When you think about it, there's a lot of stuff that'll still be scarce even when we have magic robots that can build everything instantly.
When you think about it, there's a lot of stuff that'll still be scarce even when we have magic robots that can build everything instantly.
Many sought-after things are scarce. Starship commissions are scarce. They require hard work and are assigned based on merit. Not just anyone gets the opportunity to explore the edge of space; it takes dedication and sacrifice.
The show is certainly influence by the philosophy of Stoicism[0].
By the definition of economic scarcity it will be required to in order to merit the name. However, that illustrates that a post-scarcity society will never exist (or at least is vastly farther off than some people imagine), which is the more critical point.
If anything that anyone wants is limited such that enhancing one person's realized utility is a trade-off with someone else's realized utility, you don't have a post-scarcity situation.
Which is why post-scarcity isn't really something we are ever likely to need to worry about.
What we need to worry about is a scenario with scarcity where large masses of the public are (some in a static way, and some in a transitional way that, with optimal policy, could resolve given time), through arrangement of capital and the relative utility of automation vs. labor (including when it comes to producing additional automated production units) unable to contribute significantly to output, and thus have nothing to sell in the marketplace.