Rat Race

Jones, Raymond F. "Rat Race." Analog 77.2 (April 1966). Rpt. Above the Human Landscape. Willis E. McNelly and Leon E. Stover, eds. Pacific Palisades, CA: Goodyear Pub. Co., 1972.

In "the Abundant Society," all individual production is prohibited to allow total control by those who rule and are ruled by the "mammoth, world-wide computer system" (Landscape 256). "RR" offers the hope that the system will be destroyed by a fad among men—the story presents women rather negatively—of model railroad kits. Cf. and contrast F. Pohl's "Midas Plague" and J. Williamson's Humanoids stories (cited below).