Reading the 'manna' link [1] was interesting in that it posited a way that a group might transition from a scarity economy to a post scarcity economy (Libertarian idealism aside).
One of the more interesting questions we will face is given the productivity leverage, how do we get there rather than a big apartment of rich people and a sea of slums.
It's a great question, and one I'm pretty optimistic about us getting right.
Take Open Source Ecology for example. They're making the Global Village Construction set, a collection of Open Source machines that cost a fraction of what proprietary solutions do today. I think the impact of what they are enabling is hugely catalyzing towards that end (post-scarcity communism [collective ownership of capital). To the uninitiated, it it might sound like they are do-gooders just trying to make cheap machinery available for developed regions, but in reality the kind of people who will benefit immediately are other engineers. The more these engineers are liberated by the technical/economical advances of the GVCS, the more time they'll have to put back into into the project. I can already imagine the first few small semi-sustainable towns popping up, packed with engineers, ideally mushrooming into the kind of ending Manna so wonderfully illustrated.
The more collaboration we see around giving people the technologies they need to look after themselves/family/community, the less likely we'll be living in a capitalist-dystopia.
For me personally, if I was given the option between being a billionaire and being able to have everything that I want, or helping to actively build with others towards a future where we can all get what we want... I know I'd have to go with the latter.
If the IQ-mutation load hypothesis[1] is true, the sea of slums problem will be taken care of by trivial genetic engineering. Smart people with good software are pretty good at entertaining themselves and making do with basic resources.
[1] The hypothesis is that the baseline human genome encodes a master race, but has been spoiled by a handful of mutations. Fix the mutations with "simple" proofreading and out pops a race of handsome, athletic geniuses.
Hi! Genetic engineer here. Your idea of "trivial" is weird: we have no way to replace chromosomes, or even edit them. All we know how to do is add things.
The idea is fascinating: although you're getting downvoted for saying "master race", the notion that the vast majority of random mutations are "bad" while the DNA we hold in common is "good" holds a lot of water. We have no idea how to edit our own DNA, however. We simply can't do it yet.
Trivial in the sense that it would cost on the close order of $10 billion to figure it out, and the rewards would be in the $100s of trillions.
Trivial also in the sense that the general path to proofreading DNA is "obvious". Make a DNA segment that aligns upstream of the mutation. Glue a dicing enzyme to one end. This breaks the chromosome upstream of the mutation. Repeat for the downstream side, chopping out the mutation. Then incubate with the correct sequence and DNA repair enzymes. Voila, the mutation is repaired. This is nearly off the shelf. The not off the shelf part will be getting methylation and histone packing to come out right, otherwise you get subtle but appalling birth defects.
One of the more interesting questions we will face is given the productivity leverage, how do we get there rather than a big apartment of rich people and a sea of slums.
[1] http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm