Post-scarcity/Intro

The post-scarcity age is an anticipated period where due to advancing technology, efficient use of natural resources and co-operation there could exist a great abundance of the material items that everyone needs, achieved with a minimal impact to the environment.

Many fictional visions of post scarcity involve as yet undeveloped technologies but the reality is that global material abundance can be produced with current technologies. Food is one example, where there is more than enough produced for everyone on the planet, but it is politics, economics and logistics that prevent a more egalitarian distribution. The bottom line is that in the fundamental resources of this planet there exists many orders of magnitude more energy, raw material and biological resources than humanity requires, it is a matter of developing systems that use and distribute them more efficiently.

By employing open collaborative design and advanced automation in combination, everything from the basics like clean water, good quality food, medicine and suitable housing to increasingly essential material goods such as vehicles, computers and mobile phones – all the way up to purely luxury items should be trivial to fabricate and distribute. These methods could overcome nearly all significant scarcity that currently persists due to the current economic framework that has been inherited from previous eras. This isn't to say what is proposed here will happen, but that it could happen – it is feasible from a physical and technological viewpoint. It is a matter of spreading the knowledge that these things are possible and enough people choosing to work towards it.