This Fred Pohl book

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midas_World

has a short story The Midas Plague in it where the problem is that post the development of cheap fusion resources are so abundant and production so efficient that keeping the economy working requires that people stay on a treadmill of consumption. This is such a burden that lower-class people are forced to consume more than upper-class people. The protagonist of the story gets his robots to consume his good and fears that he'll get in trouble for this but instead he gets a medal. The original version of the short story as it appeared in the April 1954 Galaxy magazine is linked from the Wikipedia article.

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jaggs 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Brilliant story and so clever. The despair at having to consume is excellent.

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mikewarot 2 days ago | parent [-]

I've despaired at having consumed too much. It's commonly called hoarding, and it ruins your life.

Never pay to store your stuff somewhere else.

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PaulHoule 2 days ago | parent [-]

The strangest thing is that a lot of the people I know who pay a lot for multiple storage lockers are poor and the content of the storage lockers is not valuable at all.

	▲	mikewarot a day ago \| parent \| next [-]
		When you're poor, you've got a vast collection of things that might be helpful in some future situation, and it seems reasonable to keep all of them, because of the sunk cost fallacy. Meanwhile, due to the reality of the situation, you waste most of your disposable income needlessly.
	▲	giantg2 2 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I agree. Although there are some exceptions, such as people in the jobs that move a lot (military, traveling nurse, etc).

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babua 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

abundance without incomes stalls demand— what’s our real-world “robot consumer” to keep the loop running.