Hacker News Reader

Comment by robertlagrant | Hacker News Reader

As soon as we are post scarcity, we don't need capitalism any more, as capitalism is just a resource allocation mechanism. Til then, we probably do!

View on HN

We've been post scarcity for "IP" for decades. The cost of making 1 copy of Barbie the Movie is the same as 1 billion copies.

Well, copying and pasting has been made easy. But making it is still hard - lots of resources to allocate there.

Making the first requires resources. Making a billion copies doesn't.

Same in a world with a star trek replicator. Making the first steak dinner requires resources, making the next billion doesn't

As I say, copying and pasting has been made easy.

More accurately, Capitalism is an ownership model. People like to retcon all forms of market-based commerce as a kind of "proto-capitalism", but that makes it hard to talk about Capitalism as a distinct economic system. The main defining feature of capital markets is their use of private property as a tool for extracting profit from a market system. There are useful and socially positive applications for capital, but Capitalism places profit above all other concerns because extracting profit is its function. Capitalism was born in feudal Europe, and grew up during the colonial period and is, factually, only 500 years old or so at most. Markets have existed all over the world for literal thousands of years. Capitalism tries really hard to pretend like they invented something, but there's far more choice and affordability in the free markets around the world than anything that has been enclosed by the american financial system.

Then again, I don't subscribe to the notion of capitalist realism. Aside from the exported violence used to impose and sustain it, the model is flimsy and constantly in crisis.

We'll never be post-scarcity because humans can never reach a state of sustained satisfaction.

Post-scarcity can't really happen on a very finite planet with a huge and growing population.

Even if we had fully-automated systems providing plentify food and water, we'd need some ssytem, likely capitalism, to distribute still-scarce luxuries (e.g. beachfront property)

And if we had total post-scarcity (effectively infinite energy and Star Trek style energy-to-matter replicators), we'd just be fighting over scarce land as everyone fills up all the space with replicated junk.

Post-scarcity just means the rate of use is less than the rate of renewal for all used resources. In a sense, hunter-gatherers were "post-scarcity." The challenge is supporting our modern quality of life at our scale of population. I think enormous strides would need to be made (fusion energy + matter synthesis, ie Star Trek replicators) in order to achieve post-scarcity on a long enough timeline without changing any of the other parameters.

Well, not just that. Not everyone can have a house on the beach. How do you allocate that resource?

Ehhh, that one's self-regulating. Have you seen what happens to houses next to the beach? They disintegrate at alarming rates. Maintenance is a nightmare.

That said, removed from market forces, there a lot of ways to allocate housing, such as some form of segmented lottery or waitlist.

Maintenance isn't a nightmare in a post-scarcity world.

Good point.

As soon as we are post scarcity, we don't need capitalism any more

If you compare agriculture 1000 years ago with agriculture today, we're already in post scarcity. I suspect the game theoretic mechanisms will keep it going for awhile yet.

As society levels-up, the definition of scarce will continually expand as we confound wants with needs. I'm not sure how in a world of infinite wants you can "out-technology" resource demands.

I don't know if we are post-scarcity. Our inputs to agriculture (lots and lots of fossil fuels) are not post-scarcity in any sense. Multiply by the scale of humanity and it's difficult to argue we're post-scarcity in agriculture. We might have more food than people to feed, but that doesn't mean if nothing changed we'd be able to sustain our level of production.

Our inputs to agriculture (lots and lots of fossil fuels) are not post-scarcity in any sense.

Yes, but our levels of productivity per-farmer would look like utter Sci-fi to a medieval peasant, if they had a notion of Sci-fi.

Also, by these standards, 1st world societies are fantasy lands, where the even the poor are fat, and have magical machines to keep food fresh, deliver music and entertainment, wash clothes and dishes. (Not all, but still.)

What we posit today as post-scarcity, will likely just move the goal posts for scarcity.

We're post-scarcity regardig digital goods. It seems we might not need capitalism for those goods any more, but it's still sticking there.

We aren't, not yet, because those digital goods still have an initial creation cost. Digital goods that people consume are made by people.

Yes, they can be copied infinitely for free, but we're only "post scarcity" if we never make anything else new.

With the advent of generative AI, we might just barely be starting to be post scarcity in a couple narrow fields.

I'll bite: we're post-scarcity for a lot of digital items that are useful tools. Goods we need but don't have exist, but I'm not even sure if they are the majority. Existing music, videos, books cover a whole lot of what humans might want - originals are the outcome of research needs (niche) and trends (not niche). Existing software tools are similar: new ones are needed to push boundaries (niche) or mostly as a response to a changing legal landscape (less niche).

On top of that, significant amounts of stuff are created out of an internal need, and would get created regardless.

One thing I'm sure about is that we're post-scarcity in historical items, and we're nowhere past capitalism there. Indeed, preservationists are hitting roadblocks all the time.

You know, that's a fair point. I think there's a great argument to be made that FOSS software in particular is essentially post scarcity.

I'm not sure I'd say we're "post scarcity" for books and other digital goods though. Sure, we have all the books written until now, but I think there's an argument to be made that a huge part of the utility of books is that they are produced in near-real-time to discuss, address, and reflect thecurrent state of society. As our society grows and changes, books featuring the issues of the days will always be desired. This falls into the "trends" category you mentioned, but my point is more that I think it's larger than you described.

Volunteerism isn't "post-scarcity". If you're fed and watered by providing value in a capitalist system, and choose to spend your spare time volunteering, that's great, but it's nothing utopian. Volunteerism is a free choice of work in exchange for a price of £0. That's regular old capitalism at work.

If you could just generate energy out of the ether and use it to materialise food and anything else you might want, for example, that would be post-scarcity.

I insist that it still is post-scarcity if you would provide the same or greater (equivalent) value regardless of the system.

While your definition might be elegant, it's too strict to foster a useful conversation.

You can't look at one area of the economy in isolation. It's all intertwined. The people creating digital goods still need food, shelter, and housing. Things that are not post-scarcity.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com