[whatevsbro]

Well that was bluntly said. I'm not sure it's accurate though, and besides, I was just talking about the nature of economies and Capitalism, which is certainly relevant to an article talking about, well, economies.

But if you see a problem with what I said, perhaps you'd like to tell me what it is?

[toomuchtodo]

The problem is, the whole part of the article was post-scarcity. You identify that earth resources are scarce. What if they're not? What if all of our energy is renewable? What if we close the loop for mined materials so we recycle in-system and no longer consume additional materials from the earth? If we're wired around scarce resources, we will need to adapt when scarcity no longer occurs.

Today's Atlas would say, "Give me enough energy and mass, and I'll move the universe." With enough energy, anything is possible.

[whatevsbro]

Quote from the article:

there are plenty of reasons to believe that we may be at the beginnings of a post scarcity economy. We have a surplus, no doubt. Of course, we still have legions of people in the world that are starving, and even people still here at home. But we actually have the capacity to feed them, to feed everyone, even now, even if we don’t have the will. It’s not a matter of scarcity; it’s a matter of the organization of labor and capital.

The problem here is that there is no "we" that can implement this unrealistic plan of arranging for an easy living for everyone. We're all just individuals and pursuing our personal gain, as I mentioned. That much is constant, because it's how we're biologically wired to operate. So, there is no "collective we" that could decide how to run a society, but that's exactly what he's suggesting.

Of course, the only entity that makes collective decisions is the government. But the government only has one way to affect an economy: coercion. In essence, this guy is suggesting that governments should force some people to provide for other people. It's just another version of "welfare", but any kind of welfare system is about using force and coercion to re-allocate resources, because otherwise resources would just get "allocated" through voluntary exchanges. In reality, it makes no sense to talk about some specific "allocation" of resources, because the only way you can even try to achieve that is through coercion again. Coercion is immoral and forbidden though, so you have no business trying to effect any specific allocation of resources.

In addition, there's a gross mistake at the root of all this: the idea that you know how resources should be allocated. We're already covered that without coercion, resources will just end up where ever they may, and that's just the end result of countless people pursuing their personal gain, making the exchanges they want to, and so on. You are only your own personal self, and you don't know what kind of exchanges other people should go through - it's all subjective.

In summary, people talking about "post-scarcity" or a "resource-based economy" (Zeitgeist) and how those should be arranged, are basically engaging in central planning, and they either realize it would require massive amounts of coercion or they do not. In the first case, they're just plain evil, and in the second, they're clueless. Either way, what they want is impossible.

[MrMan]

Post-individualism, posts like these will look pretty childish. Human societies do exist, and have existed. We not just just individuals.

[whatevsbro]

Post-brainwashing, posts like these will look astute. I'm not saying individuals don't need to co-operate in countless ways, but collective thinking is misguided, because we actually are just individuals.

We're all programmed to think in collective terms, because that helps governments maintain their power.