I did like the book but I also thought they solved huge problems in a single short chapter with minimal detail.
In one chapter it’s mentioned that one of the characters is working on some open source social media. A few chapters later it becomes the dominant social media in the world… oh and also payment method… Oh and blockchain…
Being a big fan of Lemmy, I think the book is a bit optimistic.
I love Kim Stanley Robinson, but yeah, he is definitely handwaving past a lot of the feasibility and hard work involved in many of the solutions presented. He is just a writer throwing out ideas more than working thru the struggles of implementing and getting adoption of those ideas.
To be fair, he focuses on some struggles more than others. In Ministry it’s more about a few activists and one relevant bureaucrat organizing from top down and bottom up, and not really about labourers other than vignettes for context. Character development over plot for KSR, usually.
That’s very fair.