Plumbing and George

There is a Star Trek idea that could be useful here, that a society NEEDS conflict and difficulty to thrive and achieve. They have life so easy that they haven't bothered with more than the minimum of plumbing. (One then wonders what they did with sewage.) Capt Kirk would have kicked the foundations out from under Shangri-La and set the elite to laboring, secure in the belief that it was for their ultimate benefit. And he probably would have left them with some stirring, to him, words from the Declaration of Independence. :)

This isn't my idea of paradise. I like challenge. It seems like a gilded cage for the elite. (The idea that there is no crime because there is no lack conveniently overlooks the fact that some reside in grandeur with servants and others don't.)

Maybe they don't live so very long--it just feels like that because nothing ever happens. :) And by the time they can't stand it anymore, they are trapped.

It's a shame about the wasted opportunities with, one imagines, kids in school for many decades because they grow old so slowly, and a tremendous amount of time to pass on information that the previous generations had discovered. Instead, the populace is stuck in an agrarian society and the elite stick to their books. One might think with their money and situation the community could set themselves to scientific research or innovating in ways that would help mitigate humanity's ills. But no, this is a feudal society with a docile peasant class that has scarcely advanced since the way they were when the high mucky muck set this all up with himself as the benevolent lord. (Even the sheep shearing was a messy and inefficient operation.) I guess that is the European idea of a perfect society but James T. Kirk would violently disagree.

(I don't know if it is ironic or fitting that the author Hilton only lived to 54 after writing about a paradise with long life.)