u/FrameRate_King

I'm not necessarily looking for "utopias," but for science fiction that really explores what happens when basic material scarcity is mostly solved. A lot of books say humanity has moved beyond money or resource shortages, but everyone still behaves almost exactly like people in a modern capitalist economy. Jobs, status, politics and daily life all end up feeling strangely familiar. I'm much more interested in stories that actually ask what changes when food, housing, manufacturing and energy stop being major constraints. What motivates people? How do relationships, ambition, education or even boredom change? What new conflicts replace the old ones? I'm open to any style, hard SF or softer/social SF, older classics or recent novels. Bonus points if the society feels believable rather than simply "everyone is nice now." What books do you think handled post-scarcity better than everyone else?

I want to be clear that I'm not arguing sensitivity can't be miscalibrated. I understand that some people do react to things disproportionately and that this can create real friction in relationships and communication. I'm open to that. What I'm pushing back on is the specific response of telling someone they're too sensitive, because I think it almost universaly does the opposite of what people claim they intend. The way I see it, when someone says something that lands badly and the other person reacts, there are genuinly two possibilities. Either the thing that was said was actually hurtful, or the reaction was out of proportion to what was said. "You're too sensitive" assumes the second without examining the first. It closes the conversation rather than opening it, it shifts focus entirely from what was said to how the person responded, and it puts the other person in the position of defending their emotional reaction rather than addressing the original issue. Even in cases where the reaction was genuinely disproportionate, saying "you're too sensitive" is a bad way to communicate that, because it's a character judgement rather than a description of a specific interaction. If someone cried because I forgot to use their preferred coffee mug I could reasonably say "I think that response was bigger than the situation called for, can we talk about what's really going on." That's a different thing from "you're too sensitive" which implies a stable trait rather than addressing a moment. My view is that the phrase is almost always used defensivly by the person who said the original thing, and that a person genuinely interested in good communication would never need to reach for it. I'm open to examples where it's the most constructive available response.