Alright. Thanks for that book recommendation.

That does make a lot of sense. Is there something you can point me towards to find out more?

Thank you for your kind words :)

It's funny, but I see Brave New World as being explicitly based on Capitalism and the assembly line, but I don't really notice other people bring that stuff up. I often see people saying, as you do, that it just does a good job of providing goods, and therefore allows people to live rich and fulfilling lives. I assume that is because we are very far down along this type of way of living, which is why the assumptions that underpin it are hidden to many, because they are many of the same assumptions that underpin our current society.

I haven't read Brave New World for years, so I apologise if I make mistakes.

So Ford is the great hero, because his Assembly line as an industrial process brought great efficiency. It gives you mass production at an even greater pace. It manufactures standardised forms to increase efficiency, so nothing purpose built for a specific situation. It divides the work into components, with each person performing one single task, rather than being involved in a whole process of construction. Each person is a small cog, with a very specific and single purpose.

With this mass production is required mass consumption, which is why everybody has to constantly buy new things. And these things are designed to be complex so as to require more production. This level of complexity is important, because with increased efficiency, you need to produce more to have the same level of work.

And you need to give everybody jobs, because that is important. So more things need to be produced to give them jobs. And now that everybody has jobs, they need to use that money they earn to buy the products to make sure everybody else has jobs. Everybody has to use most of their money on the products to ensure the economy functions and everybody has work.

So the logic is not providing for the needs of the people, but the needs of the people serve the level of production achieved.

Alongside the Assembly line of Ford, you also have the development of management to improve industrial efficiency, like in works by F. W. Taylor. (I read We by Yevgeny Zamyatin very recently, but was already aware of this historical element of management for improved efficiency)

The hedonistic pursuit, I believe, isn't the goal, but a method of providing for societal goals. It helps sustain this society. This type of focus of society does not provide for human needs. People are separated from their work, so they cannot gain meaning because they perform a single task in extreme repetition. And the point of their work is to create more work, because it satisfies no existing human needs. So hedonistic pursuit is a societal good, in that it uses products. Enjoyment and fun are designed around product use, hence stuff like drugs, which require production. Being by yourself and thinking doesn't require the manufacture of goods, therefore it is against society. Other needs, like human relationships, are bent to be about efficiency. Which is that you identify the key performance indicators, and get through them as quickly as possible. You don't get a full choice as to what you want to do, because you might get it wrong, or do it inefficiently. You need to meet your 'need's as quickly as and efficiently as possible. which is why you get drugs that make it feel like you have a few weeks holiday when you only have a very short period of time off. This is about maximising work time, and minimising down time.

And people would also heavily invest in the hedonism because it seems like it is the only break from their work. But since it is organised along the same principles, it doesn't meet any human needs. It is just more work.

But you still get to choose between the products that you buy. So the argument would be that market forces still exist to mean that thing that most fits people's need, the most popular thing, is the one that more people buy. You only get to decide between products, you cannot choose something that isn't a product.

In Brave New World, they even alter the human being itself to fit the Society. The Human being in its natural state, is unable to be properly serviced by this system apparently designed to serve its needs. So you alter the human so as to make sure it can be efficiently serviced properly by this society.

So its not pleasure island, in the sense that any of your actual human needs are met. What is done is that all of you actions are coerced into a small set of actions, and are decided before hand in order to maximise your efficiency in meeting your needs. And by doing this, serves to prevent you meeting any actual need. You are very good at achieving the key performance indicators, but the relation of those KPI to actual human needs no longer exists.

The society it makes stable is capitalist society. Enforced mass product consumption to stablise jobs and the flow of money. Mandatory leisure within proscribed boundaries to ensure product use. Purchasing and using drugs to avoid the human needs void in the middle that is inefficient, cannot be quantified, and cannot be fulfilled by the novelty of the purchase and use of new products.

So yes, if the whole of human needs were met by a product, the novelty of the product being the most important thing, then heaven awaits you in Brave New World. It is possible that a different society that produces as much stuff as efficiently as Brave New World, without all the extreme coercion might be good, but Brave New World has a lot of interlocking elements, and it has a lot of horrors. So I couldn't really guess as to the worth of mass production to meeting all human needs.