We already live in post scarcity, in some locations. The world has an over abundance of goods.
The industrialised world already produces more than enough for the whole world, yet not all of the world is industrialised.
Even in Brazil, a low to middle income country, obesity and diabetes is a bigger problem than hunger. And the laptops they buy are made in China same as everywhere else. Notice how Brazil has no local laptop production - that’s because Chinese production is more than enough.
That already tells you what you need to know about “scarcity”. Certainly there is no scarcity of calorie production. And there is no scarcity of laptop production. Just the concentrated production in Shenzen, done by maybe 0.1% of the population, serves large parts of the world. Brazil could have a domestic industry, but there’s no need for one.
Deconstruct the concept of unemployment. Unemployment is simply put, an over abundance of people for the number of available tasks.
An over abundance of people for the number of available tasks is an unnatural situation. Hunter gatherers couldn’t have more people than the tasks available. If you were alive you hunted.
But Industrialised society has meant that a very small proportion of the population produces all the physical goods necessary to the entire population. Hence there is unemployment and underemployment. AI will super charge this.
You could of course say “we will find something for them to do”. Well, yes, sure but you’re increasingly going into what David Graeber called Bullshit Jobs - jobs where if you ask people if they think they are making a difference in the world, they say no. The UK already something like 50% of jobs are like this. My impression is this is correct - a lot of the jobs in the Uk are indeed meaningless. My hunch is that is because they are a post scarcity society in denial.