What utopic non-sense.
The person who wrote this knew nothing of other people's buying preferences, nor distribution, nor variety, nor scarcity of goods.
Sooooo, in this world, all the clothes are uniformly the same, all the produce is uniformly the same, all the houses are uniformly the same...
Basically this whole thing breaks down whenever you add aesthetics to the mix.
The only reason Amazonium is able to exist is because so many consumer goods have become so bland, so similar, so commodified, so manufactured by so few companies, that you can find, select and order a pineapple fondlepad.
This world portrayed has turned every manufactured good into a commodity.
There is no art, no design, no aesthetics.
Because when you add these, there becomes too many choices that one place could never serve them all.
Further, the future will distribute manufacturing.
So not only will you have many choices of modifications to anything built, but you will also have many choices of who builds it.
The dystopian nightmare written about above is exactly where corporations (which will soon rule the world, goodbye USSA, goodbye China) are trying to take things. A world of bland. Just like cars today. Bland junk, where a guy could build a car out of a book written in the 70s and be called advanced, cutting edge.
RE: Looking Backwards Ch 10