Foreword: The content of the article is derived from Liu Cixin's science fiction ** "Supporting Mankind".
There is a planet with intelligent civilizations similar to human beings, and their civilization started 5,000 years earlier than the earth civilization, let's call it "Z planet", and the intelligent creatures on it we call "Z star people".
Due to the early start of civilization, the scientific and technological level of the Z-star people far exceeds that of the current stage of the earth civilization.
The reason for the high level of science and technology of the Z people is because of the invention of three kinds of high technology: machines, basic technology, and superior education.
Machines are the era of intelligent machines. The machines of Planet Z are extremely developed, they can replace humans to complete more than 99% of the work, the towering skyscrapers, the complex and magnificent road and bridge system like spider webs, all built by robots, all the food can be produced by machines, and the people of Planet Z are completely liberated, they don't have to do any work, they can comfortably lie on the sofa and enjoy the 360-degree all-round service of the machine, without dead ends.
Moreover, particularly small robots, intelligent robots as small as bacteria and viruses are also working for the Z-star people. These pocket-sized machines can act as doctors, burrowing into the body to destroy all kinds of cancer cells or pathogens like HIV, far more efficiently than the human immune system.
Theoretically, the Z-stars have eliminated 100% of the disease.
But this heavenly picture did not benefit everyone on Planet Z. On the contrary, most of the intelligent machines are monopolized by a small number of people, and wealth is frantically concentrated in the hands of a few, and the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider and wider.
Then there is the base extension technology, the full name is "gene prolongation of human life technology", that is, the aging clock fragment in the human gene is removed, and after a series of complex medical operations, the human life span can be increased to 2000 years.
But this kind of high-tech that sounds very good has not benefited all mankind on Planet Z. On the contrary, the technology of Jiyan was monopolized and sold by a few people at sky-high prices, and wealth was frantically concentrated in the hands of a few, and the gap between the rich and the poor continued to widen.
And for the first time, humanity is unequal in the face of death.
Before the advent of Kiyan technology, the people of Planet Z were the same as the people of the earth, although everyone was different in terms of wealth, status, family background, etc., but everyone was equal in the face of death, whether a baby was born in a rich family or a poor mountain village, his life was about seventy or eighty years of life.
However, after the advent of the Kiyan technology, the only fair time for human beings is gone, and the ancient emperors have finally realized the immortal skills that the ancient emperors dreamed of by asking for immortals, eating elixirs and drinking holy water.
And then there's super education. A quantum memory the size of a bottle cap can store all the crystallization of knowledge and wisdom in the 10,000-year human civilization on planet Z, and can be loaded into the human brain to form the best memory, it is an intelligence amplifier and memory amplifier, which can amplify people's intelligence hundreds of millions of times.
Mankind does not have to study hard at all, knowledge and learning have become commodities, and as long as you have enough money, you can go from being illiterate to becoming Einstein after an operation.
But this wonderful-sounding technology has not benefited all of humanity. On the contrary, it was monopolized by a few people and sold at sky-high prices, wealth was frantically concentrated in the hands of a few, and the gap between the rich and the poor continued to widen.
And for the first time, humanity is not equal in terms of IQ. The gap between people becomes a gap between humans and dogs.
Machines, Jiyan technology, and super education are superimposed, and the gap between the rich and the poor on the Z star is widening crazily, with more and more poor people, fewer and fewer rich people, poor people getting poorer and poorer, rich people getting richer and richer, poor people getting more and more ignorant, and rich people getting smarter and ......
Finally, one day, capitalism has reached its peak, and a final producer was born, the only rich man on planet Z.
This rich man is in control of Planet Z 999% of the wealth, while all the rest of the poor, 2 billion poor people, hold only 01% wealth.
The terminal owner owns the entire planet Z, almost everything on the planet Z, air, water, forests, lakes, grasslands, mountains, rivers, oceans, deserts, etc. are the private property of the terminal person, and almost all the animals on planet Z are the private pets of the terminal person.
But the old laws are still in operation, and private property remains sacrosanct.
And those 2 billion poor people live every day in completely isolated and completely closed houses and cannot go out, and taking a step is equivalent to trespassing into private houses, and they are confined to a small space like criminals, without freedom of movement.
Every poor person's home has a miniature ecological circulation system, and the poor rely on breathing and circulating air countless times a day, eating food that has been circulated countless times, and drinking water that has been circulated countless times to sustain life.
If you want to go out, you have to apply first, and after the application is approved, you have to put on a spacesuit and carry an oxygen cylinder to go out, not because there is a vacuum outside, but because the air outside does not belong to the poor.
The most extravagant pleasure of the year for a poor family is to go outside in civilian clothes, bask in the sun, and breathe in the fresh air, but first swallow an air vending machine the size of a capsule.
Air vending machines can monitor how much air a person breathes in at any time, and then convert the amount of air breathed into consumption settlement, and then deduct the poor people's accounts from their meagre deposits.
Because the air outside is the private property of the end of the year, it is charged by the second.
And because it is the era of intelligent machines, all the ** institutions and law enforcement systems on planet Z are completed by robots, large intelligent machines are like airplanes hovering in the sky, small intelligent machines are like ants and mosquitoes, omnipresent monitoring everyone's every move, and the poor do not have any possibility of resistance, resistance, uprising and revolution.
The law enforcement system on planet z does not protect the interests of the terminal, on the contrary, it protects the interests of all, but because the terminal person has 99With 9% of the property, the law enforcement system is equivalent to serving the person who has lost his or her life.
The phrase "inviolability of private property", which sounded particularly correct and especially fair and just, turned into a curse for the poor on planet Z.
If a poor person gets drunk or sleepwalks outside, a law enforcement robot will fly in from nearby and choke the poor person's neck to prevent them from breathing. It does not harm people, but enforces the law, because the poor encroach on the private property of the end of the world.
After strangling the poor to death, the poor man will be tried because he is guilty of burglary and breathes the air of the life-old without buying.
Law enforcement robots will not spare the families of the poor, they will take a certain amount of air from the homes of the poor as compensation, everything seems reasonable and legal, as for whether the microecological circulation system of the poor people's homes will collapse, they don't care, and no one cares.
After many years, 2 billion people will not be able to live, they are dying of poverty, they are so poor that they can't even afford air, they are suffocating to death.
Finally one day, all the poor people ran outside, they ran out at the risk of death, they sang and laughed, they ran, they danced, and the air outside was so sweet that it made ** tears, like angel wings caressing their depressed hearts.
At this time the terminant spoke, and he said:
I'm glad you came to my house as a guest, although I am very hospitable, but suddenly 2 billion people have broken into my home, what do you want me to do?Although I have the power and power to eliminate you through the law enforcement system of our world, it is a matter of a second, but I do not want to do it, I stop them because I am a compassionate person. ”
There is no need for you to be jealous of me and hate me, I started as a small trader of feminine hygiene products, and it is completely reasonable and legal for me to reach the scale I am today, and I deserve my position today thanks to my business acumen and vision beyond ordinary people. If it weren't for me to maintain the world's intelligent machine system every year, if it weren't for me to spend time maintaining the micro-ecological circulation system in the homes of 2 billion people every year, you wouldn't be able to live to this day, you can stay comfortably in your own home and live a quiet and comfortable life for so many years, you should be grateful to me as a philanthropist, now you can't live, that's not my problem.
In this way, I have prepared 20,000 interstellar spaceships for you, you can wander around the universe in spaceships, looking for a new home, the universe is so big, why huddle in my little room?”
Finally, I wish you all a pleasant journey and goodbye. ”
It's a sci-fi**, but the more you look at it, the more it looks like a horror**.
Horror in **?Because of the horrific scene inside, the suffocating and desperate picture, it seems to be happening on our earth in an orderly manner.
I heard that Li Ka-shing, the richest man in Hong Kong, is working on a project: how to make the rich live longer. Note that not to the "people", but to the "rich".
If this project comes out, even if it can only increase people's life expectancy to 200 years old, it will be enough to bring subversive ** to human civilization, so how can this longevity project only serve the rich?
It's okay to sell it for a sky-high price, sell it for 50 million, 80 million, 100 million, and sell it until 99% of the world's people can't afford it. Finally, who can afford it?
For example, Zheng Shuang, who has a daily salary of 2.08 million, can afford it, Wei Ya, who has evaded taxes of more than 1 billion, can afford it, Li Jiaqi, who scolds you for not working hard, can afford it, powerful people, ** dirty officials, rich businessmen, Xu Jiayin, Wang Jianlin, and countless people's fathers can afford it.
Even an eighteenth-tier star like Su Mang, who costs more than 600 yuan for a breakfast, can afford it, and some people around you seem to be inconspicuous, but they may have a way to get such a longevity project, and they can afford it.
At that time, we, the hard-pressed grassroots people who have no power, no power and no money, will be cattle and horses for generations to give birth to children to build a paradise for the rich and nobles, and there will be no end to the children and grandchildren.
Not only Li Ka-shing, but also the world's wealthy are doing everything possible to find the secret of immortality. Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and known as the godfather of Silicon Valley, once invested in a biological company that provides "blood transfusion services" for the rich, transfusing the blood of young people into the bodies of the elderly rich in an effort to make the rich live longer.
Peter Thiel, who was turned into a vampire by the angry American populace.
In addition to transfusing the blood of young people, other methods of longevity have also been tried by the rich, such as injecting growth hormone into the body, human hibernation technology, uploading the consciousness in the brain to a supercomputer to form a "digital life", and so on.
Thanks to the fact that the current technology is not developed enough to allow these super-rich to succeed, the current earth does not have the conditions for the birth of "final producers" for the time being.
Speaking of the final producer, it is said that Li Ka-shing's assets have already exceeded one trillion, accounting for 40% of Hong Kong's GDP, with countless real estate and hotels under his name, corresponding to countless low-level Hong Kong people living in pigeon-cage-like houses struggling to make a living, and at the same time grateful to Li Ka-shing, thanking Li Ka-shing for letting them live in a house and giving them a comfortable life.
Li Ka-shing doesn't look like a weakened version of Hong Kong's final birther?In recent years, there have been more and more such people in the mainland.
Compared with Li Ka-shing, Musk, who is also a capitalist, has a conscience in his Starship plan. is the richest man in the world, did not sink, did not take medicine and suck blood to fantasize about longevity, but held high the torch of idealism, spared no effort to expand the living space of human civilization, and the goal is still the ...... of the stars and the sea
As far as the Starship Project is concerned, no matter how many times he fails, we ordinary people should not laugh at him.
If we broaden the living space of human civilization and make the cake bigger, we 6 billion ordinary people can really enjoy the benefits, right?
Human civilization at this stage is such that the top 5% of the world's population consumes 67% of the world's resources. These have long completed the monopoly of wealth, and the income of celebrities and rich people with billions or tens of billions of dollars has proved that a huge gap between the rich and the poor has been formed, and they are running in the extreme direction at full speed.
These people have long targeted their claws at education, school district housing, one-on-one tutors in big cities, academic daji, education families, all kinds of school valves, etc., and it is becoming more and more difficult for ordinary people to change their fate through learning Xi.
The rentier class is doing everything possible to solidify the class, completely blocking the upward path of the general public, and they are trying to achieve isolation from the poor in terms of education.
In recent years, among the undergraduates graduating from 985 colleges and universities, there are more and more children, and the proportion of students from ordinary peasant families born in rural areas has been shrinking.
They are almost done, many hot news in the world, the elite can instinctively maintain their own circles and speak for their own class, and countless people with a monthly salary of 3000 are still there ignorantly empathizing with Li Ka-shing, empathizing with the recently deceased capitalist Munger, and empathizing with Zhao, Wu, and Angela.
Wealth monopoly, education monopoly, time monopoly, the three in one, what kind of fate will we face for ordinary people?
What is the ultimate form of the capitalist social structure?
I don't think it's a pyramid type, it's not a rugby type, it's an Eiffel Tower type.
The pyramid is only the initial stage of capitalist development, with the super-rich at the top, the rich at the bottom, the ordinary middle class, and the people at the bottom. At this stage, many people can be allowed to succeed, and many people can be allowed to climb step by step, and many inspirational stories can be achieved.
But with the savage growth of capitalism, the pyramid will be compressed inward into the shape of the Eiffel Tower, the climb will become more and more difficult, until it is impossible, all kinds of inspirational stories will be replaced by decadent words such as "lying flat", "Buddhism", "rotten", etc., countless rich and middle class will inexplicably go bankrupt and fall to the bottom of the tower, the income and wealth of the poor will shrink further, everyone will live more and more miserable, and the lineup of the proletariat will become larger and larger.
At the same time, the tower will continue to rise, reaching the sky, and sitting at the top of the tower are those super-rich people who are worth astronomical sums of money.
However, social wealth has not decreased, there are no large-scale floods, droughts, plagues, wars and other natural and man-made disasters that have eliminated a large amount of social wealth, and social wealth such as food, drink, clothing, use, housing, and opening has not disappeared overnight.
But why do we have fewer and fewer resources at our disposal?Why do countless diligent workers get up early and work greedily 996, work, go to work, and work, but their income is getting less and less, prices are getting higher and higher, and their lives are becoming more and more miserable?
Countless people are working in their own positions, and this huge cake has been madeTaken by whom?
This is a question worth discussing.