another query

[rm]

More shit I'm thinking about:

Do you believe a society that either lacks, or shuns, mass mechanical production can be technologically advanced?

N.B. -- steampunk is not an answer

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Of course, I'm not talking about the economics of our world, which is as it is and your assessment on that front is perfectly right. I'm trying to figure out rules for a world I'm writing and I want to see how other people bang into this topic as I'm sitting here doing so night after night.

[briansiano.livejournal.com]

Hm. Offhand, it seems to me that what I outlined is kind of unavoidable. Economics is a symbolic representation of certain flows in our society, like effort, materials, needs, etc. It'd depend on what you want to do with the story.

But as I said in another post, one could _imagine_ a society that has consciously decided to _not_ follow certain dictates. For example, one may have a religion, or culture, that demands that things be made by an artisan; "One must not repeat a task unless it has been completed," or something like that. So, the principle of mass production would be prohibited. So, if a shoemaker had to make thirty shoes, he couldn't just cut thirty soles, thirty side parts, and thirty sets of laces; he'd have to make each one individually. (Okay, so Henry Ford'd be a religious heretic...)

Or, one could imagine a society where making artisan stuff and mass-producing things costs about the same-- it's just as easy to make one as it is to make a thousand. Which means that people might _want_ to make their own stuff on an individual, one-of-a-kind basis.