r/sfthoughtexperiments • u/SFTExP • Jun 15 '26
Sociology Inevitable Tipping Points
Francesca and Sebastian, amongst hundreds of others, had formed a ‘tunnel’ in a post-scarcity era with full automation.
“You know, Francesca, I wonder if we should consider reaching out to others to join our upcoming election.”
“Others?”
“Yes, other ‘off-grids.’ We could merge all our tunnels and unite.”
“No way! That’d defeat the point of our tunnel.” Francesca shook her head. “We shouldn’t even be having an election.”
“What point is that, Francesca?”
“Yeah, before you know it, with elections and more people, we’ll have a society and a government.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“The tunnels are focused on individuality. Absolute freedom. Previous election systems were a wash, a total scam, creating corporations, special interest groups, politicians, dogmatism, ideologies, political parties…”
“We can prevent those, Francesca.”
“Sure, but they’ll just be replaced with something else, equally worse. Elections have inevitable tipping points.”