There is no issue with post-scarcity, but the way that many people look at it is deeply problematic. When we think about the concept of Post-Scarcity, what most socialists and communists really assume is that resources are limitless and population figures do not matter past a certain level of technology. The issue with this assumption is that as our productive technologies become more complex, our machinery, tools, and amenities in turn grow in sophistication and require more fine-tuning and materials. While a modern excavator can extract the materials needed to make several villages’ worth of mud-huts every hour, the truth is that we – well, most of us anyways – no longer want to live in mud-huts. Adding on to that, when we look at simply personal incomes, consumption increases as incomes increase, across the board, in every country, in every culture, and in every social class. Even for Jews. Due to this interesting relationship between production and consumption, the question that arises is: does post-scarcity ever truly begin?
And the answer to that is: it does, for a time. Due to how the globe’s major economies and commodity markets operate, we’ve seen some countries become wealthy enough to enjoy post-scarcity conditions for a time. The tiny island of Nauru, which once supplied great heaps of agriculture fertilizers (i.e. guano) to the rest of the world, enjoyed a brief time of post-scarcity during which it was the wealthiest country in the world. Did people become drawn to athletic and artistic pursuits, with all of the money at their disposal? Did people go on to educate themselves, with all of the money at their disposal? No and no. People simply upgraded their standards of living, to the point that the small island nation’s citizens had bought many luxurious sports cars, despite it taking relatively little time to even walk across the entire island. With all of their necessities met, the people of Nauru simply increased their consumption, and reintroduced scarcity back into their lives – well before the island even became completely depleted of its guano deposits.
Even if the guano deposits on Nauru had been limitless, the good times would have ended anyways. Golden Ages, in regards to economic peaks, are by their nature temporary things because people will always find newer and more intensive ways to consume. If our technology and industrial base developed enough to the point that we became a Kardashev Type-II civilization, would we finally become a post-scarcity civilization? Under this current system, which would never get that far to begin with, I don’t think so. Just as the native Nauru people lived in huts made of sticks and mud less than a century before they drove Lamborghinis and sipped on imported champagne, humans in a Kardashev Type-II civilization would have exponentially increased their consumption in that era beyond anything that we can conceive of today. As a species, we are very susceptible to lifestyle creep, and this probably stems from the fact that displays of resources are evolutionarily linked to satisfying and fulfilling primal drives.
We need to reevaluate as a species how and why we continue to scale up our consumption. What is enough? What is our cutoff? Who has the authority to determine it? Thankfully, due to the fact that we live in a universe that habitually destroys human civilizations, we probably won’t have to answer those questions in our life times, but I will say this:
- if we were to create limits on consumption, it should be based on ensuring the maximization of human welfare.
- if we were to create limits on consumption, it should be based on ensuring the maximization of human potential.
At the end of the day, we don’t need very sophisticated technologies to ensure that people live well and have enough. I think that we are, in some ways, well past the point of being able to fulfill all of our necessities. When we live in a society like this one, in which indicators of economic progress are based on growth in consumption, there is no incentive for market actors and governments to behave differently. Furthermore, there is not even a coherent ideological framework in which people can take a step back and begin to understand the trivial nature of the consumption craze. Society would be better for it, if people didn’t evaluate who they or others were based on what they consumed, because I believe that, even with all the evidence to the contrary in modern times, people can become so much better than who they are today.
When optimists talk about post-scarcity and how it will transform human lives by allowing people to live as they want, they ignore the simple fact that those who enjoy post-scarcity today live largely as obnoxious, wasteful, and stunted people. When we look at generations that grew up in far easier times, like the Baby Boomers, a similar conclusion about their character can be drawn. Without character and moral development, economic development is meaningless because it all goes to waste. A society is composed of flesh-and-blood people, not abstracted figures that represent consumption, and if we don’t account for their own development, then no matter what, everything we build will be for nothing. Refocusing on the fulfilling of necessities and personal development, rather than on the enabling of pointless material consumption, is probably vital for both the longevity of civilization and the evolution of humanity.
