Post-scarcity
The post-scarcity age is an anticipated period where due to advancing technology and efficient use of natural resources there will be a great abundance of the material items, goods and services that people require, achieved with a minimal impact to the environment. It will not matter where you live.
When civilization reaches this point, everything from basics like clean water, nutritious food, medicine and suitable housing to increasingly essential material goods like vehicles, computers, mobile phones and all the way up to purely luxury items, will be freely available to anyone that requires them.
The simplest analogy is that of a vast jungle producing abundant fruit that anyone can eat. But in this scenario the jungle is highly autonomous distributed machinery that has been openly designed.
Abundance of the fundamental resources
- Do we really have the resources for this kind of society?
- Civilization boils down to four fundementals: material, energy, information and intelligence – none of which are in short supply. It is the current inefficient methods of use (and re-use) and perceived economic restrictions that make it appear that there are significant limitations to these resources.
- See the fundamental resources page for more information on resource availability.
- How do we design machinery advanced enough to give us all of this?
- See the open design and closed-loop automation pages.
