| Economy Of Abundance |
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MEANS Speculative technology Most visions of post-scarcity societies assume the existence of new technologies which make it much easier for society to produce nearly all goods in great abundance, given raw materials and energy. More speculative forms of ) - Drexler, Eric K. , Anchor Books, 1986 Even before that level of technology can be achieved, Fab Lab s and advanced industrial automation might be able to produce most physical goods that people desire, with a minimal amount of human labor required. As for the raw materials and energy needed as input for such automated production systems, Self-replicating automated mining plants set loose in the Asteroid Belt (see Asteroid Mining ) or other areas of space with huge amounts of untapped raw materials could cause the prices of these materials to plummet, and new power sources such as Fusion Power or Solar Power Satellite s could do the same for energy (especially if the power plants/power satellites could themselves be constructed in a highly automated way, so their number would be limited only by raw materials and energy). Definition of post-scarcity Even without postulating new technologies, it might be true that today there is already enough energy, raw material and biological resources on Earth to provide a comfortable lifestyle for every person on earth, but even a hypothetical Political or Economic System that was able to achieve an Egalitarian distribution of goods would generally not be termed a "post-scarcity society" unless the production of goods was sufficiently automated that virtually no labor was required by anyone (although it is usually assumed there would still be plenty of voluntary creative labor, like a writer creating a novel or a Software Engineer working on Open-source Software ). This is a key difference between the most common post-scarcity vision and other Utopia n visions such as Communism . There are some exceptions to this usage of the term however. Anthony Giddens , for instance, uses "post-scarcity" to refer to a set of trends he sees in modern industrialized nations, such as an increased focus on "life politics" and a decreased focus on productivity and economic growth. Giddens acknowledges that the term has also been used historically to mean a literal end of scarcity, however. Digital abundance Traditionally, creators have used (and continue to use) raw materials to instantiate their works: a painter might use oil and canvas, a sculptor might work in clay, an architect might draft designs in pen and ink. Such work would result in a single copy (or "matrix"). While mass reproduction of such works ("impressions") - by processes such as printmaking or photocopying - is possible and common, such reproduction still incurs appreciable costs (for example for the paper used, and for the physical distribution of the copy). Digital copies however have negligible reproduction costs. The same painter could create an original work with Graphics Software ; the sculptor might use Rapid Prototyping ; the architect CAD/CAM tools. Most of the "cost" in such works is in paying for the original design and development - for the creators' expertise and for their tools (though these also do not wear out the same way physical tools do). While the creators of such works must still labor to create the design matrix, there are virtually no raw-materials required to recreate the work once completed. This negligible-cost reproduction raises the question, "How much should one pay for something that can be copied near-indefinitely at minimal expense?" Does a purchaser have the right to reproduce their own copy as much as they can afford to? Some people believe the purchaser does not or should not have any rights to copy or transfer ownership, and use Digital Rights Management to enforce this view. Others instead feel that information should be freely distributed (see Copyleft ), and that DRM measures are attempts to restore prior business models' viability by inducing Artificial Scarcity . Many advocates of the ) - Stallman, Richard ; Dr. Dobb's Journal , March 1985 ''"In the long run, making programs free is a step toward the post-scarcity world, where nobody will have to work very hard just to make a living. People will be free to devote themselves to activities that are fun, such as programming, after spending the necessary ten hours a week on required tasks such as legislation, family counseling, robot repair and asteroid prospecting. There will be no need to be able to make a living from programming."'' EFFECTS Economic paradigm ) - Raymond, Eric S. , April 1998 Post-scarcity societies might also have their market economies limited to the exchange of energy and resources, or of other scarce or even non-material things, such as Status or Reputation (see Whuffie for a fictional example), real estate, or skills and expertise. Many science-fiction variants also imagine the very concept of Ownership to weaken or disappear,Various novels set in the ' The Culture ' universe - Banks, Ian M. ; 1987-2000as people lose attachment to all but sentimental-value items, knowing that they will always be able to receive or create replacements. Many stories depict this as a positive advancement, freeing humanity from both toil and greed. Others posit that handing production and most other services over to machines and computers will stunt the spirit of humanity, or even lead to a loss of control over humanity's own fate. Unavoidable scarcity Some things will remain rare even in a post-scarcity society. Only one person at a time can be a leader of a group, community or country, there is a practical limit to the number of people who can live in any specific, 'in-demand' locale and there are only sixty-eight 'real' Faberge Egg s in the whole world. However, hypothetical machines such as a Star Trek Replicator or nano-construction are envisioned as being able to produce any real-world artifact, and some fictions even envision the physical creation of new living space ( Orbitals or Ringworld sVarious novels from the ' Ringworld ' series - Niven, Larry ; 1970-2004) to reduce this scarcity. IN FICTION Fictional post-scarcity societies include the Bitchun Society from '''' that there are many items the replicators can't make duplicates of, including Starship s). James P. Hogan 's tale of Alpha Centauri colonists in '' Voyage From Yesteryear '' meanwhile show the difficulties of changing an existing economic paradigm, and postulate that a fresh start may be necessary to overcome old thinking about money and possessions. Rudy Rucker also dealt with this jarring transition in '' Realware '' in which humans receive an alien device that can instantiate any consumer product they have seen. This leads to a breakdown of the market, with stores blacking out their windows in a vain attempt to prevent people from 'copying' their products. Still, people who do buy the products find them instantly copied once out on the streets. There have also been fully Dystopian science fiction societies where all people's physical needs are provided for by machines, but this causes humans to become overly docile, uncreative and incurious—examples include E. M. Forster 's 1909 short story '' The Machine Stops '' and Arthur C. Clarke 's 1956 novel '' The City And The Stars ''. An intermediate step to a post-scarcity society has been shown in Neal Stephenson 's '' The Diamond Age '', where fabricator technology allows the growth of any item that one has design plans for - however, the poor receive a lesser amount of energy and resources per day to use, and thus have to wait longer for their items to be fabricated. Also, their items tend to be smaller, as they have no access to large-scale fabricators. This system, fueled by a centrally-distributed matter 'feed' is eventually replaced by a more advanced technology. Riders Of The Purple Wage , Philip José Farmer 's Dystopia n 1967 science fiction novella explores some ramifications of a future wherein technology allows everyone's desires to be met. Kim Stanley Robinson 's Mars Trilogy describes the beginning development of a highly automated society whose economy was to be based on caloric input/output and had only a few materials valued based on their scarcity. SEE ALSO
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