I agree with you, but I mean post-scarcity in the sense that humans aren't really providing much value to the market in an objective sense, and all of their nee

I agree with you, but I mean post-scarcity in the sense that humans aren't really providing much value to the market in an objective sense, and all of their needs can mostly be met with very little cost to society at large. I also mean this as a gradient process. In regards to the scarcity of labor, we're clearly pretty well on our way to transitioning past human utility for many physical tasks, right? The value contributed by being physically capable of carrying a given capacity is something that previously gave one the capability to add value to countless endeavors, and now that is effectively adding no value at all. This will continue along this trajectory. And what we're seeing now is the same thing happening for tasks requiring mental proficiency. Most rote tasks regarding formatting data, inputting data, basic analysis, etc, are all thoroughly being replaced by software and ML. What is effectively happening now is that the bar for the minimum necessary cognitive capabilities is slowly being raised, and more and more of the population will become fully incapable of providing any objective value to the majority of the market. People act like this is a process that necessarily results in a 1:1 replacement of jobs, like "oh but who will build those machines? who will replace them?" As though there's some magical symmetry that keeps the process balanced, but no such force exists. In regards to the other side of the scarcity problem, the scarcity of resources, we're well on our way to being past that problem. Markets continue to drive the cost of goods down, and the actual cost of sustaining a basic human existence with food and shelter is well short of the theoretical point of absolute removal of scarcity in this regard. So it's not impossible to imagine that we're well on our way to a point where most humans are capable of adding very little objective value that cannot be solved better by available technology, and available technology is capable of providing humans with what is necessary to live a comfortable life with very little net cost to society at large. What will happen at this point, I would imagine, is that new markets will simply emerge with a much heavier emphasis on subjective preferences and desires. Scarcity of physical space will be magnified, arbitrary scarcity like explicitly limiting attendance to events, things like this. I think that the "artisanal" side of the market that you're already seeing emerge will probably continue to grow, where the product itself is not valued necessarily because of its objective utility, but rather because it was made by a person. So that's what I mean by post-scarcity. I don't mean it in the Marxist sense where we've eradicated the possibility for markets to exist. And I think that in the future I've described, something that looks like UBI will probably be a necessary instrument to ensure that we can maintain the existence of markets while recognizing that we have the capability to provide humans a comfortable existence at very little cost to society, in a time where they are very unlikely to be able to add any real value back.