What does Socialism look like to you?

[joshcryer]

130. After over a year I figured out how to frame what socialism looks like.

Socialism looks like a young child waking up in a comfortable temperature, slipping out of bed into a new pair of slippers that fit just right, waltzing to the kitchen to make breakfast, being greeted by family.

The child is only 6 years old but can decide breakfast for the entire family, and does it.

Breakfast is made, everyone gets PB&J waffles, covered in freshly crushed pecans and maple syrup, as well as a nice tall cold glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

How was breakfast made?

Everyone made it.

Maybe this day dad walked to the skyscraper's arboretum and hand picked some pecans off of a screen that they had been collecting on as they naturally fell from the tree, carried them back to the dwelling, and shelled them by hand.

Or maybe the mom popped them in a de-shelling gadget on the counter.

Or maybe the child had the pecans collected from the same arboretum, within walking distance, by an automated rover picking machine.

Or maybe any one of them performed any one of the above tasks.

But there they have it, pecans. Nicely crushed, perfect added texture.

Where did the waffles come from? PB&J, even? Well, peanuts are growing in the vertical skyscraper, somewhere. Maybe a week earlier the child and parents waltzed down to where they were growing and pulled them out of nutrient rich synthetic "media" to protect the pods from over-saturation in the hydroponic system. Mom being sure to check the pH balance which is almost always accurate when they leave the hydroponics area, but it can't hurt to check. If it alerted, which it almost never did, it would give instructions to fix the problem. Maybe mom checked so diligently because she knew about the hydroponics systems or maybe she checked because she was annoyed it worked so well and wanted to be the first to fix something there.

Maybe the peanuts were automatically picked, shelled, and delivered, in ground powdered recipe form, just like the pecans.

The oranges, same thing, different section of the skyscraper, same basic premise. The batter? Need lots of flower, probably a really fascinating hydroponics wheat field somewhere on the facility. Maybe the child still hadn't seen it except on a tablet that was made in another facility nearby. Maybe the parents didn't take him because he'd get excited and want to run the gamut, of 3 football fields of wheat growing in a brightly lit room, rustling his fingers through every stalk he could.

From each according to their ability, to each according to their need. Except, ability is meaningless and needs are obvious, wants are more curious. Socialism is to me simply the act of making breakfast together, even if it takes all week to gather the materials and process them by hand if desired or if it's done with the press of a button, without there being any productive and artifical limitation on those in the process. With a plethora of options that wants are decided by a child who just wandered into the kitchen because two confounded parents couldn't decide.

No one shells peanuts to put on the market, no one shells pecans, you do it yourself, or if you doubt yourself, you have a machine do it for you. Or maybe you don't give a crap about making breakfast and you would rather program the machines that do it for you, and the other person next to you, because once code is written it can be copied with zero marginal cost. Just as if I share some seeds it is the representation of a plant which replicates genetically in the appropriate environment at zero marginal cost.

No exact production, no scarcity indexes, no calculations, simply an overabundance of any easily grown foods stuff in a hydroponic or aeroponic medium lit by LED lighting powered by the sun, or maybe fission energy, or maybe fusion. Not the wind though.

There's no appreciable wind on Mars. But there's plenty of thorium.