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Fully Automated Luxury Communism by Aaron Bastani

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Fully Automated Luxury Communism

by Aaron Bastani

Narrator Shaun Grindell

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Length 7 hours 42 minutes

Language English

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“In my experience, readers find this book to be inspiring, infuriating, or a bit of both. Bastani takes a big-picture look at emerging trends in technology and argues that we are in a period of cultural and economic change which he calls the 'third disruption' which is as profound and disruptive as the advent of agriculture or the industrial revolution. Bastani looks at trends in areas of computing power, artificial intelligence, space travel, gene editing, renewable energy, and synthetic biology to argue that our future can be filled with sustainable abundance rather than scarcity and collapse. He also argues that who controls these technologies will determine whether our trajectory as a society will bend toward a just utopia or dystopian nightmare. Whether or not Bastani oversimplifies the promise of these technologies (he does), he helps us take a sobering look at the big trends in technological change and their implications for our social, economic and political order and grapple with the consequences. This book was perfect fodder for a book club discussion and I recommend reading and debating its contents with others.”
— Peter • Turning the Tide Bookstore

Summary
About the author
About the narrator

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.

Business Politics & Economy Science & Technology Nonfiction

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.

Born and raised in Southampton, England, Shaun Grindell is an accomplished actor who trained at the Calland School of Speech and Drama and the Lee Strasberg Actors Institute in London. As an audiobook narrator, he has narrated many titles in different genres. Among his most notable works are the Hamish Macbeth mysteries by M. C. Beaton. Shaun also garnered an AudioFile Earphones Award for his reading of The Roving Party by Rohan Wilson.