It depends on the market, however I think that scarcity will end up being manufactured. Just look at the diamond market -- one or two companies effectively mono

It depends on the market, however I think that scarcity will end up being manufactured. Just look at the diamond market -- one or two companies effectively monopolised the entire market and rose the price and value of their product through creating artificial scarcity. I don't like the idea of this (I hold the idea of Iain M. Banks' The Culture[1] as the ideal civilization), but I think that it is required for capitalism to remain a viable system post-scarcity. I suppose one other way to do this (That would hopefully be outlawed) is the creation of a virus that wipe out all the natural sources of a product (I'm thinking mainly of foodstuffs here), leaving a single company the owner of the plant/genome/whatever. The idea is explored in one of Zach's comics: [2] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture [2]: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2834 http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2834