Fifteen Million Merits

Automated everything; humans generate power and consume media.

Pedal an exercise bike to earn merits. Spend merits on media, on skipping adverts, and eventually on one shot at a talent show. Sleep in a cell whose walls are screens you cannot switch off.

Manufactured scarcity — The abundance is real, so a new scarcity gets invented to compete over.

States the invented-scarcity argument more clearly in an hour than most novels manage in four hundred pages.