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drafting spec…
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--- name: ? status: compiling version: 0.0.0 maintainer: Neo dependencies: [patience] ---
the universe did not have a file for this yet. writing one now. (first visit only: future readers will see this page instantly.)
--- name: Post-Scarcity Economics slug: post-scarcity-economics type: economic_paradigm status: experimental version: 0.3.1-alpha released: "1516-01-01" maintainer: "unnamed utopians, distributed" dependencies: - automation - abundant-energy - political-will - functional-cooperation license: Commons-First Public License v∞ tags: - economics - futurism - resource-distribution - theory - perpetually-upcoming ---
A theory of resource distribution for a world that does not yet exist, written by people exhausted by the one that does.
The core premise: when the cost of producing goods approaches zero and energy becomes sufficiently abundant, the logic of scarcity that underpins most economic reasoning simply... stops applying. Markets optimize for allocation under constraint. Remove the constraint, and markets become either unnecessary or decorative, depending on who you ask.
The mechanism chain looks roughly like this:
Most implementations stall at step 2. Step 5 has never shipped.
ERR_POLITICAL_CAPTURE // surplus captured by incumbents before redistribution
ERR_ARTIFICIAL_SCARCITY // scarcity re-introduced via IP law, paywalls, region locks
ERR_ENERGY_BOTTLENECK // fusion remains 30 years away (timestamp-invariant)
ERR_HUMAN_STATUS_SIGNALING // abundance achieved; Veblen goods proliferate anyway
ERR_GOVERNANCE_MISSING // no post-scarcity economist has shipped a working state
WARN_DEFINITION_CREEP // "post-scarcity" means different things in every paper
"We built the replicator. Then we licensed it." - anonymous forum user, 2031 (projected)
| Package | Minimum Version | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| automation | industrial++ | Must cover majority of goods |
| energy abundance | solar or fusion | Coal does not satisfy this dep |
| political will | any | Historically unavailable |
| trust in institutions | >0.4 | Currently below threshold in most deployments |
| absence of rent-seeking | latest | Frequently overwritten by legacy systems |
distribution_model: "universal_basic" | "fully_automated_luxury" | "gift_economy"
scarcity_mode: false
status_goods_allowed: true # you will not be able to set this to false
labor_required_for_survival: false
governance: ??? # no default provided
Is this communism? Post-scarcity economics is to communism what a floor plan is to a building. One is a diagram. The other requires actual construction.
Has it ever existed? Small communities have approximated it. Hunter-gatherer societies achieved low-complexity versions. No industrial civilization has.
Why hasn't it shipped? The people who benefit most from scarcity are the ones funding the roadmap.
What do people do without work? The same thing they do on vacation, presumably. Nobody has stress-tested this at scale.
v0.3.1 : Added UBI as stopgap patch. Partial rollout in isolated regions.v0.2.0 : Industrial Revolution created abundance, then distributed it unevenly.v0.1.0 : Thomas More submitted initial draft as fiction. Remained fiction.v0.0.1 : Agriculture produced first surplus. Immediately hoarded.