The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity,
Captain Jean-Luc Picard. Star Trek: First Contact
What is Post Scarcity Economics
Economics is the study of scarcity. You have scarce resources and have to find a way to allocate them. Money and capitalism has been useful is it allows a free market to set values on goods and allows for a processing of information that planned economies do not have access to. If you think about it there are three things that are really scarce today:
- Land
- Energy
- Raw materials
- Labor
You might debate how scarce, but there is a scarcity issue. So what are the future technologies that change this.
Land – Yes We Are Making More
Once you start moving to space the ability to build space habitats just gives you an unlimited amount of living space. The future lies in space habitats probably on the scale of large O’Neil Cylinders and not terraforming other planets. It is far cheaper to build a large habitat than terraform a planet.
Energy – Fusion (Only Twenty Years Away)
While the joke has been fusion is the technology that is only twenty years away and alway will be. It is coming closer be a reality. ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is being built in France and will be the first fusion reactor that should produce 10 times more energy than it takes in 50 MW to 500 MW, and first plasma is scheduled for 2025. This will demonstrate the technological feasibility of a fusion power plant. This probably doesn’t get you to commercial fusion power in twenty years, but it is now a question of when not if.
Unlimited clean energy gets you to a lot of things. If we are concerned about freshwater the energy to run desalination plants is available. Recycling can be too energy intensive once power is available we can start turning trash back into more raw materials.
Space Mining
While some resources are getting difficult to get on Earth, as space infrastructure grows the same resources get easier to obtain in space. Where on Earth some of those resources may have been in short supply the asteroids are going to give us an almost unlimited supply in the short term. Also in some ways this becomes a virtuous circle. As more resources are mined in space the more resources are available to build infrastructure making obtaining resources still cheaper.
Automation
This for a point will be the dark side of the immediate future. We are looking at a major restructuring of the economy about to happen. For business owners and shareholders the goal is to increase profitability. The tipping point is coming where automating work with robots and Artificial Intelligence and robotics gets cheaper than paying employees. So we see are going to see jobs going away, and potentially less jobs being created. This is where it is hard to see the other side.
For the moment I am going to handwave the crisis away. As this needs a post of its own. However the positive is all goods get cheaper as well. So we will not be lacking for anything.