Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani
Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani
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Fully Automated Luxury Communism

Author: Aaron Bastani

Narrator: Shaun Grindell

Unabridged: 7 hr 42 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 08/25/2020


Synopsis

A different kind of politics for a new kind of society—beyond work, scarcity, and capitalism

In the twenty-first century, new technologies should liberate us from work. Automation, rather than undermining an economy built on full employment, is instead the path to a world of liberty, luxury, and happiness—for everyone. Technological advance will reduce the value of commodities—food, healthcare, and housing—towards zero.

Improvements in renewable energies will make fossil fuels a thing of the past. Asteroids will be mined for essential minerals. Genetic editing and synthetic biology will prolong life, virtually eliminate disease, and provide meat without animals. New horizons beckon.

In Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Aaron Bastani conjures a vision of extraordinary hope, showing how we move to energy abundance, feed a world of 9 billion, overcome work, transcend the limits of biology, and establish meaningful freedom for everyone. Rather than a final destination, such a society merely heralds the real beginning of history.

About Aaron Bastani

Aaron Bastani is co-founder and Senior Editor at Novara Media and has a doctorate from the University of London. His research interests include new media, social movements and political economy. He has written for Vice, the Guardian, the London Review of Books and the New York Times and regularly appears as a commentator on the BBC and Sky News.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Naomi

There was a lot here I disagreed with. The move to this kind of society should be led by the resource-rich global south, not pulling "underdeveloped" countries behind to be exploited for their minerals in the transition. The chapter on renewable energy is totally unrealistic and he doesn't mention n......more

Goodreads review by W.D.

Brucie's thoughts—pretty streamers Guess this world needs its dreamers May they never wake up…. —Prefab Sprout, Cars and GirlsOK, you got me: I did put that epigraph in there mainly cos I just love love love the lyrical stylings of Paddy McAloon from Prefab Sprout, true, but nevertheless I do still ha......more

Renewable energy solving our insatiable power demands and automation saving us from spirit crushing bullshit jobs? Lab-grown meat ending animal farming and feeding the world? Asteroid mining ending mineral scarcity? This is optimism! But grounded. I confess I was likely to be a fan before I turned th......more

Goodreads review by Robert

I'm skeptical of tech-utopianism, and I think Bastani is too starry-eyed in some places, but I think that this book and books like this are essential and valuable, if for no other reason than as a reminder of the great possibility of the future and the sheer abundance of the world we live in, if we......more