[chipsy]

This is a topic discussed in economics - reducing scarcity through technology.

For an example of how this has happened with other resources, look at metals. Aluminum and iron used to be much more expensive and scarce. Now they're pretty cheap, and to find out why, just total the savings of lots of tiny improvements like thinner soda cans, better sorting of recycling, lower-energy production methods, etc.

If 50 people come up with cumulative improvements of 2% to a process, you end up with a 269% improvement.

This is one of the reasons why software is so appealing - it's low-capital to distribute, and there are an unending number of tasks to automate, making it easy to come up with new approaches to improve productivity.