Food still has to be produced. Energy still has to be produced. All that stuff has to be paid for somehow or the producers stop producing for the freeloaders.
The question is: what happens when most or all of the food and energy is being produced not by human labor, but by fully-automated processes? Why would, say, a farming robot care whether someone is "freeloading" off its labor?
What you think of as a mental hurdle I see as a way of discerning what is mine from what is yours. Show me a developed nation where a person actually doesn't have any personal property.
The idea of a post-scarcity society is not incompatible with the idea of personal property. It is incompatible with continuing to believe that basic necessities such as food, shelter, water, medicine, and possibly other things should be apportioned on a "did you earn it" basis, because that notion dates to a time when it truly was necessary for each person to put in continual effort to ensure enough of those things were produced. These things are no longer super-scarce and no longer require anywhere near the effort to produce that they used to; society should adjust in response to that change.
There is no logical reason, if the capability exists to automatically produce sufficient basic necessities for every human being, why every human being should still have to do a make-work job in order to prove they "deserve" those things. And you could still have all the capitalism you like for anything that isn't a basic necessity; the basic life doesn't have to be one of luxury, just one free from worry about things like food and shelter; the currency of such a society would need to be tied to something other than control of basic-necessity resources, but finding alternative bases for currency is something people already do for fun.
Food still requires valuable farmland, water, energy, fertilizers, pest control, capital to buy and expand the automation, operating costs and labor to repair and oversee the operations. It's an enormous amount of initial capital investment and a massive on-going operating expenses, and that's just for basic farming.
Now, add all the post-processing and transportation logistics after the food comes out of the ground to get to basic staple ingredients. Then add all the preparation activities, cooking, and packing to get to the Hot Pocket/Pop Tart level of salable food (or food-like) product.
Watersheds need to be protected; water needs to be treated, tested, stored, and pumped under pressure through a distribution network of pipes. Sewerage needs to be piped in the other direction, treated, and disposed of.
Electricity needs space, energy input, capital, and opex and a distribution network that needs on-going maintenance and repair. Gas lines need a lot of the same. Internet distribution needs...
Medicine needs space, energy, [lots of] people with specialized training just to apply the state of today's art. It also has a large research and development component responsible for ensuring that we aren't still using leeches to treat "Bilious fever".
> Why would, say, a farming robot care whether someone is "freeloading" off its labor?
The obvious rebuttal is that someone has to build and maintain the farming robot, so this is the guy whom you would be freeloading of.
On a more general note: The concept of property only ever arises because of scarcity. For example, you wouldn't describe yourself as owning the air in your apartment, since there is ample air. A diver, on the other hand, would definitely declare ownership in the air in your air bottle.
So how can we implement a post-scarcity society? My best guess would be to work on affordable technology that makes basic things like water, food, clothes or internet access not scarce anymore.
"There is no logical reason, if the capability exists to automatically produce sufficient basic necessities for every human being, why every human being should still have to do a make-work job in order to prove they "deserve" those things. And you could still have all the capitalism you like for anything that isn't a basic necessity; the basic life doesn't have to be one of luxury, just one free from worry about things like food and shelter; the currency of such a society would need to be tied to something other than control of basic-necessity resources, but finding alternative bases for currency is something people already do for fun."
Well, let the people who live on welfare invent and create the machines that will give them free food, water, heat and living space. They surely have a lot of time to devote to that, not having to work for a living.
"Post scarcity" only exists and continues because of continued efforts which continue only because of reward/profits. No profit => no effort.
The other problem is what constitutes basic necessity. I can build you a "human terrarium" of 100 sq ft, HVAC, clean water, disposal, and 4 bottles Soylent per day - leaving you 18 hours daily to procreate & demand more. What is the limit to your demands? You have ample opportunity & resources to earn your own survival with ease; now you demand I provide your total basic survival needs from my own efforts, taking what I would give my own offspring - ENOUGH! BEGONE!
The question is: what happens when most or all of the food and energy is being produced not by human labor, but by fully-automated processes? Why would, say, a farming robot care whether someone is "freeloading" off its labor?
What you think of as a mental hurdle I see as a way of discerning what is mine from what is yours. Show me a developed nation where a person actually doesn't have any personal property.
The idea of a post-scarcity society is not incompatible with the idea of personal property. It is incompatible with continuing to believe that basic necessities such as food, shelter, water, medicine, and possibly other things should be apportioned on a "did you earn it" basis, because that notion dates to a time when it truly was necessary for each person to put in continual effort to ensure enough of those things were produced. These things are no longer super-scarce and no longer require anywhere near the effort to produce that they used to; society should adjust in response to that change.
There is no logical reason, if the capability exists to automatically produce sufficient basic necessities for every human being, why every human being should still have to do a make-work job in order to prove they "deserve" those things. And you could still have all the capitalism you like for anything that isn't a basic necessity; the basic life doesn't have to be one of luxury, just one free from worry about things like food and shelter; the currency of such a society would need to be tied to something other than control of basic-necessity resources, but finding alternative bases for currency is something people already do for fun.