The biggest crisis is the end of scarcity

“Visiting the planet every half-century has made her (the alien), unlike her Earth friends, an optimist. Humankind never goes the easy way around, and given the stakes, they could easily mess up—by starting World War III or being unprepared for a more lethal pandemic than COVID-19, unrestrained artificial intelligence, or the deadly consequences of the climate crisis. She reminds herself, and wishes the citizens of the planet could remember, that few living in 1974, 1924, or 1874 could have imagined the extraordinary progress earthlings have made since. Which, perhaps against her better judgment, gives her hope that she will get to visit in 2074 and be impressed once again.”

> "The ethics and philosophy of under-consumption …"

> "So essential when there was under-production; but in an age of machines and the fixation of nitrogen–positively a crime against society."

(My headcanon is that it is sold as a dystopia largely because it presents a future devoid of english teachers; the savage proves his savagery by committing suicide, despite having been offered the islands: the Rumspringa of the world After Ford)

The sphere of production and circulation are impacted simultaneously. So you have an excess of resources and labor, but also not enough money to buy it, because access to resources is gated behind money and money is earned in correlation to productivity.

In its essence, you need to be productive in an economy which no longer needs further production, simply for the sake of obeying the "productivity <=> money" rule.

If this wasn't clear maybe this example is more illustrative: house prices go up by 50%. You need to work 50% longer, but this doesn't mean the economy will actually consume 50% more just because you need the money for the house.

In the scarcity regime you don't have to think about this at all, there is enough of a backlog to just work through it.

Now, if you were to object that poor people still have unmet needs, then the answer is that rising wealth inequality is allocating money to people with a lower propensity to consume. That by the way is where positive capital returns eventually end up, simply because exponential growth outpaces the human brain at some point.

Optimism is the only way forward if we want to get out of the quagmire.