When laws of supply and demand are replaced with scarcity and abundance

Science fiction has long dreamed of a post-scarcity society, and it’s become quite common to hear discussions about transitioning from a world of scarcity to a world of abundance. But, for all the good intentions and creative thinking, our limitations, both human and material, will be an ever-present force in society and a very necessary one. The trick is understanding which aspects of society will flow towards abundance and which ones will not.

Abundance as described by James Heskett, a professor emeritus at Harvard writing for Working Knowledge:  “It is a world where everything digital is available at all times. And because of the very low cost of maintaining and distributing inventory, everything is likely to remain available forever. … It is a world of non-zero-sum thinking.”

The basic assumption – that all things scarce can somehow be magically transformed into all things abundant – is nonsense. Nothing could be further from the truth. Unless the laws of physics are rewritten, certain things will never reach the level of what is called abundant.  That said, abundance is now happening in some very unusual ways.

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