post scarcity

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description: after the elimination of scarcity; in a time when society has sufficient resources

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We Are as Gods: A Survival Guide for the Age of Abundance

by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler  · 13 Apr 2026  · 225pp  · 76,418 words

everything, everywhere, all the time? We’ll examine the science of longevity and the strange, sweeping consequences of living a very long time in a post-scarcity world. Where does meaning come from? What happens to purpose? Once, these were philosophical questions. Today, they’re survival skills. But we’re getting a

power sits in very human hands. Which makes our final question unavoidable: What happens when abundance is the rule rather than the exception? Imagine a “post-scarcity world,” where nearly anything and everything becomes available through the combined force of exponential technologies. Industries run on solar and fusion; products and services are

. Star Trek inverts the paradigm. Abundance doesn’t sedate. It ignites. Humanity rises from the wreckage of the twentieth century—war, hunger, poverty—into a post-scarcity world powered by warp drives, artificial intelligence, and deep purpose. The voyage of the starship Enterprise is the opposite of a retreat into comfort. It

drive us forward. As coach Dan Sullivan likes to say: “It’s critical that our future be bigger than our past.” In a long-lived, post-scarcity world, the absence of external struggle means we need to generate drive from within. Humans have five major intrinsic motivators—curiosity, passion, purpose, autonomy, and

requires moderate stress. Flow reinforces the idea, as the state only emerges when challenge exceeds skill. Stagnation is a greater risk than starvation in a post-scarcity world. To thrive, we need to train ourselves to stretch ourselves, over and over again. Cultivate Curiosity Over Comfort: Curiosity is rocket fuel. It fires

young again, asking, “Why? Why? Why?” to our hearts’ content. Redefine Work as Creation: For a very long time, we worked to survive. In a post-scarcity world, the new work is creation, growth, self-expression, meaning-making. These skills define the future of work, when the goal is no longer to

The Infinity Machine: Demis Hassabis, DeepMind, and the Quest for Superintelligence

by Sebastian Mallaby;  · 30 Mar 2026  · 607pp  · 161,998 words

, would be to have AI,” Hassabis said later. At Bullfrog, Hassabis ripped through the first books in Iain Banks’s Culture series, which described a post-scarcity, interstellar society dominated by intelligent artificial beings. In this world of Banks’s imagining, AI systems would generate economic abundance, and citizens would lack for

general intelligence would make almost anything possible, surpassing the internet, the printing press, or even the Industrial Revolution in importance. It would usher in a post-scarcity world of radical abundance, resembling the future described in the science fiction he had read as a teenager. “People aren’t thinking ambitiously enough about

are not understanding the magnitude of the change. “I don’t think money’s even going to be relevant. What will money mean in a post-scarcity society? “Or corporations. Or the stock market. What do these things mean if we have superabundance? “And I’m not sure that the solution to

my visits to see Hassabis, I ate lunch in the DeepMind cafeteria before the meeting. The food was delicious and varied and absolutely free: The post-scarcity society had already arrived in this corner of London. Sneaker-shod researchers padded about contentedly with plates of salad and sea bream. Nobody was old

enormity of AGI bubbled up again in conversation. “So it will be bigger than the Industrial Revolution?” I asked, curious to hear more about the post-scarcity future. “Yeah, I think so,” Hassabis reiterated. “Maybe AI is more like fire and language. Or maybe it’s as big as the emergence of

Iain M Banks - The Culture complete works

by Iain M. Banks  · 5,095pp  · 1,429,463 words

, whatever they had been. It happened. It made you poor–it was tantamount to taking a religious vow of poverty–though being poor in a post-scarcity society that only retained money as a sort of ceremonial formality was not so terrible; it took only one person of nominally average means to

. The world was almost as long down its axis as it was wide and was conventionally arranged–by the relaxed, abundantly provisioned standards of a post-scarcity humanoid civilisation–with parkland, forests, lakes and aesthetically pleasing built-up areas and isolated grand architectural statements spread across its nearly three million square kilometres

AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future

by Kai-Fu Lee and Qiufan Chen  · 13 Sep 2021

purpose-filled lives? Would any economic theory apply anymore? This story, set in Australia, explores a futuristic society that has introduced two currencies for a post-scarcity world: a card that provides for citizens’ basic needs, and a new virtual currency for building reputation and respect through service to the community. In

, in which all people are entitled to a comfortable life, as goods prices approach free, and work becomes optional. Others have called it “abundance” or “post-scarcity.” But in “Dreaming of Plenitude,” a society that at first seems like it might possess all the ingredients of a utopian paradise, in which everyone

wait. So, with nearly free energy, inexpensive materials, and AI-automated production, we will usher in the age of plenitude. PLENITUDE: A TECHNOLOGY-MEDIATED INEVITABILITY “Post-scarcity” describes a world where nothing is scarce, and everything is free. In “Dreaming of Plenitude,” we encounter a future world in which countries are moving

toward post-scarcity, although at different paces. In the last story, Australia, a highly developed country, is wealthy enough to give everyone basic necessities and comfortable living (through

story, would reach a state of plenitude sometime later. Because the timetable will vary for different countries, I prefer the term “plenitude” rather than “post-scarcity.” Also, strict post-scarcity will never be achieved. For example, no matter how much technology improves, there will never be more than twenty paintings by Leonardo da Vinci

five hundred years ago. As William Gibson said, “The future is already here—it is just not very evenly distributed.” ECONOMIC MODELS FOR SCARCITY AND POST-SCARCITY For millennia, human economic systems have evolved under one fundamental premise—scarcity. Scarcity exists when human wants for goods and services exceed the limited supply

Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy

by Robert W. McChesney  · 5 Mar 2013  · 476pp  · 125,219 words

number of people could make a living producing content, what sort of culture would society produce? The online logic seemed as much pre-surplus as post-scarcity, as much Dark Ages as Age of Enlightenment. In short, the need for the PEC, the need to develop effective systems and policies, was and

What Would Google Do?

by Jeff Jarvis  · 15 Feb 2009  · 299pp  · 91,839 words

Googlejuice • Life is public, so is business • Your customers are your ad agency New Society • Elegant organization New Economy • Small is the new big • The post-scarcity economy • Join the open-source, gift economy • The mass market is dead—long live the mass of niches • Google commodifies everything • Welcome to the Google

. We are reorganizing society. This is Google’s—and Facebook’s and craigslist’s—new world order. New Economy Small is the new big The post-scarcity economy Join the open-source, gift economy The mass market is dead—long live the mass of niches Google commodifies everything Welcome to the Google

his blog (and he beat me to using it as the title of a book). “Get small,” Godin blogged. “Think big.” The post-scarcity economy We are entering a post-scarcity economy in which Google is teaching us to manage abundance, challenging the bedrock rule of economics, first written in 1767: the law of

, 126–27 Platial.com, 33–34 politics, 51, 217–21 trust and, 83 Pope, Ivan, 206 populism, 84–85 pornography, 225 PornTube, 225 portfolios, 214 post-scarcity economy, 57–59 Potts, Mark, 56 PowerPoint, 64 Poynter, Don, 137 PPPs. See personal political pages Prezvid.com, 37 print-on-demand, 140 Prius, 164

Googlejuice Life is public, so is business Your customers are your ad agency New Society Elegant organization New Economy Small is the new big The post-scarcity economy Join the open-source, gift economy The mass market is dead—long live the mass of niches Google commodifies everything Welcome to the Google

Automation and the Future of Work

by Aaron Benanav  · 3 Nov 2020  · 175pp  · 45,815 words

driving cars). With the exception of the exoskeleton jumpsuits, all of this is possible now if we fight for it. We can already achieve the post-scarcity world that the automation theorists invoke, even if the automation of production proves impossible. My interest in this topic arose from two distinct sources, one

my own, which by comparison with theirs was still of the dullest-possible grey. In the pages that follow, I explore possibilities for achieving a post-scarcity future without the full automation of production: by sharing the work that remains to be done in a way that restores dignity, autonomy, and purpose

discuss the policy alternatives that aim to resolve this market failure—neoliberal structural adjustment, Keynesian demand management, and universal basic income—and sketch out a post-scarcity world against which they should be measured. Writing this book has only further convinced me that turning the tide toward a more humane future will

testing out as a possible response to the present recession. We should not be fighting for this modest social goal, but rather to inaugurate a post-scarcity planet. I could not have written this book without the support and friendship of many people, including: Perry Anderson, Arielle Angel, Elyse Arkind, Marc Arkind

Instructions,” which he lifted from the names of spaceships in Iain M. Banks’s Culture series. Banks’s ambiguously utopian science fiction novels depict a post-scarcity world in which human beings live fulfilling lives alongside intelligent robots—called “minds”—without the need for markets or states.9 Politicians and their advisors

government would actually be able to fulfill the promise of full automation by creating a post-work or post-scarcity society. In Four Futures, Peter Frase thoughtfully explores the alternative outcomes for such a post-scarcity society, depending on whether it were still to have private property or to suffer from resource scarcity,

is defeated, maybe the best we will get is UBI, but that distributional reform should not be our aim. We should be reaching toward a post-scarcity world, a goal that advanced technologies will help us realize, even if the full automation of production is not achievable—or even desirable. The return

while away our time in dead-end jobs, playing video games on smartphones. We need to slip out of this timeline and into another. A post-scarcity future—in which all individuals are guaranteed access to whatever they need to make a life, without exception—could become the basis on which humanity

create, to learn and to teach, unhampered by the fear of where the next meal is coming from.”31 To find our way toward this post-scarcity future requires not only a break between work and income, as the automation theorists recognize, but also one between profit and income, as many do

over the course of three generations.14 By contrast, radical Keynesians like British economists Joan Robinson and William Beveridge knew that to get to the post-scarcity world of Keynes’s dreams, it would be necessary to socialize investment levels and legislate shorter working days.15 Beveridge’s 1944 plan for “full

labor has been rendered largely or even fully obsolete. UBI is the technical solution that transforms the nightmare scenario of automation into the dream of post-scarcity. On this basis, automation theorists often present UBI as a neutral policy instrument—appealing to left and right—that solves the problem of global un

of which will not bring us closer to a world of human flourishing.27 A critique of the automation discourse’s market-based vision of post-scarcity will help reveal the contours of a nonmarket alternative. UBI proposals long predate the advent of the automation discourse. Some trace their origin to Thomas

participate in the world of private property. In his proposal, which anticipates the concept of basic income, payments are not a way to create a post-scarcity world, but rather to secure the moral foundations of a private-ownership society. Twentieth-century neoliberal economists supported a basic income for similar reasons. Both

enjoyable, or to automate them out of existence.39 UBI becomes a means not of stabilizing the late-capitalist economy, but of pushing toward a post-scarcity world, in which the “economic problem” has been solved and people are free to pursue their passions. Past that point, the major questions concern humanity

efforts to raise a modest UBI to a higher level would quickly push the economy into crisis, forcing UBI advocates to press forward toward the post- scarcity world long before they were ready to make the leap, or else to back down. Facing such a salto mortale, reform parties typically have blinked

the power to control investment decisions away from capitalists, hence rendering the capital strike inoperative, can clear the way for us to advance toward a post-scarcity future. CHAPTER 6 Necessity and Freedom EVEN IF ONE DOUBTS automation theorists’ account of technological progress—as I certainly do—their attempt to imagine and

chart a path toward a post-scarcity future remains their thought’s most attractive aspect, because it allows us to pose the question of how the pieces of this defunct world can

no one has gone before,” without having to worry about how they are going to earn a living. The question is: Can we envisage a post-scarcity world without the replicators—that is, even if full automation turns out to be a dream? By focusing on technological progress rather than the conquest

of production, automation theorists end up largely abandoning what has been seen as the basic precondition for generating a post-scarcity world, from Thomas More’s 1516 Utopia to present-day Trekonomics. This precondition is not the free distribution of money, as the most recent wave

out of it, we could begin from a world of generalized human dignity, and then consider the technical changes needed to realize that world. The Post-scarcity Tradition What if everyone suddenly had access to enough healthcare, education, and welfare to reach their full potential? A world of fully capacitated individuals would

that serve as the foundation for all our other activities.6 Whereas automation theorists place their hopes in technology, many of the original theorists of post-scarcity—such as Karl Marx, Thomas More, Étienne Cabet, and Peter Kropotkin—did not need to call on a deus ex machina to solve this riddle

. They claimed that post-scarcity was possible without the automation of production. Instead, they argued, we needed to reorganize social life into two separate but interrelated spheres: a realm of

inspired the exiled Rousseauian republican Étienne Cabet, who read More’s Utopia in the British Museum and was immediately converted to the social ideal of post-scarcity. He wrote his own treatise, titled Travels in Icaria (1840), advocating for what he called “the community of goods.”10 To More’s call for

, coming into contact with revolutionaries like Peter Kropotkin, who went on to write detailed accounts of how democratically organized post-scarcity societies could be constructed. Kropotkin emphasized the role of voluntary associations in post- scarcity life. He argued that voluntary associations would flourish in a world where money and private property had been abolished

in “menial service” so that others might make art, he said, we would “all be artists and all serve.” To many people, this vision of post-scarcity was what “socialism” and “communism” had come to mean, before their later identification with Stalinist central planning and breakneck industrialization.16 I will take each

, common intermediate and final goods, sanitation, water, electricity, healthcare, education, child and elder care, means of both communication and transportation, and so on). Theorists of post-scarcity generally estimate that these common labors would take anywhere from three to five hours a day—about one-third to one-half of a standard

capacitated world, these specialisms would themselves be more evenly distributed. Utopian writer Edward Bellamy proposed one way to organize the division of labor in a post-scarcity society in his novel Looking Backward (1888). There, the supply and demand for labor determine how many hours people work, rather than how high a

be performed by food replicators and cleaning drones, so that people can get on with their scientific research unimpeded, remains to be seen. In the post-scarcity tradition, the reorganization of necessary labors makes possible a world of free giving. Everyone can go to the social storehouses and service centers to get

the night without having to prove that they qualify for access. There would be no possibility of excluding someone from these social goods. For a post-scarcity society to come into being, a literal cornucopia is not required. It is only necessary that scarcity and its accompanying mentality be overcome, so people

starship Enterprise tells a financial mogul, who had been cryogenically frozen in the twenty-first century only to be revived, to his horror, in a post-scarcity world).25 In such a world, there could still be sanctions to ensure that necessary work is actually undertaken. However, inducements to work would not

ideas: feelings of autonomy, mastery, and purpose are what generate the best work, not higher levels of monetary reward.27 The successful organization of a post-scarcity world would require that its denizens solve, to their satisfaction, the problems posed by the twentieth century’s socialist calculation debates. They would do so

standards. Again, there is likely to be no single best way to deal with these crucial problems.28 Free Time for Everyone For theorists of post-scarcity, the reconstruction of the realm of necessity is not an end in itself; the solidarity it engenders also expands the realm of freedom and ensures

oppressive personal relationships within households or workplaces, or to renegotiate the terms of those engagements.31 What will people do with their expanded free time? Post-scarcity has been called “post-work,” but such framing is inadequate.32 After a period of rest and recovery, even the most work-weary people become

be determined by the profit motive, or dictated by the interests of the wealthy. What we call “capital” in the society of scarcity would, in post-scarcity, be recognized for what it is: our common social inheritance.34 Built up over generations, belonging to no one and to everyone, it is that

resource scarcity or abundance, as long as certain fundamental conditions of sustainable material security were met. The first thing people would actually do in a post-scarcity world—alongside insuring everyone’s basic needs were met—would be to put a large portion of humanity’s collective resources and intelligence to work

technologically advanced society, so that everyone has the right and the power to decide what to do with their time. This brief sketch of a post-scarcity world can perhaps serve as a benchmark to evaluate the various pathways that are supposed to get us to that place. From this standpoint, it

as both a dream and a nightmare, that is because it has no innate association with human dignity, and because it will not generate a post-scarcity world by itself. Nor will universal basic income. Perhaps if access to education and healthcare were dramatically widened, communities revitalized through cooperative sharing of the

sources of energy—then, a basic income could form one part of a larger project aiming at human freedom.36 But the path to a post-scarcity world could also take some other form entirely. Without a clear vision of this coming world, it is easy to get lost along the way

. Postscript: Agents of Change IF NEITHER TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT nor technocratic reform leads inevitably to a post-scarcity world, then it is only the pressure of social movements, pushing for a radical restructuring of social life, that can bring it about. One of

alone dream. Movements without a vision are blind; but visionaries without movements are much more severely incapacitated. Without a massive social struggle to build a post- scarcity world, late-capitalist visionaries will remain mere techno-utopian mystics. Notes Chapter 1. The Automation Discourse 1 See Edward Bellamy’s utopia, Looking Backward, 2000

, Revisiting Keynes’ Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, MIT Press, 2008. See also Mike Beggs, “Keynes’s Jetpack,” Jacobin, April 17, 2012; Robert Chernomas, “Keynes on Post-Scarcity Society,” Journal of Economic Issues, vol. 18, no. 4, 1984; James Crotty, Keynes against Capitalism, Taylor & Francis, 2019. 15 Robinson admonished the “bastard Keynesians” for

, and Herbert Marcuse, who essentially suggested that the collapse of spheres could be achieved by turning all work into play. Single-realm conceptions of a post-scarcity world are, in my view, both totalitarian and hopelessly utopian (in the bad sense of the term). 8 Quoted in Marx, Capital, vol. 1, p

, 2000 [1935], pp. 37–60; Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, Beacon, 2001 [1944], pp. 257–68. See also Marcel van der Linden, “The Prehistory of Post-Scarcity Anarchism: Josef Weber and the Movement for a Democracy of Content (1947–1964),” Anarchist Studies, no. 9, 2001, pp. 127–45. The socialist calculation debate

account of the place of the realms of necessity and freedom in democratic socialism that is similar to my account of their place in a post-scarcity world. 25 Saadia, Trekonomics, p. 40. 26 Kropotkin, Conquest of Bread, pp. 138–9. 27 Daniel Pink, Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us

Woods, 25 British National Health Service, 69–70 Brynjolfsson, Erik of labor-productivity growth, 17 The Second Machine Age, 2–3, 45 Cabet, Étienne on post-scarcity, 83, 84–5 Travels in Icaria, 84–5 call center sector, 118n48 Capital (Marx), 8, 47–8 capital disinvestment, 71 “A Capitalist Road to Communism

, Herbert, 8, 132–3n7 Marx, Karl Capital, 8, 47–8 Communist Manifesto, 85 concept of relative surplus population, 120n8 political development of, 133–4n13 on post-scarcity, 83, 84–5 stagnant economic sector concept, 57 Mason, Paul, 96–7 McAfee, Andrew of labor-productivity growth, 17 The Second Machine Age, 2–3

sector employment in, 56, 58 Minijobs, 52 mining industry, 117n45 MNCs (multinational corporations), 27 money, free, 72–6 Moore’s law, 40 More, Thomas on post-scarcity, 83, 89 Utopia, 82, 84 Morris, William, 132–3n7 mudsill theory, 132n6 multinational corporations (MNCs), 27 Murray, Charles In Our Hands, 74–5 Musk, Elon

Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World

by Nick Bostrom  · 26 Mar 2024  · 547pp  · 173,909 words

see many new faces here today, so maybe it would be good to start with a quick recap. We began yesterday by observing that simple post-scarcity utopias, which present a vision of material abundance, relaxation, and social license, have held strong appeal among immiserated hard-working folk, as evidenced by the

& culture type, that is not our topic of this lecture series. We’ve instead been exploring some issues that arise in what I will term post-scarcity utopias. These are predicated on the assumption that a condition of economic abundance is somehow achieved. This idea is not new, of course: the Land

of Cockaigne is essentially a post-scarcity utopia. And it is common for drafters of governance & culture utopias to assume that a society organized according to their prescriptions would also achieve some

even with infinite money—for example because they haven’t been invented yet. But for our purposes it may be sufficient to say that a post-scarcity utopia is one in which it is easy to meet everybody’s basic material needs as traditionally conceived—food, housing, transportation, etc. We may toss

then observe that, in developed countries, we have already come a long way toward realizing this type of abundance—say, more than halfway toward a post-scarcity utopia.99 This estimate obviously omits our animal brothers and sisters, for the vast majority of whom the situation is still most dire and in

urgent need of amelioration.100 * * * In these lectures, we have then gone beyond post-scarcity to talk also about what we can term post-work utopias. These are visions for a society that has achieved full automation and thereby eliminated

maybe we would be eighty percent of the way there. * * * Let it not be thought that traditional governance & culture utopias are necessarily “more realistic” than post-scarcity or post-work utopias. What is realistic depends on the context. If we are considering a condition of technological maturity, what may be unrealistic is

have to move through this quickly, as we have a lot of ground still to cover. You’ll recall that we introduced governance & culture utopias, post-scarcity utopias, and post-work utopias. We saw that the problem awaiting us as we approach technological maturity—the problem of deep redundancy— extends beyond the

and needs of some oppressed group, such as animals. Comes in many flavors—feminist, Marxist, scientific/technological, ecological, religious. (And now, most recently, crypto?) 2. Post-scarcity utopia Featuring an abundance of material goods and services—food, electronics, transportation, housing, schools and hospitals, etc. Everybody can have plenty of everything (with the

important exception of positional goods). Many governance & culture utopias are also, to varying degrees, post-scarcity. In reality, if we focus just on human beings, Earth is already, what—about two-thirds of the way there? compared to the baseline of

human economic labor, though attempts to imagine this condition are often half-hearted and assume a continued need of human labor for cultural production. In post-scarcity utopia, there is plenty, but producing it might require work. In post-work utopia, there is little or no human work, either because machines give

. In classical governance & culture dystopias, for example, the problematic pattern might be oppressive totalitarianism (Nineteen Eighty-Four) or dehumanizing consumerism (Brave New World). In a post-scarcity dystopia, it could be alienation or social disconnectedness. In a post-work dystopia, the issue might be tedium and indolence. In post-instrumental or plastic

. Student: May I ask a question? Bostrom: Fire away. Student: I’m a little confused here. I thought the key benefit of getting to a post-scarcity civilization would be that we could do all kinds of things that aren’t “task-optimal” but are still fun. Like, maybe I want to

numbers are made up; maybe it should be 80%? At any rate, I think we’ve come a very substantial part of the way toward post-scarcity utopia—not because there does not remain pockets of destitution in developed countries or because there is not a lot more neat stuff that it

quite widespread even in some wealthy countries; and the rest of the world obviously remains further away from anything that could be described as a post-scarcity condition. 100 What about preserving the ecosystem in an unmodified condition? Imagine that some technologically advanced civilization arrived on Earth and was now pondering how

–23, 493, 494 Usefulness-of-effort hypothesis, 345–46 Utility monster. See Superbeneficiary Utopian literature Governance & culture, 125–27, 201 Plastic, 202 Post-instrumental, 202 Post-scarcity, 127–28, 201 Post-work, 128, 202 V Virtual reality, 165–71, 242. See also Digital minds, Experience machine W Welles, H. G., 30 Wireheading

Fully Automated Luxury Communism

by Aaron Bastani  · 10 Jun 2019  · 280pp  · 74,559 words

3.What Is Fully Automated Luxury Communism? II. New Travellers 4.Full Automation: Post-Scarcity in Labour 5.Limitless Power: Post-Scarcity in Energy 6.Mining the Sky: Post-Scarcity in Resources 7.Editing Destiny: Age and Post-Scarcity in Health 8.Food without Animals: Post-Scarcity in Sustenance III. Paradise Found 9.Popular Support: Luxury Populism 10.Fundamental Principles

of the Industrial Revolution, marking an era in which machines are increasingly able to perform cognitive as well as physical tasks. This new situation of post-scarcity underpins what will be referred to as ‘extreme supply’, something not only limited to information, but – as a consequence of digitisation – labour too. Here, continuous

vanquished. In 1930 Keynes speculated about something remarkably similar and, amazingly, even had the confidence to put a date on it – foreseeing the arrival of post-scarcity as soon as 2030. Other than Keynes’s stated disdain for Marx’s class-based politics in ‘preferring the mud to the fish’, what was

of Gods on Olympus’, as if a shuttle should weave of itself, and a plectrum should do its own harp playing. Aristotle 4 Full Automation: Post-Scarcity in Labour Productivity is for robots. Kevin Kelly When Capital Becomes Labour In 2011 the Economist, in circulation since 1843, posed its readers a question

opportunities of the new world, rather than dwell on those technologies and social mores which are falling into the slipstream of history. 5 Limitless Power: Post-Scarcity in Energy It never ceases to amaze me how PV costs keep coming down … it is unparalleled in the history of energy use to have

that under the Third Disruption it isn’t just information and labour which want to be free – it’s energy, too. 6 Mining the Sky: Post-Scarcity in Resources The Earth is a crumb in a supermarket filled with resources. Peter Diamandis A Finite World The issue of resource scarcity and depletion

present only 1 per cent of batteries are processed in such a way – and no doubt an improvement, that is still a long way from post-scarcity and permanently cheaper energy. That same report proceeded to outline how nickel and zinc, widely used in electricity storage, could face similar production peaks in

be applied to outer space and celestial bodies. * In 1973 dollars it was calculated to have cost $25.4 billion. 7 Editing Destiny: Age and Post-Scarcity in Health We are as gods … we might as well get good at it. Stewart Brand An Ageing Species By 2020, for the first time

that the genome of E. coli wasn’t sequenced until 1997, which represented the cutting edge of biotechnology at the time. 8 Food Without Animals: Post-Scarcity in Sustenance Cattle are very inefficient animals in converting vegetable proteins into animal proteins. We actually lose a lot of food by giving it to

Canada stepped up to become agricultural powerhouses, this might only serve to increase the possibility of resource conflicts with their more militarily powerful neighbours. Forget post-scarcity. Between rising populations, climate change, a dearth of fresh water and stretched bio-capacity, just avoiding widespread famine by the middle of this century would

technology is already making us gods – so we might as well get good at it. Nevertheless, space must remain for ‘grassroots’ campaigns which advance the post-scarcity alternative while attacking a broken status quo. Campaigns around divestment from fossil fuels offer one example of how that will work. Rather than calling for

it was socialism, still defined by scarcity and jobs, which became the North Star for hope across the world. The technologies needed to deliver a post-scarcity, post-work society – centred around renewable energy, automation and information – were absent in the Russian Empire, or indeed anywhere else until the late 1960s. Indeed

. A politics appropriate to FALC understands that and inserts itself into each terrain, guided always by a simple motto: liberty, luxury and the pursuit of post-scarcity. 10 Fundamental Principles: The Break with Neoliberalism Burn neoliberalism, not people. Clive Lewis Carillion’s Collapse and the East Coast Line Although FALC is the

local bus services for those over sixty – being extended to everyone. This is sensible – as we’ve already seen, transport sits at the intersection of post-scarcity in energy and labour with extreme supply from renewable power (energy) and autonomous driving (labour) meaning the cost of public transport will fall precipitously. This

Review, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 2001. Romer, Paul. ‘Endogenous Technological Change’. Journal of Political Economy, 1990. Part II. New Travellers 4. Full Automation: Post-Scarcity in Labour When Capital Becomes Labour ‘Ford Factory Workers Get 40-Hour Week’. History.com, 2009. N. V. ‘Difference Engine: Luddite Legacy’. Economist, 4 November

, Erik and Andrew McAfee. The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. W.W. Norton, 2014. 5. Limitless Power: Post-Scarcity in Energy Energy and Disruption Malm, Andreas. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. Verso Books, 2016. Arrival of

Solutions to Climate Change Are Here Rifkin, Jeremy. ‘Capitalism Is Making Way for the Age of Free’. Guardian, 31 March 2014. 6. Mining the Sky: Post-Scarcity in Resources Finite World Ahmed, Nafeez. ‘Exhaustion of Cheap Mineral Resources Is Terraforming Earth – Scientific Report’. Guardian, 4 June 2014. Withnall, Adam. ‘Britain Has Only

cost of storage technologies for, 105 disruption and, 94–6 free, 99–101 future of, 105–6 insulation of, 113–15 minimising consumption of, 220 post-scarcity in, 94–116 renewable (See renewable energy) solar, 101–5 wind, 111–13 energy transition, politics of, 218 Engels, Friedrich The Communist Manifesto, 51–2

Guttenberg Bible, 241 Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV), 205 Hayabusa spacecraft, 131 Hayek, F. A., 225 HDV (Haringey Development Vehicle), 205 healthcare Britain and, 213–14 post-scarcity in, 138–58 in UK, 215–16 United States and, 213–14 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 16 heme, 176–7 Henderson, Bruce, 46–7 Henderson

How the Outer Space Treaty Will Impact American Commerce and Settlement in Space’, 129 Resolution Foundation, 58 resources asteroid mining, 119–20 globalism and, 197 post-scarcity in, 117–37 private space industry, 120–1 space, 119–37 Ricardo, David, 69, 233 rice production, 161–2 Richards, Bob, 124 Rifkin, Jeremy, 79

meat, 170–5 egg whites, 177–9 food, surplus and disruptions, 159–60 meat from vegetables, 175–7 milk, 177–9 planetary limits, 160–4 post-scarcity in, 159–81 synthetic meat, 168–70 wine, 177–81 synthetic meat, 168–70 Syriza, 28, 30 TALEN (transcription activator-like effector-based nucleases), 150

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