Of course it might be the blind pig, acorn thing. But maybe not. Around 1952, Kornbluth would have been immersed in paens to the resurgent power of consumerism after the war, while simultaneously "Madison Avenue" was establishing its reputation for an uncanny ability to move huge piles of consumer goods that people never thought they needed. With these things in sharp relief, maybe Kornbluth did clearly see where it would end up.

I have further thoughts on the matter, of course [;-) don't I always], but I can't see how to cast them in a way that's appropriate for this board. In the past, even when I wanted to engage in the science-fictiony extrapolation about future economic systems that might evolve out of the present regime, I've felt it more appropriate to post on CE, because inevitably the topic brings out defensiveness from those who love the status quo. As if I'm to blame for the fact that the universe changes and things evolve! Trying to understand where things are going isn't the same as prescribing where they should go.

Maybe I can speculate this much: Things today may look like Kornbluth's nightmare, but that doesn't mean that it's permanent, and this may in fact be the last gasp of the old economic regime, its peak rather then the beginning of its supreme reign. This may sound very geekcentric, but digital technology is subversive of the status quo. There's a war going on, and sometimes we see its ripples on the surface, notably Hollywood's frantic, and ultimately hopeless, defense of property rights in bits. The battle cry "information wants to be free!" isn't a declaration of war upon the fences, it's an observation about the basic nature of digital information: It will leak out, like liquid hydrogen in a cryotank, no matter what you do. Those who learn to live with the properties of digital information will prosper, those who don't will fail. And digital information is perfectly democratic; an individual can create it as economically as a member of the wealthy elite who controls vast amounts of capital.

Or there could be an unhappy ending: The same old oligarchs figure out, or pay someone to figure out, how to build strong digital fences, and digital technology will be hamstrung from realizing its ultimate potential, forevermore. Everybody these days is writing science fiction about the utopian future in which digital technology conquers all; maybe somebody needs to write a dystopian novel about the alternative in which the status quo is somehow maintained.