(Don't read this if you don't want Culture book spoilers)

At least the manipulations are for a good reason, unlike our present Capitalist Manipulations. Sure Gurgeh is played hard, but SCs reasoning for that was to destabilize a very cruel society in the least-harmful way they thought possible. And despite that, they went out of their way to provide him with protections all along the way. It shows how a post-scarcity society answers the remaining hard moral questions that might crop up. I think Banks lays out something as idealistic as reality will allow, a mix of pragmatism and compassion.

We definitely do not get that from our present, very much outwardly, explicitly coercive power structures. I'd take drones playing games with me for reasonably noble purposes over the disgusting manipulations and outright power abuses of a Capitalist society, with its only goal ridiculous and ultimately useless profit.

And that said, the Culture is fully aware of the dangers and moral risks of their meddling, and is still only partly apologetic about it. In Look to Windward, the Culture literally caused a bloody and intense civil war by trying to erase a caste system in a lower-tech society. While they apologized and tried to make amends, they still maintained that they'd keep interfering, keep trying to make things better, even if they're going to make mistakes and cause harm, all because they want to try to prevent greater harms if possible.

This is contrasted almost directly by things like the Prime Directive (which some argue was originally created to showcase humanity's compassion and drive for the same as the Culture, b frequently breaking it, as is the case in ToS, for noble purposes) as used in the TNG era and somewhat Voyager. The Culture isn't afraid of those mistakes and I think that shows a much more humane approach, a much more logical one, and one that certainly has the potential to bring about greater peace and general well-being than the essentially passive, wishy-washy, hopeful optimism-minus-action of something like the Prime Directive, which gives observers peace of mind in the face of external suffering and serves best as a refuge for cowardly centrism.

As far as Banks and his Culture goes, I do not think there is another Science Fiction writer that had as keen a grasp on the idea of AI or post-scarcity out there. His machines vary in intelligence and motive and drive, from little more than robots as we know them to intensely, almost more-than human actors with deep feelings. As an art form, fiction obviously features a lot of conflict and Banks's books are no exception, but unlike most sci-fi he does not taint his pleasant, optimistic, peaceful view of future. It really is a blueprint for what is possible, something I feel like we could build one day. Maybe soon. And, hey, if someone doesn't like the Culture, they can always leave. That, more than much else, is something you can't get easily anywhere else.

This, right here. Work and 'productive' employment are not the natural condition of humans. People who worry about 'purpose' should be super careful that that isn't their Capitalist brainwashing talking, because in this day and age, with the veritable flooding of Capitalist propaganda through every avenue, including the obvious (advertising, cultural productions) to the least suspicious (seemingly simple interactions with family/friends), there's a high chance anyone who thinks they need work has been thoroughly tricked into loving the fact they're a cog for the profit of a few.

People who say "I would feel bored without work" are great for the Capitalist. They have been conditioned by the system to love work, and that's not good. The ethical question about programming a robot to enjoy being a slave has already been answered by the Capitalists and their answer is "We'll do anything for more money." People today have already been 'programmed' to love their work, and it ain't a pretty thing. It's the root cause of 99% of these posts about how AI is going to make us so bored we kill ourselves or whatever. Yeah, if you've been told by your culture/society that you must work to feel good, then the end of that requirement could feel a little frightening and horrible.

Or it could feel like withdrawal from an extremely nasty drug, and once you get over it you might find you like life without Capitalist-purpose looming over you to be pretty damn good.

>It is in the best interests of Capital that more people are able to purchase products. Meaning it is in the best interest of capital that people earn wages.

Ah great, so we have to work forever. Sure the jobs will get easier, but that's not much of a help, and it's certainly not the way forward. Having to have a job forever because we can't think past Capitalism is just sad. I do not want that future for the human race, but that is what we'll get if we let the Capitalist be in charge.

Capitalism, like most economic systems, is simply a management system for scarcity. And just like slavery and feudalism before it, it is a VERY bad one for many reasons, but the most important one for the future is this: it has no management system/plan for abundance.

When there is enough of something to go around, there's no capitalist incentive to provide it for all. When people talk about prices always falling, there is a lower limit to that. Prices cannot get too low, to the point where providing a service to everyone would not be profitable. Capitalism encourages this. It also encourages flat out waste. Dutch East India company traders burned excess spice crops because they knew that their existence jeopardized a high price.

We can do better, but not with the profit motive as a guiding operating principle. Even without robots, labor could be divided much more fairly, waste could be curtailed, etc., but none of that will happen with Capitalists in charge because such reforms would massively eat into profit. Which is the point. Our scarcity fuels their profit.

A Post-Scarcity (my preferred definition for this is not everyone gets space yachts, but rather to say that society has no need unfilled rather than every want fulfilled) future requires the dismantling of Capitalism, down to even the social and cultural machinery that perpetuates it.

I think you're proceeding from a false, Malthusian assumption, that is that population will grow without bounds given unlimited resources.

Would you say the developed world is richer than ever ? With more food than ever ? With more stuff, more resources, more technology than ever ?

Most would.

Yet, where is the ever-expanding population growth ? It's not there. Countries like the US have to import people to show any demographic growth. Japan is facing a shrinking population because it does not do this.

The link between 'more food' and 'more people' is not, probably has never been, as clear as the Malthusian approach to analysis would suppose. So the idea that UBI is going to lead to ballooning population just doesn't seem viable, considering the resources humanity has developed in the past two centuries.

Also, the goal of post-scarcity needs to be redefined I think. Most people think it means freedom from want, but it would better proposed as freedom from need. Because as some joker always says "huk huk who gets all the beachfront property," we're clearly not going to solve that kind of scarcity. But we can make sure we live in a world where no one is starving nor do they have to work three jobs to achieve that goal, and then worry about how we'll divide up all the luxury shit later.