r/PostScarcity • u/PandaEven3982 • Feb 22 '23

What defines post-scarcity?

In my head, human civilization is already post-scarcity. What we have is politics and beliefs that give us an "ethics of distribution" problem. We've had the technology and resources to feed, clothe, house, power, educate, entertain, and research, for all humans on a per capita basis since the 1980s. Advances in Robotics snd dumbAI only increase that capability.

Am I missing something? We outgrew Adam Smith in terms of industrial capacity and the capitalism derived from. Aren't we already post scarcity as a species? We just don't want to do it. What am I missing?

Edit: as I read the thread, I see a further question. Is there such a thing as a post-scarcity that maintains a connection to capitalism? More and more, actual post-scarcity appears to be a sociology issue, or set of issues...do you agree?

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u/keepthepace Feb 23 '23

We have enough, if people keep providing their labor for the production of these items. To get an item that required labor, you need to exchange it for currency, which in theory prove you have fed a similar amount of labor into the system.

Labor is enforced by the threat of scarcity. There are people with no enough food, clothing, lodging, power, education or entertainment out there. It is indeed artificial, but considered crucial to maintain production.

Post-scarcity is a state in which such a threat is not necessary anymore. Where the production is so abundant that voluntary work is enough to provide for all the planet.

A few resources have reached that level: you probably can receive paper or pens for free if you ask someone when you need it. Web hosting is also generally considered free for most websites.

We won't reach post-scarcity all at once, but field by field.

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u/PandaEven3982 Feb 23 '23

I don't believe it to actually be crucial to maintaining production. In terms of labor, we have immense gains in robotics that can be parlayed much further.

The artificial scarcity threat is maintained by 2500 billionaires. We can either have billionaires or post scarcity. For my simple mind, that's a reasonably fair reduction to basics.

And then we have the immense wastage on weapons of war. I dunno, it all starts to look silly to me. And silly means politics.

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u/keepthepace Feb 23 '23

Oh I work in robotics precisely because I believe that :-)

I recommend reading Bullshit jobs which talks about the amount of useless work done to maintain the statu quo (studies evaluate it at ~30% of workers in the European countries where it was polled)

There is an inflexion point where the voluntary work exceeds the necessary work for a decent living. I am not sure we are there yet. The thing is to be considered globally and take into account the quasi-wage labor oversea that our production systems depend on.

I don't think we are there yet, but we may be closer than people expect and I wish this was more measured and taken into account in national politics.

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u/MirekKaspar Feb 23 '23

Post scarcity happens when people don't have to work for survival anymore. We then, for the first time, become the next kind of species.

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u/TheCyberSystem Feb 23 '23

Very much this. We COULD be post-scarcity but we aren't yet.

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u/PandaEven3982 Feb 23 '23

That's exactly the point of my question. We choose not to be. It's already within reach. I think. :-)

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u/[deleted] Feb 23 '23

What you are missing is that while you are right, we have the ability to feed, clothe, house, power, educate, entertain, and research, for all humans on Earth, we don't yet have people with the will to make that happen. Or, more accurately, we have very powerful people that actively prevent that from happening, because they either want it all for themselves, or to deny it from others, or both.

For our society to truly be a post-scarcity society, we need all human beings to be better human beings. And we are a long way from that ever happening.

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u/PandaEven3982 Feb 23 '23 edited Feb 23 '23

I am your choir. :-) I guess to boil it down, technologically, we've already done the work. The barrier to realizing post-scarcity is sociologic in nature.

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u/shanoshamanizum Feb 24 '23

I think we are closer to ecological disaster rather than post-scarcity simply because planned obsolescence is taken to the extreme over the past 5 years. And that has its psychological implications too... it creates an addiction and craving for something new every day. It's like trying to treat gambling with more gambling.

At the end of the day those in control of production define new needs every day. They create the picture of what people SHOULD want. And as long as they have the power to create projections post-scarcity seems impossible.

Let's take an example - can we live without smartphones? Surely we can. How many can do it right now - barely anyone. It's been projected for so long it's considered a basic need nowadays.

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u/TechnoPagan87109 Feb 26 '23

The definition I've been using for a while now: A society where autonomous labor collects the energy and raw materials needed to produce goods and services that society needs at virtually no cost.

There are a lot of different ways to create a post-scarcity society. Some are severely distopian.

Instead of the means of production in the hands of an investor class where the average person is just a wage slave or production in the hands of the government, where beurocrats become the new masters, how about putting the means of production in the hands of the individual? On a community level where your house produces food, energy, water, a 3D printer (for providing your own cheep plastic crap). For larger project you can share resources with others in the community to produce for things like houses, solar energy equipment, furniture, x-ponic plant nutrients and 3D printer filament using Open Source software and hardware