I’m a millionaire. Scarcity is no longer an issue for me.
Look at this factory, where robots are building stuff, with minimal need for human intervention.
And look at this beautiful warmed greenhouse, that enables salad production even in winter.
All this technological improvement will improve our lives!
Surely, we cannot be far away from a world in which scarcity no longer exists, right?
Actually, I’m a millionaire in Zimbabwe dollars.
Which is kind of meaningless.
I cant buy anything with it.
How can I still be poor, even though I’m a millionaire? It makes no sense, right?
But look at this:
Having a million dollars is completely useless if everyone also has a million dollars. It’s even more useless when others have trillions of dollars.
Or when they have even more than that.
In a market economy, scarcity is what makes things valuable. Having a lot of money is meaningless if money is not scarce.
Even something that is inherently useful, like air, which every human requires to survive, is not considered valuable, because it is not scarce.
But if there is a lot of pollution? And fresh air becomes scarce?
Then it becomes valuable!
To live a good life, you need things that are actually useful.
You need air to breath, water to drink, you need food, shelter, healthcare, education, etc.
Ideally, it means that those things should not be scarce.
But to get rich in a market economy, you need to have things that others dont have. You need scarcity. Capitalism, and the market economy rely on scarcity.
If you want to use something directly, it doesn’t matter at all how much others have.
If I have a pizza, and I’m going to eat it, well you can have a pizza too. Or twenty. Or a hundred. What do I care. My pizza is not going to be any less tasty because of it.
I’m still going to enjoy it, it’s going to be delicious, and it will feed me all the same.
I have 0 reason to try and prevent you from making your own pizza. I can actually teach you how to make pizza if you want, it’s really easy.
But in a market economy? When things are intended not for use, but for trade?
Then scarcity is important. Then preventing others from having the same stuff you have is what makes it valuable.
Why do you think counterfeiting money is illegal?
Why do you think inflation happens?
Because when there is more money, then money becomes less valuable.
We could all be billionaires, and we would not have taken a single step towards resolving scarcity.
Scarcity is a social issue.
This is how we end up with the current dystopian society.
Where automation is not actually improving our lives, but is seen as taking away people’s jobs. Making the remaining jobs more valuable.
Where automation does not lead to everyone working less, but instead leads to some people being unemployed, and desperate to have a chance to work.
Where it does not lead to everyone having more, but instead drives wages down.
Where people having more money just makes prices go up.
We end up in a situation where there are warm houses to grow salads, but where human beings freeze to death on the streets without being able to access housing.
Not because we dont have the technical capacity to provide everyone with housing, but because making sure that some dont have access to housing is how rents are kept so damn high.
If everyone had a home of their own, or access to government provided housing, then the property owners would not be able to force everyone to pay insane rents.
Housing would still be very valuable. Because it protects us from harsh weather, because we need it for survival.
But it would not have such a high price, it would not have a high exchange value, billionaires would not be able to force people to work so much just for a roof over their head.
In a market system, based on supply and demand, having more demand than supply is what keeps prices high.
A post scarcity society is attainable. It just means a post capitalist society.
Did you ever notice that there are tons of ads trying to make people want useless stuff?
That’s another way to create scarcity. Instead of restricting supply, increase demand.
Advertising would have you believe that there is no limit to how much material stuff people can desire. And puts a lot of effort into making that happen.
Trillions of dollars go towards advertising, towards convincing people that they want or even that they NEED whatever product it is that they are trying to make a profit on.
But in fact, there are a lot of studies showing that past a certain level where you no longer need to worry about survival, extra money does not actually make people happier.
Contrary to what ads pretend, being stressed your whole life running after money and trying to buy ever more stuff is not going to make you happy.
There are however a lot of things, like friendships, which are completely free, and will bring a lot of happiness to your life.
A post scarcity society is not a society where everyone has infinite stuff.
A post scarcity society is one where everyone has enough to cover their needs for survival, and has the ability to have free time, to have friends, to engage in arts, in sports, games, etc.
Where people can focus on being happy and healthy.
This stressful, depression inducing rat-race focused on just increasing GDP, creating more stuff, making people work more, pay more, increasing profits, destroying the environment, etc, this is leading us nowhere.
We have the technical capacity for a post scarcity society.
What we need is social change.
A different type of economy. One which focuses on maximizing health and happiness. Not one that focuses on creating more junk.
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