Frederik Pohl's 1954 novella, "The Midas Plague," envisions a future marked by overwhelming abundance resulting from effortless production, which resonates increasingly today as AI and automation become pervasive. The story depicts a world where individuals are mandated to consume excessively, revealing a disturbing inversion of wealth having everything yet lacking true agency. As society grapples with the implications of overproduction, the narrative challenges us to engage in meaningful choices rather than succumbing to mere consumption.

Seventy-two years later, as artificial intelligence and humanoid robotics begin to replicate that same cheap, tireless production on a planetary scale, Pohl’s story reads less like quaint mid-century speculation and more like a dispatch from our own near future. It is a story about the moment when abunda ...