In the future, robots have taken over all or virtually manufacturing and production, with the result that capacity has outstripped demand and prices plummeted. In order to support the economy there are laws requiring people to buy ever increasing numbers of products even if they don’t need them or want them. The system was set up such that the poorer a person is, the more he must buy; so that only the very rich own very little.
Fredrick Pohl–Midas Plague.
Apparently it was a parody of some screwball idea about economics that John Campbell was promoting.
Thank you!
OK, here’s another one; possibly published in Omni.
In this future world, art must be completely original. There’s a musical genius named Sugar who composes in isolation (as he cannot be subject to any outside influences). Somehow he gets ahold of a Bach recording. He’s found out because his monitors noticed that fugues have completely disappeared from his music. (He’d avoided them so as to hide that he’d listened to another composer.) I believe he was sent to prison. He was on a prison road crew, or else got a job on a road crew after he got out. He was whistling a tune, and another worker said, ‘That’s a Sugar song!’ I don’t remember if people were allowed to sing songs or not.
Unaccompanied Sonata, by Orson Scott Card
Thank you, too!
God, we’re awesome at this game.
Here’s one I must have read in the early 80s. Probably by someone really famous…
A man works at a toy company in design. A girl there gives him mixed signals. They fall in love one day and she hates him the next. Turns out the girl is a set of clones and one of them did love him and he ends up hoping the ‘next’ one will do so again.
I guess I’m not so good at this game. That does remind me of a major plot twist in The Prestigebut with the genders reversed.