Series introduction

A world of abundance is closer than it appears. As recent technological advances start to propagate through the economy, we will see rapid price collapse. In this abundant future we’re talking about weekly grocery bills on the order of $5, monthly rent less than $100, sub $1000 cars, and much more. 

Recent years have been a relentless parade of technological advancements in renewable energy, robotics, AI, and space travel that have the potential to self-reinforce and make everything cheaper.

The goal of this series is to explore the future of abundance we are headed for.

Language and imagination

Our current culture needs help imagining technological advancement leading to a positive future. You can see the imbalance in every bookstore, movie theater, and streaming catalog. People don’t even have proper language to describe a potential future of abundance.

To ensure the best possible future, we need to talk about it, plan for it, and refine our plans to help shape it towards a positive outcome. We’ll also need some new vocabulary and open our minds to these new possibilities.

What’s in the series

This series will attempt to propose

1. Definitions of post-scarcity and abundance
2. Reasons post-scarcity is an attainable goal in the near future
3. Possible paths to post-scarcity
4. Possible roadblocks on the path to post-scarcity
5. What humans will do in a post-scarcity future

Industrial capacity creates abundance

In 1750, most humans lived as subsistence farmers. In America today, only roughly 1% of Americans are involved in farming (source), and people are much better fed.

This is only possible due to machines. Machines that pump water, machines that till the soil, machines that plant the seeds, machines that spray for weeds, machines that harvest crops, machines to prepare the crops for sale, it’s machines all the way down.

This has led to a collapse in food prices (source). So much so that in America, you’re far more likely to die from complications due to obesity than starvation.

Beyond food

As more humans were freed from needing to farm to survive, labor has been dedicated to other pursuits.

Some of those freed-up humans created inventions that further improved the productivity of humanity. Take the mechanical loom for example.Since its invention clothing has become so affordable that the average wardrobe in the world contains 148 items of clothing (source), up from just a handful per person.

In the ancient Babylonian empire, it used to cost 60 hours of labor for roughly 90 minutes of light. Now, 60 hours of labor can purchase 1200 days of light. (source) The improvements to this number exploded with the invention of the lightbulb and electricity.

The story is the same for communication, transportation, and housing.

Industrial abundance creates leisure

As humanity's industrial capacity increases and people become more productive, there tends to be more disposable income available, which is spent increasingly on non-essential goods and services. 

As demand for non-essential goods and services increases, more people make a living in leisure industries, creating whole new economies, skill sets, and possibilities for fulfilling work.

What do you humans need?

Necessities

People need oxygen, water, food, shelter, healthcare. Without these necessities, people will die relatively quickly.

As society has grown, we’ve discovered the need to use certain systems and technologies to provide these necessities at scale. These become necessities by extension because they are necessary to provide the necessities.

For example, in a world where people can’t survive without a job, access to transportation to and from work is also a necessity. 

Essentials

Education, discretionary transportation, and access to community.

A human life is not physically threatened if they lack these items, but they are unlikely to thrive. Another way to characterize these goods and services is that they are necessary to live a fulfilling life.

Luxuries

Comfort, leisure, status.

These are not necessary for human survival but enhance the experience immensely. 

There is no ceiling to luxury consumption, but there are levels of how luxurious something is, and this will organize the order in which it will be seen as standard to the human experience. For example, upgrading from an econobox to something more comfortable is not as lavish a luxury as upgrading from first-class air travel to flying private.

Levels of Abundance

Post-scarcity is not rigorously defined anywhere, and is currently a concept primarily explored in science fiction (e.g. Star Trek and Ian M. Banks’ Culture Series). It’s so far beyond the human experience of today that most folks cannot wrap their minds around the possibility. Let alone how it would work.

There are some non-fiction books like Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, Post-Scarcity Anarchism, and Zero Marginal Cost Society on post-scarcity, but as far as I’ve seen, there’s no framework for thinking about the levels of abundance in a society.

The base principle of abundance

Abundance seems to be a function of the proportion of human labor used to produce the necessities of human life.

As the percent of the human labor pool that’s used to produce food, water, shelter, and healthcare reduces, the level of abundance in a society increases. In turn, this seems to generate more of what elevates the human experience (education, community, leisure, etc).

Measuring progress: The Abundance Scale

I’d suggest that any scale that seeks to measure abundance will be similar to the Kardashev scale and logarithmically track a single metric. Topics such as abundance or the scope and scale of civilization are imprecise by their nature, but the mere existence of the scale organizes thinking around the rough progress a society is making.

The Abundance Scale, proposed below, logarithmically tracks the metric of “percent of human labor required to produce human necessities” from 100% to approximately 0%.

At each stage in this scale, society will look remarkably different and be marked by very different priorities, concerns, and ways of organizing itself. This will be a downstream effect of what remains scarce in that society at that stage.

Here’s the scale:

A0: Subsistence

Nearly 100% of human labor is to provide necessities.

This stage is marked by:

• Most folks sole focus for their labor is survival
• Most folks live in rural settings, cities are small and/or exist predominantly in thriving empires
• Political concerns mostly center around land rights and food

A1: Discretionary Abundance

Less than 10% of people’s labor is dedicated to producing necessities

This stage is marked by:

• Most folks can pursue vocations other than subsistence agriculture
• Most folks must work in order to earn their necessities
• Most folks have some leisure time
• Most aspects of labor are assisted by automation
• Significant urbanism
• Political concerns are mostly focused on access to employment and to its precursors: education, transportation and community.

A2: Basic abundance

Less than 1% of people’s labor is dedicated to producing necessities.

This stage is marked by:

• Most folks don’t need to work to provide their necessities
• Folks work to earn items that are considered luxury, to improve their craft, and/or to improve their status.
• Much of industry is completely automated; humans assist the machines instead of the other way around.
• Political concerns are mostly focused on advancing abundance and the fair distribution of luxuries

A3: Unbridled abundance

0% of human labor is necessary to produce physical goods.

This stage is marked by:

• People only work to improve their craft and/or improve their status.
• At this stage everyone lives like a billionaire of the early 21st century.
• Industry is so fast and complex, non-digital intelligences cannot be involved
• Space-based industry and settlement is widespread (necessary for access to resources and living space)
• Political concerns are mostly focused on the preservation of abundance and expanding its scope

What is post-scarcity then?

For humans alive in any time period I would guess that the next level on the Abundance Scale would be their definition of “post-scarcity.” 

Even if there was an objective point where we’d look back and say “we’ve definitely achieved post-scarcity”, I don’t think there’s a precise point where you flip from pre-scarcity to post-scarcity.

For the purposes of the imagination of humans alive in the early 21st century, I think the best definition of post-scarcity would be “when humans don’t have to work to survive.” (roughly A2 on the scale). At that point the human experience has crossed a threshold where it is altered beyond recognition by those that came before.

Where are we on the scale?

Abundance is incredibly geographically uneven

In the US, it seems like we’re on our way to A1, while some regions of the world are still firmly in A0. Abundance is a function of industrialization and industrialization is geographically uneven.

In India in 1980, only 25% of households had electricity, now that number is closer to 98% (source). They may eliminate extreme poverty from their country entirely by 2030 (source). The US hit numbers similar to this decades earlier (thanks to the Rural Electrification Act). 

The western world industrialized early and intensely, and therefore have achieved higher levels of abundance. Progress in the rest of the world is rapid but many regions are still stuck on the A0 stage of the scale.

This indicates that future progress on the abundance scale is likely to be experienced unevenly as well. 

Progress is volatile

If you look at the price of food on a hundred-year time scale, the progress is clear. However, if you look at 2018-2023 in the US, it’ll look like things are getting worse (mostly due to inflation).

Based on the history of industrial improvements, there are catalytic advancements in technology that are an inflection point for a good or service and rapidly changes the price. Then, it will stabilize (maybe incrementally improve) for a time until the next major advancement. This is easiest to understand if you use the example of light (candles/lamps -> incandescent lightbulb -> fluorescents -> LEDs) or clothing (manual loom -> mechanical loom -> sewing machine -> synthetic fabrics).

Regression is also possible. In the 1960s, humans landed on the moon. In 2020, no country or company could land humans on the moon. SpaceX has reversed the trend but without their innovation and focus there wouldn’t have been. 

Industrial progress is volatile but over time it (generally) heads in the right direction.

There’s a long way to go, but it is happening.

Part Two: A roadmap to abundance

Preview:

1. Universal price collapse: the natural trajectory of capitalism
2. The nesting doll nature of prices
3. The techno-abundance loop