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Scarcity is infinite. Post scarcity is, as they say, not even wrong. Totally meaningless.
by davidmathers 17y ago
Scarcity is infinite. Post scarcity is, as they say, not even wrong. Totally meaningless.
- mediaman 17y agoI agree with you -- decades of psychological research show that people acclimate to what they have, and then want more. Imagine cavemen postulating about what we'll do when we have these big machines that can carry us around at great speed, and when our food is already made for us and no hunting is required. Could they have guessed we'd work in glass office buildings so we can buy iPods and McMansions? I suspect we're in no better position to guess how we'll use our future economic output, only that we will definitely want to spend it.
- sachmanb 17y agoyes, but not everyone in the world currently has this set of things: [1] shelter,[2] food, [3] water. there are some things that are basic to our survival and experience, and from there we build the 'more.' when i think post scarcity, i think post-scarcity of life essentials. the quest to explore and build new things is infinite.
- randallsquared 17y agoWealth has increased enormously over the past couple centuries, but, as you say, we've absorbed it. But at some point as the curve trends up, we'll be able to work less and have more anyway on a year-to-year basis. Even though scarcity will technically never end, it might still feel like you can do anything you can imagine, for average levels of imagination.