The Wages of Humanity (2024)

Liu Cixin is an unadulterated genius, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
If someone wrote poetry in mathematical progression, in the backdrop of a scientific revolution, with social experiments thrown in just for the sake of it, you might get something close to him. Even then I'm not sure.
Simple concept brilliantly done. Take a bow, maestro.

The Wages of Humanity was a short story that managed to pull my three-point-five-star rating up to a four-star rating. It started a bit slowly, and it took a while for me to become invested. However, once it was moving, I was intrigued. It’s a story that gets the reader thinking, one that contains more than appears on the surface.

Without a doubt, this quick read is more than worth devouring.

I had to take several pauses to finish this rather short story.
For the Benefit of Mankind is horrifying on all front.
But it does present the best argument against private property that I've ever read.
I don't think anyone could read through this story & still support capitalism, this short story exposes with minute accuracy the evil of the so called "neutral" "law of the market".
It exposes how what is legal is by no means what is fair & that the capitalist oppressor doesn't need to use cruel language, can do horrible things & justify them & deem themselves as being good or justified in their actions.
This is the most important piece of writing I have read since I read Bakounine & saw that he found the same flaws in Marx's theories as I did.

Capitalism at its prime

Yet another amazing sf short story from Liu Cixin. The story explores what happens when capitalism is taken to its extreme. Completely mind bending and thought provoking ideas.

I'm lucky to be alive. I was running while listening to this book and it took a lot of willpower to not jump into oncoming traffic to make the stupidity stop.
Even if you overlook the ridiculous premise, the storytelling was simply atrocious. We jump around between essentially unrelated subplots before getting one stupid 'twist' after another. The protagonist was a lifeless cliche whose pitiful attempts at backstory were laughable at best. The rest of the characters were equally hollow who said and did things that made no sense, even within the context of the setting. And what annoyed me the most was that the antagonistic force that set the 'main' plot of the story in motion would have seen through the frankly idiotic attempt to 'game' their moronic system.

Bewildering yet again. Fulfilled all my expectations. I just cannot get over how genius this author is.

Another thrilling tale that keeps you wondering. Once more, my only disappointment was to know there is not more material on this.

What the billionnaires did in the short story is beguiling. But the entire short story looks like an abominable propaganda by Marxists and Maoists, particularly the preposterous description by the man from the Earth No. 1.

Interesting companion to Taking Care of the Gods but ultimately wasn't swayed.

Income inequality scifi

Collected in The Wandering Earth: Classic Science Fiction Collection, this story is also titled For the Benefit of All Mankind. The first half of this story is all about Smoothbore and how he was recruited, then trained to become an assassin at some secret Assassin academy where he learns some basic tenets, like don't let your clients and units (targets or marks) get too close to each other, and the gun NEVER asks questions or takes sides, just does its job. All very cold blooded. This arc reminded me of the anime Assassination Classroom, except the kids and teachers aren't as charming.

So he grows up, things happen and we get to the present day. 13 members of the Standing Committee of the Council for Liquidation of Social Wealth give him a job to kill 3 extremely nondescript people. He recognizes the bosses, extremely wealthy capitalists but not the intended targets. As Smoothbore surveils the targets, all of whom are poor people, he begins to question why they've been selected. He breaks another rule and the council let him "ride along" on their mission as they distribute wealth. He figures it out.

“My paintings describe poverty and death. If I became a millionaire overnight, my art would die.”

Eventually there's a very telling conversation with an alien that puts everything into perspective.
“And that is the story of First Earth, the story of two billion poor people and one rich man.”
“If you did not intervene, would our world repeat this tale?” Smoothbore asked after the First Earthling finished his narration.
“I do not know. Perhaps, but perhaps not. The course of a civilization is like the fate of an individual - fickle and impossible to predict.”

At this point I felt the author switched directions so many times I was going to get whiplash from all the plot twists. Part of me felt the alien's world was extremely unjust because Capitalism got to the point where even air and water were unaffordable (!!!) but the thinly veiled excuse to extol the virtues of communism is equally as bad.

Liu Cixin thus leaves it up to the reader to decide which position our morality will take. That's why this is a 5⭐ story because it made me think about stuff I normally don't want to think about. I was kind of sad to realize things COULD go this far, since we do live in a capitalist society where those without money are constantly being preyed on and treated badly.

There is wealth inequality, which causes resentment, riots and death. There is also proof that giving everyone freebies to "level the playing field" doesn't help society progress as we just get a bunch of lazy, entitled, useless, non-productive humans. The real answer should be something in between, but humanity hasn't quite figured out the solution to this problem yet.

Pedantic, heavy handed Marxist screed. Characters vey cardboard cut out and undeveloped. Stone cold killer with a crack in his emotional armour. Ruthless, self-satisfied business people convinced of their own virtue with standard Marxist justifications for their actions. Criminals equated with business moguls. Pure, honourable saintly poor. Then that really OTT, way-too-on-the-nose and overlong monologue at the end in case you missed the blunt "Capitalism bad, communism the best" message that was already way too obvious.

Nothing interesting or clever about the sci-fi premise except, maybe, the idea that there are other earths out there and the fastest to tech would come to devour the others. So all in all, terrible story and a waste of university level study.

The messages are blunt and simplistic. If the rich would just give everything away, then the world would be perfect and we could all be equal and that would be paradise. Seems like it was written by a 10 year old.

Disappointing considering all the good things I've heard about this author.

read for eng102

CRAZY. if the matrix and animal farm had a baby, this would be it. why could i imagine this actually happening.

"killing others became a pleasure for smoothbore, more addictive than any drug. he lived to smash the delicate jade vessels called 'humans', to watch the red liquid contained within gush out and cool to room temperature. that alone was the truth – that any warmth in that liquid was only ever a charade."

"the rich and the poor were no longer the same species. the rich were as different to the poor as the poor were to dogs. the poor were no longer people."

This is a dystopia showing what can happen if the gap between the rich and poor grows to the extreme. And what will be if the AI does everything and most people become useless.
When greed is the only merit, being opposite to greed becomes a crime punishable to death.

Smoothbore's back story was fun to read, but it seemed kind of irrelevant overall. I get that they wanted to portray him as an cold hard operator capable of turning on his employers, but perhaps the amount of detail was not necessary.

The Last Capitalist portion of this story was great. It was genuinely hilarious to me. Capitalism taken to its absolute extreme! I just hope the author realizes how absurd this depiction of Capitalism is.

Refreshingly different from Cixin's other short stories, but still characteristically written.

Really lofty intellectual ideas - he perhaps tries to tackle too much at once, but he’s got a really fresh voice and take on society that I’ll allow it.

A simple story about the rich and the poor told to a devoted assassin by an alien from the Elder Brother planet.

read for uni

Todo bueno con Cixin Liu! Increíble

Cixin Liu loves to punish humanity with a trip to Australia

Heavy-handed social justice scenario (which comes across inauthentic given the author's political views)

A perfectly Cixin-esque reduction of capitalism ad absurdum on an interplanetary scale. Do we expect anything less??

made me feel bleak out of my mind but the hitman thing was fun at least

Liu's writing style is always enthralling...

Genius.

An OK book. Not a very “Sci-Fi” story. A few unique ideas but gets predictable often. Lacks character development. 2.5/5.0.

This story was a refreshing take on wealth inequality

[4.5 stars]

The progression of the story and how more and more information is doled out worked really well here. I liked the main character, and it was interesting to see the job give him pause considering what he’s chosen as his life’s work.

I don’t understand what happened at the very end though. Did he shoot them in a way that delayed their death? Did he intentionally miss because living in the future would be a worse fate?

Cixin sigue tocando palos con sus cuentos CF. Tras probar la CF más clásica y luego las fábulas, se atreve con algo que parece y no es género negro. Muchos hacen muchas menos pruebas y tardan toda una carrera.