About a Post-Scarcity Economy

What are some of the central characteristics of the solution proposed?

Automation of Labor

As the trend of exponential increase in information technology, robotics, and computerization continues, human labor is becoming more and more inefficient in regard to meeting the demands necessary for supporting the global population. From the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, we have seen an increasing trend toward “technological unemployment” — the phenomenon where humans are replaced by machines in the work force.

This issue is actually overshadowed by a larger social imperative: the use of machine labor (mechanization) is provably more efficient than human performance in virtually all sectors. The trend now shows that “Employment is Inverse to Productivity.” The more mechanization occurs, the more productive an industry becomes.

Today, there are repetitive occupations which simply do not need to exist given the state of automation and computerization. Not only would mechanization reduce the mundane burden and allow more free time for people, it would also increase productivity. Our labor-for-income system is stifling progress in its requirement to “keep people working” for the sake of “economic stability.”

In a post-scarcity economy, there would be no reason to have occupations such as Banking, Trading, Insurance, Cashiers, Brokers, or Advertising. The arts and personal expression will likely thrive like never before, as the amount of free time made available to people will permit a renaissance of creativity and invention.

Access over Property

The concept of property is a fairly new social concept. Before the neolithic revolution, communities existed in an egalitarian fashion, living within the carrying capacity of their regions.

The real issue relevant to meeting human needs is not ownership — it is access. People use things; they do not “own” them in any meaningful sense. In a post-scarcity economy model, the focus moves from static ownership to strategic access. Rather than owning various forms of recreational sporting equipment, Access Centers are set up where a person simply “checks out” the equipment, uses it, and then returns it. This “library” type arrangement yields key benefits: no property crime (no incentive to steal what no one owns), access abundance (one car could facilitate many users), and peak efficiency of production (goods designed to last with the best materials).

Self-Contained / Localized City and Production Systems

There are many brilliant engineers who have worked to tackle the issue of industrial design, from Jacque Fresco to R. Buckminster Fuller. Behind such designs as Fresco’s Circular Cities or Fuller’s Geodesic Domes rests a basic train of thought: Strategic Efficiency and Maximization of Productivity.

Fresco’s “circular city” is constructed of a series of “belts”, each serving a social function such as energy production, research, recreation, and living. Each city is a system where all needs are produced within the city complex in a localized fashion. This is very different from the “globalization”-based economy we live in today, which wastes outrageous amounts of energy and resources due to unneeded transport and labor processing.

Technological Unification of Earth via a “Systems” Approach

We live in a symbiotic/synergistic planetary ecosystem, with a cause-effect balance reflecting a single system of earthly operation. Buckminster Fuller defined this well when he referred to the planet as “Spaceship Earth.”

A Global System of Resource Management must be put in place. The first step is a Full Global Survey of all earthly resources. Then, based on quantitative analysis, a strategically defined process of production is constructed from the bottom up, using variables such as renewability and negative retroactions. The goal is absolute efficiency, conservation, and sustainability — with decisions arrived at by computation, not human opinion.

The Scientific Method as the Methodology for Governance

The application of “the scientific method for social concern” is central to the post-scarcity economy model. We have proven to be scientifically defined and a product of traceable causality, and it is this understanding that can allow us to slow and even stop the aberrant behavior we see in society today such as abuse, murder, and theft.

If you don’t want people to steal food, do not deprive them of it. Human values and hence human behavior are shaped by the environment in a cause-and-effect based way. In a post-scarcity economy model, the central focus in regard to removing aberrant human actions is not to “punish them”, but to find the reasons for their offensive actions and work to eliminate them.

Moving Away from Money and Markets

Market theory assumes a number of things which have proven to be either false, marginally beneficial, or outright socially detrimental. The core problems include:

A) Infinite Growth — mathematically unsustainable and ecologically detrimental. The entire basis of the Market System is the perpetual extraction and consumption of finite resources for the sake of profit. In order to keep people employed, people must constantly consume, regardless of the state of the environment.

B) A Corruption Generating Incentive System — the competitive marketplace generates an equal if not more pronounced amount of corruption in the form of planned obsolescence, common crime, wars, large-scale financial fraud, and labor exploitation. The greatest scientists and inventors — Tesla, Einstein, Bell, the Wright Brothers — found their motivation not in monetary gain but in the drive to create socially beneficial work.

C) A Disjunct, Inefficient Industrial Complex — with globalization, it has become more profitable to import and export labor and goods across the globe rather than produce locally. This “cost efficiency” generates extreme “technical inefficiency.” In a post-scarcity economy model, the focus is maximum technical efficiency with production made as centralized and fluid as possible.

D) A Propensity for Establishments — established corporate/financial orders have a built-in tendency to stop new, socially positive advents if there is a foreshadowed loss of market share and profit. A well-known example is the collusion to limit the expansion of the fully Electric Car. In a post-scarcity economy model, there is nothing to hold back the development and implementation of new technologies.

E) Inherent Obsolescence — due to the need to stay “competitive”, it is a mathematical certainty that every good produced is immediately inferior the moment it is created. It is impossible for a company to use the most efficient material or processes, as it would be too expensive to maintain a competitive cost basis. In a post-scarcity economy model, goods are created to last.

F) A Propensity for Monopoly and Cartel — in an economy based on “growth”, it is only natural for a corporation to want to expand and dominate. Monopoly and cartel are absolutely natural and in fact inevitable in the competitive system, for the very basis of competition is to seek dominance over market share.

G) Market System is Driven by Scarcity — the less there is of something, the more money that can be generated in the short term. This sets up a propensity for corporations to limit availability and deny production abundance. Abundance, Efficiency, and Sustainability are, very simply, the enemies of profit.