You mean the human condition? Life has always been this way and since we're not a post-scarcity society yet I don't see how any workable system would not be morally bankrupt by this standard.
Maybe people would be more eager to work if the benefits were more equitably distributed?
We have plenty of everything, enough for everyone but we allocate and distribute it too inefficiently. Supermarkets destroy their unsold food, and Amazon their unsold products. Zoning laws mandate low density areas when we have the engineering to build enough homes for all vertically on the land we do have. Apple could provide iPhones at a cost that everyone can afford but they deliberately price them at a level that only a top % can handle. I think we all know about the scam of diamonds at this point as well.
It's all just fake and caused by the desire for short term profits.
So realistically it's a decent way of managing the excess and providing equality.
They don't sell like produce obviously but the food is almost never expired only expiring soon sometimes.
How can we be sure that we aren't? Or rather, how will we ever be able to tell whether we are living in a post-scarcity society, when artificial scarcity is imposed by those with political power?
We don't have true scarcity in housing. What we have is artificial constraints on building being imposed by the state.
We also don't have scarcity in basic foodstuffs. There's plenty of food. What we have is a system of distribution that requires that people exchange money for food, and the only source of money that most people have is to exchange it for their labor. We could instead just give people enough money to pay for basic food, energy and housing.
There is scarcity in other things, and there will always be scarcity in some things, even in "post-scarcity" societies. Capitalist market economies are usually very efficient at allocating such resources, and people would still have the incentive to work so they can get the extra things that they want to have for themselves or their families. Capitalism can co-exist with a post-scarcity society.
A workable but less "morally bankrupt" system would lower the cost of housing by using government policy to increase supply, and would give people enough cash to pay for basic food, energy and housing through a universal basic income.
Sure, as long as "efficient" means "most aligns with the desires of capital".
Personally I’d argue that capitalism is great for non-necessary consumer goods, and disastrous for necessities. My TV is cheaper (inflation adjusted) and measurably superior to what was on sale half a century ago. Unfortunately my house is massively more expensive than it was half a century ago, and unlike a TV I will die sooner if I don’t have some sort of dwelling to live in.
If we’re going to keep capitalism, and the growing sentiment against it here makes me question even that, we need to put stronger safety rails around it.
It would be so much more simple to say you can just buy a lot for maybe $25000 and put one of these garden sheds in and live on it https://www.costco.com/stonecroft-12'-x-10'-wood-storage-she.... There you go, full housing setup for under $30000, but it would be a very low standard of living, but much nicer than sleeping in a car or on the street. In many populated counties it is illegal to sleep on your own land if you don't have an inspected house or utility hookups.
There are also often limits on adding new dwelling space to your land. I would need a permit to add a detached studio to my back yard if it crosses the threshold of being a “dwelling unit”. Usually a bathroom is enough to trigger this regulation.