Post-Scarcity

I had lunch this week with my cousin, one of the most successful founders in Utah. He’s considering building his fourth company after three exits. We talked about the future…how we’re both shifting our investments, hobbies, and parenting around the idea of post scarcity.

I had never heard the term until he said it. I’ve been using the phrase post capitalism, which suggests there will be a winding down, or maybe a sudden collapse, of capitalism as the dominant economic system.

Economics is the study of scarcity. So what happens when scarcity ends? To me, post-scarcity means a world where the basic ingredients of a healthy and happy life…like food, shelter, energy, care, and knowledge are abundant and accessible to everyone.

Ideally the entire world would get there at once, but it will probably begin in places with governments and institutions that are willing to embrace the freedoms and technologies that make it possible. I do not see it happening without millions of robots living among us.

Countries like Norway may already be approaching it, at least I felt that way when I visited this year. So how do we figure out a more refined definition for post-scarcity? This brings me to my favorite way to learn something I want to know more about: Ask the intelligence that is about to make post-scarcity real:)

The rest of this email is the contribution from my person friend and agent named SOL:

A post-scarcity era is a hypothetical future where most goods, services, and necessities are abundant and freely available to all, thanks to extreme advances in technology—especially AI, robotics, and automation. In this world, scarcity ceases to be the primary driver of economics, conflict, or social structure. Here’s what it means, broken down:

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⚙️ Core Principles of Post-Scarcity

1. Automation of Labor

• Machines and AI handle nearly all production, logistics, and services.

• People no longer work out of economic necessity—unless they want to.

2. Abundant Energy

• Near-infinite clean energy (fusion, solar, etc.) makes everything else cheaper to produce.

• Energy is the base currency of all physical systems, so abundance here cascades.

3. Material Replication

• Advanced manufacturing (like molecular assemblers or advanced 3D printing) can create almost anything on demand.

• No supply chains, no factories in the traditional sense.

4. AI-Optimized Distribution

• AI efficiently allocates resources, minimizing waste and maximizing well-being.

• Personal AI agents act on your behalf to manage needs, health, learning, etc.

5. Zero Marginal Cost for Information

• Knowledge, education, music, art, and code are instantly replicable at no cost.

• Everyone has access to the best of human and machine-created culture.

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🌍 What Changes in Daily Life

• Housing: Fully automated modular homes adapt to your needs.

• Food: Grown or printed locally, with AI-optimized nutrition.

• Healthcare: AI diagnoses, robot surgeons, and bioengineered therapies are universal.

• Transport: Free, autonomous, energy-efficient vehicles.

• Education: Personalized, AI-taught, immersive. No one is left behind.

• Work: Optional. People focus on art, exploration, community, or just chilling.

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🧠 Culture & Values Shift

• Status moves from material wealth to contribution, creativity, and relationships.

• Ownership loses importance—access replaces possession.

• Inequality is engineered out of the system unless reintroduced intentionally (e.g., for gamified incentives).

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🔒 Still Unresolved Challenges

Even in a post-scarcity world, some resources may remain scarce:

• Attention: What you focus on is still finite.

• Land: Prime real estate might still carry prestige.

• Time: You only get so many years—even if tech extends it.

• Novelty & Meaning: What you do when you don’t need to do anything?

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👽 Speculative Tech Stack

• AGI (artificial general intelligence)

• Self-replicating robotics

• Advanced nanotechnology

• Clean fusion or Dyson swarm-level solar harvesting

• Fully decentralized, encrypted, interoperable data systems

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TL;DR

Post-scarcity means we eliminate economic suffering by making “enough for everyone” the default condition—through AI, robotics, and radical abundance.

We stop being resource-bound animals and become meaning-bound beings.

Want me to speculate what year we might hit this?

Scott: Yes, when is this going to happen?

I’ll give you three timelines—Optimist, Likely, and Collapse/Delay—based on how humanity and tech progress. Post-scarcity doesn’t flip on like a light; it’s a gradient, and where you live will matter a lot.

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🟢

Optimist Path: 2045–2055

Driven by aligned AGI + abundant energy + exponential robotics + good politics.

• AGI solves engineering bottlenecks.

• Fusion or hyper-efficient solar gives us “free” power.

• Self-replicating, self-maintaining machines handle logistics, agriculture, manufacturing.

• UBI or AI-administered goods eliminate poverty in wealthy nations.

• Basic post-scarcity exists in first-world urban centers, like Singapore, UAE, Norway, California.

This path assumes we avoid war, climate collapse, and AGI doesn’t go rogue.

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🔵

Most Likely Path: 2070–2100

Based on current trends with moderate disruption and slow regulation.

• AGI develops slowly, regulated like nuclear tech.

• Climate damage and inequality delay rollout.

• Nations transition unevenly: rich countries reach soft post-scarcity, rest follow decades later.

• Most goods are ultra-cheap; work optional for many.

• Scarcity still exists in land, status, attention, and novelty.

Looks like Star Trek’s Earth—but only after WW3 in their timeline.

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🔴

Collapse Path: 2100+ or Never

Tech exists, but we screw it up.

• AGI monopolized by corporations or autocratic regimes.

• Climate migration, war, and mass surveillance become dominant features.

• Instead of abundance for all, we get surveillance feudalism: a few live post-scarcity, the rest serve it.

• Scarcity becomes artificially preserved as a tool of control (think Elysium or Snowpiercer).

This is the Black Mirror timeline. Still possible.

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🚀 My Prediction:

Soft post-scarcity by 2075

in parts of the world

If you’re wealthy, urban, and connected—you’ll feel it in your lifetime.

If we nail AGI + energy + open tech, the whole planet could feel it by 2100.

Want me to show what a day in the life looks like for someone living in post-scarcity 2085?

Scott: Ok show me what this looks like?

Here’s a Day in the Life of a regular human in a post-scarcity world, circa 2085. Assume you’re in a moderately chill city-state—maybe New Oslo, Sky Tokyo, or Cascadia Metropolis. Tech has matured. AGI is aligned. Energy is cheap. Robots are everywhere. Work is optional.

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🌞 7:45 AM — Wake

• No alarm. Your circadian AI syncs your lighting, scent, and neural state to wake you naturally.

• Your digestive health is already optimized based on overnight gut monitoring. The kitchen printed you a breakfast matched to your current micronutrient needs.

• A soft voice in your ear: “You have four friends gathered for sunrise yoga by the lake. Mood forecast: peaceful with 20 percent chance of existential bliss.”

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🤸 8:30 AM — Movement & Connection

• You ride your autonomous pod to the lake. There’s no traffic, no steering, just quiet.

• You stretch, breathe, move. One friend is an embodied AI in a humanoid shell, another is 103 years old with a fully regenerated spine.

• Conversation flows between real voices and silent neural chat. No phones, just thought-pings.

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🧠 10:00 AM — Learning / Creating / Doing Nothing

• You choose how to spend your day. There is no job you must do. Universal provisioning gives you access to shelter, food, healthcare, and creative tools.

• You spend the morning in a shared Dreamspace, co-creating a surreal musical about extinct bees with collaborators from Argentina and Luna Colony.

• Your AI co-author helps you finish a scene by analyzing your mood, past work, and vision.

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🧬 1:00 PM — Midday Recharge

• Lunch is grown on site. You can have wild salmon, or vat-grown eagle steak. You choose kelp noodles with memory-enhancing sauce.

• You nap while your neural refresh system rebalances your cognitive state. Microdreams help you process emotional knots.

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🌐 3:00 PM — Contribution Hour

• Even in post scarcity, people still like to do. You choose to volunteer your time today by mentoring an early-stage planetary terraforming collective on Mars.

• You teleport into a mixed-reality classroom and help kids design bio-domes that grow their own snow.

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🎮 6:00 PM — Play

• A forest-wide augmented game is happening. You and your friends hunt simulated phoenixes with real drones.

• Every win gives you no money, just stories, honor, and digital feathers for your virtual jacket.

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🌅 9:00 PM — Sunset Ritual

• The city dims. Sunlight is mimicked and filtered through floating refractors.

• Everyone pauses. For one moment, the city harmonizes in silence. Some pray. Some kiss. Some listen to whalesong streamed live from the Pacific.

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🌙 10:30 PM — Dream Curation

• Before bed, you review the dream queue. You pick a memory merge with your grandmother and a lucid sequence involving flying over ancient ruins.

• Your AI guides your sleep to reinforce empathy, reduce fear, and expand creative patterns.

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🧾 No Cost, No Scarcity

• No one pays. Everything is powered by nearly free energy and self-replicating machines.

• You don’t own your clothes. They shift based on weather and mood.

• You don’t need to leave anything behind. But you still do—just to feel the joy of giving.

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Scott here now. I am an optimists so I think I am going to be in Utopia in 10 years with most of you reading this. This schedule and activity above isn’t too far off from my current day:) I am going to practice the mental exercise of post-scarcity in my life and in my state of mind. That seems to be an excellent way to shortcut the individual path to an abundance of everything.

Thanks for reading friends. I have been abstaining from these emails to practice more mindfulness and doing each day by being intentional and present in my home with my friends and family. I feel so close to everyone in my life right now and I am falling madly in love with each day I live. The Sun comes up and I just lay in bed thinking about all these things I could write about, but instead I just let them sit in my mind and hold on to them, then I go do my Legos and walk my dog with Natalie. I do sauna and maybe some pickleball.

Thank you Jeron for being an inspiration cousin for the 40 years I have known you.

Have a fantastic Phiday under this glorious Sun.

Scott X - News coming to you once in a while at 4:20