Although I am personally sceptical about the wild eyed rantings of “technologists” like Kurzweil, I regard the situation not so much as communism requires star trek replicators to work, but rather, star trek replicators require communism to work. In this case, a communist system is put into place deliberately to retard innovation.
Once a society has reached that level of technical innovation, it requires a very deliberate and delicate equilibrium. A society must, at the same time, make all monotonous tasks automated and invisible while also restricting the use of automation in as many tasks that humans find pleasure in doing as possible. Unless this is done, in a comparatively short time, all jobs would become automated and human work would become obsolete. Looking at current historical examples, the human race is not good at coping with such a lifestyle and we would quickly descend into hedonism. In short, we would become a society of Paris Hiltons.
A communist government where all innovation, at least that related to automation, remains strictly in the purview of the government where presumably wiser heads would prevail is the only way I see that can prevent such a thing.
I’ll agree that the concept of shoveling shit was an important one. But once the idea took root, the actual act of shoveling shit really doesn’t lead anywhere. I’ve actually shoveled shit for a living - trust me when I say it’s not as glamorous as it appears.
Today that left-wing propaganda rag, the Wall Street Journal, was gushing about the benefits of large govenment, high taxes, generous welfare, and strong public egalitarianism.
Now, these countries are not Communist. They are capitalist. But, as you can see, in no way does a large government have to “ruin” any political system.
Likewise, the size of its government is not a factor in determining whether or not a communist-based system “works”.
The solution to bad govenment is not less government, it is good government.
