done due to the economic systems that dominate most countries. It's easier to envision the end of the world than it is to envision the end of capitalism.

Just knowing we do have the ability to slow things down, but actively choose not to in the name of profits and comfort is incredibly depressing and demotivating. The future looks bleak because it will be.

[worldsayshi]

> It's easier to envision the end of the world than it is to envision the end of capitalism.

Yes, so let us try to envision the end of capitalism; in a myriad different stories. That's one thing I want sci fi writers to do.

[abakker]

We don't even need this - we have a pretty good explanation for what's going on, it's just that people don't want to admit it. the reality is that "work grows to fill available space", but, up until a point. Slowing/declining populations, but high workforce productivity speak to the basic tenets of the population-led economic growth model starting to get a little suspect.

A very broad brush view might be that it took 60 years for automations in the workplace to finally match pace with demand, but increasing automation in knowledge work vs the potential for aggregate demand to fall means we'll have to come to terms with the "required" level of productivity, rather than assuming more growth is the objective.

If we can get this right, we might see the globe get more equal, more leisure time, and a shrinking of the investment sector since the pursuit of growth might get more nuanced. All of that would take a long time, though.

[ryandrake]

Anything written about "Ending Capitalism" will remain speculative fiction for the foreseeable future. Capitalism has become humanity's majority religion--people believe in it almost without question. Ending capitalism as about as likely as ending Christianity or ending Islam. I don't think it's possible to have enough utopian fiction to cause us even envision ending it.

[bawolff]

> Yes, so let us try to envision the end of capitalism; in a myriad different stories. That's one thing I want sci fi writers to do.

It does seem like everyone on this thread wants that as the main authors mentioned are ursula le guin (e.g. the dispossed) and iain m banks.

[eli_gottlieb]

>It's easier to envision the end of the world than it is to envision the end of capitalism.

Is it? Or have people just convinced themselves that everything except their personal utopia is capitalism?

[peppers-ghost]

Not sure I understand what you're getting at here. The only country not dominated by market forces that I know of is China and it's barely the case even there.