> We were not defined by our jobs but by our participation in a densely interconnected social world.

Serious comment: 20+ years ago, Burning Man taught me this. Back then it was closer to its founding anarchic ethos and in a pre-social media, pre-starlink, pre-cell phone world, provided an large-scale social experiment in constructing an artificial and temporary bubble of post-scarcity society, within which commerce and status relocated from the obviously economic, into other modes of competition and hierarchy-finding.

In specific, social status recentered on a spectrum of predictable values including durable ones such as charisma and appeal, but also more altruistic ones, such as the nature of the gifts one provided (experiential and environmental, more than tangible). Status through the "gift economy" is how this was described.

It was, frankly, glorious to inhabit: at least, for a week...

I have wondered idly where in the space of possible social structures humanity would find itself, in a post-scarcity world, as it became further decoupled from "contemporary capitalism" as we know it.

That is: was the "natural" social ordering that emerged at Burning Man, an accurate view of what a prototypical post-scarcity humanity would tend toward?

Or was it "merely" the one that emerged when all the participants were entirely inculcated in and hence prone to recapitulating the hierarchical arrangements of the quotidian world on which the fantasia of Burning Man was built?

My assumption is that human nature (in all layers of its stack) makes social hierarchy inevitable, and if we don't need literal currency, we'll find a coin to trade in, hoard, envy, and pursue.

But I would assume that, being a product of contemporary capitalism, with little ability to distinguish natural law from cultural constructs in my own intuitions, wouldn't I?

Regardless, I hope I get to find out.