[charlesu]

What resource is scarce? We can’t give everyone an iPhone or a McMansion, but we could probably feed everyone.

[ZephyrBlu]

I'd say you're completely right, but there are a couple of caveats.

1) Most people would not be content with just the basics. We like shiny new stuff like iPhones or fancy clothes or nice food

2) Even if there was no scarcity of anything, our distribution systems (Globally) are pretty poor. I doubt we could flip a switch and begin distributing resources to everywhere in the world that needs them.

[postingpals]

We actually can give everyone a phone since there are well over 8 billion in circulation.

[pfalcon]

By taking them from whoever owns them already? That's still popular petty street crime tactics in 3rd-world countries.

[charlesu]

No, we can just give people used phones. We have such a surplus of some things that we can actually redistribute them in a non-zero sum way.