4 ms·

> what sorts of new economic models will be needed to help everyone thrive in a post-scarcity world What sort of new economic models did we come up with to hel

• Marha01 3mo ago
  Food production is indeed a solved problem in most countries (we are almost post-scarcity when it comes to food), which is why obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today. Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. I fully expect such issues in conflict zones, even in AI post-scarcity world. Housing is definitely not post-scarcity today, building a house is still very expensive, not to mention the limited availability of land zoned for housing.
  • squidbeak 3mo ago
    > Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones. How do you explain the existence of food banks in peaceful first world countries?
    • StilesCrisis 3mo ago
      Without trying to sound crass, food banks _are_ the reason we don't see people dying of starvation in first world countries. If people need food, a food bank will give it to them no questions asked.
      • felixgallo 3mo ago
        Unfortunately this is not just precarious, it's extremely vulnerable to changing political conditions. Many of the food bank services in my state have lost significant funding owing to the use of words like 'women' or 'black' in their grants, which were duly grepped for and shut down. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Cuts-to-Woke-Programs-Fact-Sheet.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Cuts-t... Civilization can't rely effectively on systems that are this fragile.
        • StilesCrisis 3mo ago
          > Civilization can't rely effectively on systems that are this fragile. That's American politics in a nutshell. We've spent 250 years assuming scruples and common decency would be sufficient.
          • nradov 3mo ago
            Is it not sufficient? Americans give more to charity than citizens of any other developed country. The arguments that all food aid should be routed through government bureaucracies are entirely unconvincing. I'd rather donate to organizations like Second Harvest than pay higher taxes. https://www.shfb.org/ https://www.shfb.org/
            • xboxnolifes 3mo ago
              Does this account for the portion of taxes that go to the type of efforts that donations do? If not, is it really giving more? OR is it giving less and feeling better about it?
              • gowld 3mo ago
                On average, Americans donate 1-2% of income, while spending 7-20% less on contributions to government. On the other hand, Americans receive less for the government, and spend more on caring for themselves (health care) than Europeans receive from the government. To sort that you, you'd have to figure out how cost-efficient the two models are, for services provided.
            • DFHippie 3mo ago
              We used to live in a world where individual virtue was what everyone fell back on. That is the default state. It has many problems -- free riding by the selfish, for one, but also a lack of capacity to prepare for large-scale disasters like the Great Depression. We have a government precisely to solve this sort of problem. It works (when it is competent and not corrupt) for defense, international trade, and the enforcement of law. Solving resource distribution and aid coordination is right in its wheelhouse.
    • OttoVonBizark 3mo ago
      The fact food banks exist suggest over all food scarcity is solved in that specific culture. - if it wasn't there wouldn't be any spare food for a food bank
    • xyzzy123 3mo ago
      Food is allocated using a variety of mechanisms in peaceful first world countries, primarily money but also via government assistance, kinship, friendship, community, etc. At any given time many people have problems with one or more of those systems. Money is easy to run out of because it's used for everything, the government can be slow and difficult, relationships can fray, people can be isolated, etc. Food banks exist as a backstop for when the regular means of allocating are not working. The problem isn't "scarcity" per se, it's more of an allocation thing. Who has a claim on enough food to stay alive? Everyone! But what foods can they claim? How much? What specific channel / institution (with associated allocation rules) will distribute it to them? What are the conditions and controls? etc. Allocating things can be difficult. An allocation mechanism with no controls will see fraud, waste and abuse. Even when an institution is willing to give things away no questions asked, there are (often invisible until you think about them) conditions like "please don't claim huge quantities and resell what we're giving you, that would be unfair to others". It's also interesting to think about the fact that you can't fix food scarcity in general by simply giving hungry people money, because money is too fungible.
      • cassianoleal 3mo ago
        > It's also interesting to think about the fact that you can't fix food scarcity in general by simply giving hungry people money, because money is too fungible. Is that a fact? Do you have references to back it?
        • jandrewrogers 3mo ago
          The widespread existence of secondary markets for SNAP benefits, which convert subsidized food for poor people into cash, carries this implication. This is pretty normal in some poor communities and that cash is commonly diverted to various vices. Some malnutrition is a consequence of this. Adding friction to the conversion of welfare benefits to cash is a feature. You can't force poor people to spend cash on proper nutrition and a minority of them don't. It isn't a moral judgement but an observable fact. A lot of policies around welfare are targeted at trying to prevent this minority from slowly killing themselves in public.
    • deleted 3mo ago
      [deleted]
    • hgomersall 3mo ago
      There's plenty of food, just not the political will to make sure everyone can afford to buy it.
    • ratelimitsteve 3mo ago
      As part of the solution to the hard problem of food: distribution.
  • LunaSea 3mo ago
    > which is why obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today Obesity is much more related to the type of food than the quantity. Many developing countries have obesity issues due to scarcity of fresh and healthy food. In some places coca cola is cheaper and / or more available than drinking water.
    • asdff 3mo ago
      Hard to imagine that a 24 rack of coca cola is actually cheaper than an iodine tablet or a couple drops of household bleach or you know, boiling water.
      • rubyn00bie 3mo ago
        It can be when you don’t have access to boiling water, bleach, iodine tablets, and/or the water you have access to is extremely contaminated with chemicals because of pollution.
        • asdff 3mo ago
          If you can find burnable material you can boil water
  • turtlesdown11 3mo ago
    > Hunger is present pretty much only in conflict zones https://www.fao.org/interactive/hunger-map/en/ https://www.fao.org/interactive/hunger-map/en/
  • cornholio 3mo ago
    A baseline of housing - for example, a Japanese style capsule or ultra-tiny home, that you can lock and store your belongings safely - costs close nothing. Of course, nobody would want the hobo-hotel in their neighborhood, but it has nothing to with scarcity. > the limited availability of land zoned for housing. A limited area of land is zoned for housing because those with the power to expand it are already housed. This explains how scarcity is created, not that there is any intrinsic scarcity.
    • bloppe 3mo ago
      It's a limited area of desirable land zoned for housing. You could build all the tiny homes in the world in bum frick nowhere, but the unhoused would rather be homeless in a big city for various reasons. I probably would too.
      • cornholio 3mo ago
        This is another reframing of the problem. What makes the area desirable is previous investment society has made there, to the benefit of some and the exclusion of others; the scarcity is created by political choices, not intrinsic.
  • overgard 3mo ago
    Housing scarcity is highly artificial because people are treating houses like speculative assets. And the NIMBYs don't help
  • seltzered_ 3mo ago
    I recommend doing some reading about the inputs modern agriculture depends on (e.g. chemical fertilizer) then thinking about the issues they're associated with beyond an anthropocentic frame (e.g. ocean dead zones).
  • tonetheman 3mo ago
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  • dinkelberg 3mo ago
    > obesity is a much bigger issue than hunger today Hunger is acute suffering, mostly by people who cannot change anything about it, while obesity is more of an epidemiological problem and can in principle be avoided by eating (or in the case of dependent persons, feeding) less.
• allears 3mo ago
  Post-scarcity? Sure, if you live in a first-world country and are upper middle class or higher. These tech-bro pundits have a very limited world view. The basic essentials of life are very scarce for millions and millions of people, and AI will probably make that worse, not better.
  • Marha01 3mo ago
    Why should AI make it worse? Can you point to any other important technology that historically made people in poor countries even poorer? Technological progress generally lifts people from poverty in the long run. There could be issues caused by disruption of established systems in the short term, though.
    • watwut 3mo ago
      > Can you point to any other important technology that historically made people in poor countries even poorer? Technological progress generally lifts people from poverty in the long run. It is very long run. Industrial revolution was disaster for average worker for example. For that matter, all the tech that allowed chattel slavery made whole class of people poorer and significantly worst off. The accumulation of power and money by smaller group of people means loss of power by poorer people. Those with power then use the power to their own benefit while poorer people dont have that option and become even more poor or worst off.
    • overgard 3mo ago
      Uh, I think threatening the work of a large swath of humanity would make a lot of people poor? The rich historically have never shared the wealth until they're forced to. Just as an example (ironically from google!): "Google co-founder Sergey Brin has spent $82 million to oppose California's proposed wealth tax." This is a man that has more money that he could ever hope to possibly spend, and he's spending an absurd amount just because the mere thought that he might benefit from the society he lives in and should contribute back to it apparently infuriates him.
      • bloppe 3mo ago