Having also grown up with Asimov novels, recently I was pleasantly surprised to discover Vernor Vinge's A Deepness In the Sky[1] which contains also a discussion on the very same topic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky

I'm a bit reminded of the Zentraedi from Macross, who know how to fly and fight with advanced spaceships/mechs, but not how to repair them or how they work. Except in that case it's because their patron race, the Protoculture, deliberately kept them dependent; Protoculture factories supplied as many ships and weapons as the Zentraedi might need, meanwhile, the average Zentraedi was kept at about a five-year-old human's level of cognitive development. (After Zentraedi culture integrated with human culture (thanks to a frickin' idol singer), adult Zentraedi were at cognitive parity with adult humans.)

All of which makes you wonder: on actual Earth, is there a class of tech-company Morlocks keeping the disposable-income Eloi dependent with their endless supply of disposable gadgets?

Good catch! It reminded me the same thing, Macross.

There is indeed something keeping working class humans dependants: a focus on growth at all costs (including population growth). It is pervasive (the ideology is reinforced with ads) and makes you desire for example the latest iPhone X.

With a permanent growth, the basic problem is all humans are still born with a dependancy on housing and food (and other fancier things) that are in short supply. To attain these, humans need to work. Their work is used not just to maintain the basics, but to fuel growth.

Some people (mostly millenials) have found a solution: leave cheap, remain childless.

It causes many people to freak out about the economy, the birth rate, and how more immigration is needed to maintain growth. People don't really want that, and end up voting funny.

"The social contract", how an individual and society interact (and are depended upon each other), is broken.

In the old days if someone didn't like how things were going there were spaces with (far less) people that they could go off in to and do their own thing; if it mattered that much.

In less old days someone was part of a community. They did things that supported the community and return the community supported them.

In recent history people were part of national communities, there were careers with 'retirement' plans and advancement tracks that enabled someone to achieve most of their potential if they wanted it.

Today everyone wants a short term solution with no long term planning or costs. There is no community because you don't know if you're going to be there in 5 or 10 years. There is no investment because you don't know if you're going to be there in 5 or 10 years. There is no sense of belonging because there is nothing to belong to. Everyone is a disposable cog in a machine that doesn't care about them.

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People have always voted funny, and I think that's what has gotten us where we are now.

The "social contract" was an elaborate way to force people into an agreement. But I agree with you, it was at least possible to leave. It wasn't organized slavery. And the other side of the bargain was more or less kept, so it even made some sense.

I don't think it is possible to leave anymore. Not just that, but we are selling out our young generation and immigrants. We indoctrinate people to borrow a debt that can't be legally discharged, just to acquire mostly useless government sanctionned diplomas. We have rules for immigrant workers that to me look like indentured servitude. And on top of that, we resent these people that make modern society possible. I am waiting for them to shrug like Atlas. I hope they will.

I am lucky to be outside out that, but it still disgust me. Like you said, this is a society that wants to treat people like disposable cogs in a machine, that doesn't care about them. I get that, and I could be on board, if only it was honest and without lies.

I just do not agree that people have always voted funny. Their perspectives were more aligned with the government before. Not so much now, and I don't think it is fair to blame them.

Without bringing politics to HN, I think I have some unpopular libertarian political opinions. But even for me, it goes way too far, and it is not libertarian at all.

> everyone wants a short term solution with no long term planning or costs.

Except for a few, who are treated like fools or motors.

> Everyone is a disposable cog in a machine that doesn't care about them.

The same as above. However, the cogs work more than motors, where it should have been the opposite.

I would think millenials actually desire growth as much as any other generation desires it. That they don’t implies they may not be able to.

The Zentraedi were cloned super-soldiers designed to serve the Protoculture and nothing else. Then the Protoculture lost control of their weapons.

Lin Meimei I guess awakened the emotions they'd never required nor experienced before.

This is very much a theme in the Warhammer 40k universe. Tech priests "pray to the Omnissiah" while applying various sacred ointments (lubrication for parts?) to machinery and such to get tech to work [1].

[1] http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Tech-Priest

On that topic, I think you can directly equate Behavioral Economics to Psychohistory. In fact, fellow Nobel winner Paul Krugman claims to have become an economist because it was the closest he could come to being a pyschohistorian in real life.

> those in power start viewing scientists with disdain and distrust

Are we talking about a novel or the current government in power in some prominent countries at the moment?

Well the good part is the, the scientists (aka priests) create a religion to control the primitives.

Profession also discusses the same theme and it's shorter (IMO his best short story, and in a way prophecies how modern SW development works).

Eh, that kinda boils down the entire social, political, and technological arc of Asimov's Galactic Empire into the caricature we later got in the form of the Adeptus Mechanicus.