You're talking about nobles of the robe. It's another kind of bureaucratic role for the nobility, different from the traditional landowning role.
Unemployment and utopian abundance
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You're talking about nobles of the robe. It's another kind of bureaucratic role for the nobility, different from the traditional landowning role.
Unfortunately, this is all too real. Statistically, crime has nothing to do with absolute standards of living, and everything to do with income disparity. In other words, it's not about how much stuff you get to consume, it's about your rank in society. And crime has always been a good way to rise in society when legal means are not enough.
Imagine the following: you're an unemployed young man right now. You feel like a loser, and most people see you as one. Girls frown at you when they hear you're a NEET, your parents are disappointed, you feel like your life is wasting away and you could do better.
Now take that situation and put it into a distant future Stellaris utopia. Has anything changed? Not really. You just don't have to worry about starving and you get some gadgets for your home, but all those other problems are still there.
But then some guy proposes that you help him move a new drug. Now instead of that lonely loser you can be a respected dealer/pimp. It's always gonna be a tempting proposal for a segment of the population.
Emigration push will exist because of what the second poster stated. It might not push to other planets with worst living conditions, but so far as I know emigration push is just a number, it does not indicate final destination.... so you can always asume it's pushing to "a place where the grass is greener".
What sort of income disparity is there when everyone is on utopian abundance? Utopian abundance is specifically, according to the game's description giving everyone nearly (I suppose if someone wanted to own a literal star, that would be hard to do) unlimited access to any luxury they desire. If rulers are given more than the workers or unemployed, you're not talking about utopian abundance, you're talking about for example academic privilege, or some other living standard option.
If you live in a world where automation has taken over the vast majority of low-skill work, you can't know for sure that the population looks down on unemployed people the same way as we do today. People look down on unemployed people because they view them as a strain on the economy. Someone else needs to work twice as much to support an unemployed person in addition to themselves. When the manufacturing capacity of an empire gets so enormous that they can afford to just give any material goods to any person for free, the rationales for looking down on these people fall apart, because an unemployed person is no longer a significant strain on society. Over time, the social norms and taboos might very well change in such a way that no one really thinks much of it.
For the record, I do not need to imagine your situation. I have been an unemployed person in the past. It was not very exciting and I did feel bad for using other people's resources to keep myself alive. I was however well fed, had a place to live, and things to pass time with. I did not feel any desire to start pushing drugs, or stealing in order to get more material goods. Had I not received enough funds to buy food, the chances of me turning to crime would likely have been much greater.
Utopian abundance isn't just giving people a selection of goods you think will be enough to please them. It's having luxuries more easily available than most people on present day earth can imagine. It's not just having "a car" given to you for free. It's having a Koeningsegg given to you for free. And then another after you crash your first. And another. This isn't possible in our world because the expertise and materials needed to make such an item is very limited. 400 years from now, your apartment complex' 3D printer could make you such an item in a few minutes from nothing but a mineral paste made from recycled goods. Anything you can imagine, manufactured to your specifications in the blink of an eye.
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It requires work. I've seen a tactic where you deliberately get as much pops unemployed under Utopian Abundance and use them and only them as a source of research points (no Labs) and then don't produce any consumer goods, because their output isn't affected by the fact they don't actually get what they were promised.
Maybe someone could make an rp mod where unemployment has a chance to spawn rare special pop jobs. Social workers for example (that one maybe not rare). They could be benign or malign and depend on ethics and living standards. An egalitarian unemployed may become a freelance artist: a culture worker with less production. With utopian abundance he could be a deviant artist who creates the same amount of unity, etc., but use thrice as much cgs. For materialists there could be inventors and rogue scientists. A wandering preacher, an ascetic (with utopian abundance) or a heretical preacher for spiritualists.
It's not about consumer goods, it's about having responsibilities and feeling like you matter. A social policy of redistribution can give you stuff, but it can't give you that sort of social meaning. Even in an utopian abundance, a starship ace pilot is gonna be regarded more highly than a guy who does nothing, even if both of them get as many toys. There are plenty of people today who are seen highly because they have an important position, despite not earning much from it (scientists, NGO leaders, artists and so on)
Doesn't that require using the buy one unit of CG per month exploit?
You get the Shortage, but it's -25% happiness, which is bad, but can be dealt with and the rest is just -50% research and unity output from jobs, but the unemployed doesn't count. So as long as you can have a population that isn't happy, you don't need a single CG.
Hmm... so it works as long as you have enough unemployed people to handle your research and unity, tight?
Under utopian abundance unemployment just flat out shouldn't effect crime and Social Welfare should reduce the effect significantly.
Crime happens with unemployment because people need money to live under normal living conditions when you give everyone basic sustenance (social welfare) regardless of employment that decentivizes crime (idle hands are not the devil's workshop, desperate hands are) and when everyone can get whatever they need for free (utopian abundance) there is absolutely no incentive for organized crime. And I don't believe bored teens doing dumb shit counts as 'crime', the kind of crime in Stellaris is definitely meant to be organized, society destabilizing crime created by people with ill intent and who are desperate to survive in poor living conditions.
Also my previous post on the impacts living standards should have on downwards movement and emmigration still stand.
Crime happens with unemployment because people need money to live under normal living conditions when you give everyone basic sustenance (social welfare) regardless of employment that decentivizes crime (idle hands are not the devil's workshop, desperate hands are) and when everyone can get whatever they need for free (utopian abundance) there is absolutely no incentive for organized crime. And I don't believe bored teens doing dumb shit counts as 'crime', the kind of crime in Stellaris is definitely meant to be organized, society destabilizing crime created by people with ill intent and who are desperate to survive in poor living conditions.
Also my previous post on the impacts living standards should have on downwards movement and emmigration still stand.
Yes rather than unemployment it's inequality; think on that Swedish devs. Isn't Scandinavia's secret superpower the ability to mitigate inequality !
Could cultural factors also be significant, look at Vulcan, look at Qornos . . . philosophy, warrior culture . . .
Could cultural factors also be significant, look at Vulcan, look at Qornos . . . philosophy, warrior culture . . .
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Even under utopian abundance, where everyone could theoretically have everything they want, there's still the very real risk of nepotism and corruption.
Sure, the pamphlets state that everyone gets 3 rolls. But if the guy doing the distribution gives everyone 2, that's a whole lot of rolls that could be sold on the interstellar black market.
Also, being a democracy, those rolls might buy some votes. Just because everyone has 3 rolls it doesn't mean someone wouldn't want 15.
It's there because if it ALSO reduced crime it would be flat out super-duper-overpowered, at least right now it's just only super-overpowered.
Kind of like how if xenophile empires could just go, "OPEN BORDERS! ANYONE WHO WANTS TO COME LIVE HERE IS FREE TO DO SO!" and get immigration of any pop willing to live there it would be OP?
This sounds like you're talking about things being rationed. This sounds closer to the social welfare policy. Utopian abundance is to actually give 15 of that thing to those who want 15. There is no rationing in Utopian Abundance, consumer goods are so readily available that the state can supply more goods than almost anyone would be able to consume. People would run out of space to store things before the state ran out of things to give to them. Lack of living space is actually the only thing I could see being scarce under Utopian Abundance, but there's always emigration to one of the new colonies for people who want more of that.
As a tangent, note that food policies are actually separate from consumer goods policies (and can't be set on a per-species basis! They should probably be coupled to or paired with living standards in some way)
So in a utopian abundance society, the first guy who wants to be emperor of the galaxy simply gets the title, and supreme control of the utopian abundance society?
I think not.
Resources are NOT infinite, and by your definition, as soon as someone wants complete sole control of the state they get it?
Assuming infinite resources even under utopian abundance is delusional at best.
Those rolls could represent anything from political power to actual physical military power.
There will always be someone who wants it all, does he get it?
You're running off on a crazy tangent.
The point is that any for any level of consumer goods (being emperor is not a consumer good) that an employed worker/specialist could get in a non-UA society, a UA society offers more, even to citizens who are sitting on their asses fapping to porn all day and doing nothing "productive".