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In the movie Elysium, the 1%, set up a gated community in space to separate themselves from the proles. Why only one Elysium? On earth, there is still a teeming mass of humanity that needs goods and services. Fertile ground for another 1% arise to meet these needs and eventually build another Elysium. Perhaps there is no property rights regime on Earth that encourages investment etc. Not the case in the movie because there is a police force, legal and parole system apparently administered by Robots. Furthermore, the robots are controlled by the 1% off site. Why do the 1% need to maintain control of the denizens of Earth? Elysium appears to be completely self-sustaining. No resources are apparently needed by it from the Earth. The only visible operation run by Elysium on earth is a company that manufactures robots. The head man is an Elysium expatriate but everyone else working at the factory is a denizen of Earth. Is Earth a banana republic to which Elysium outsources production? No, contradicts the self-sustaining assumption earlier. In short, the economics of the world envisioned in the movie make no sense. It used to be that scientific plausibility was a constraint on science fiction (otherwise its fantasy or magical realism for snobs). I’d add another criteria, economic plausibility. Utopias (or dystopias) must be economically plausible. With these words, can I lay claim to have started to a new branch of literary criticism: the economic analysis of utopian/dystopian fiction?
Back to the subject of this post. Pay attention to the robots in the movie. They have the agility and dexterity of humans. They are stronger. They can even detect sarcasm. Given this, its unclear why human are needed to work in the robot factory. Robots could be used to repair robots and produce new ones. What should such a world look like? Well I need only one `universal’ robot to begin with to produce and maintain robots for other tasks: farming, medical care, construction etc. Trade would become unnecessary for most goods and services. The only scarce resource would be the materials needed to produce and maintain robots (metals, rare earths etc.). Profits would accrue to the individuals who owned these resources. These individuals might trade among themselves, but would have no reason to trade with anyone outside this group. So, a small group of individuals would maintain large armies of robots to meet their needs and maintain their property rights over the inputs to robot production. Everyone else is surplus to needs. Thats a movie I would go to the cinema to see!