After Scarcity: Why Humanity Is Rich Enough To Stop Letting People Suffer

We were all raised on the same story:

Resources are scarce. Life is hard. There isn’t enough for everyone, so some people will be poor, hungry, unhoused, or buried in work forever. That’s just how it is.

That story used to be true.

It isn’t anymore.

We’re living in a new era I call “after scarcity”: a world where, technically, we have enough food, energy, and productive capacity to guarantee every human a baseline of safety and dignity.

But our systems, institutions, and mindsets are still stuck in the old world.

This isn’t a sci-fi thought experiment. It’s a moral one.

1. The Lie We Still Live In

For the last couple of centuries, the core economic assumption has been simple:

Human wants are infinite
Resources are finite
Markets are the best way to allocate what little we have

That story is the foundation of a lot of “common sense” opinions:

“Some people will always be poor.”

“We can’t afford universal healthcare / housing / food.”

“If everyone had security, nobody would work.”

But look at the world in 2025:

We already produce enough food to feed everyone. People starve because of war, distribution, politics, and profit – not because the planet can’t grow enough.

Solar and wind are now cheaper than building new fossil fuel plants in most places. Energy abundance is a technical problem that’s basically solved and a political problem that’s barely started.

Automation and AI are making it possible to produce more with less human labor every year.

If you zoom out, the picture is simple:

We’re not running out of “stuff.”

We’re running out of excuses.

2. Capitalist Realism: The Atmosphere We Breathe

The late writer Mark Fisher had a phrase I can’t stop thinking about: “capitalist realism.”

His point: it’s become easier for people to imagine the end of the world than the end of our current economic system. Not because it’s good, but because it feels inevitable.

Capitalist realism shows up like this:

Systemic problems get reframed as personal failures

Can’t afford rent? “Budget better.”
Burned out? “Practice self-care.”
Job market collapsing? “Reskill harder.”

Any alternative sounds childish or dangerous

Universal basic income? “No one will work.”
Free healthcare? “Too expensive.”
Decommodified housing? “Unrealistic.”

It’s like living inside a funhouse mirror where:

Poverty looks like bad choices, not policy
Homelessness looks like individual failure, not a housing market design
Burnout looks like weak character, not a broken work culture

Capitalist realism is the software running in the background of our society.

“After scarcity” is the patch update we refuse to install.

3. Automation: The End of Survival Work (If We Want It)

For most of history, it genuinely took huge amounts of human labor just to keep people alive:

Farming
Building
Transporting
Manufacturing

Now?

Robots build cars. Algorithms trade markets. AI writes code, drafts documents, and analyzes data.

Every year, more of the “necessary work” for society can be done by machines.

That creates a fork in the road:

Dystopia route

Productivity goes up
Profits go up
Workers become more precarious
People still have to grind 40–60 hours just to survive

After scarcity route

Productivity gains are treated as a social dividend
We shorten the workweek
We separate basic survival from employment
People still work – but more from choice than fear

Automation doesn’t automatically free people. It just makes it possible to free people.

Whether we use it to create mass unemployment or mass security? That’s a political decision, not a technological one.

4. Mismanaged Abundance: Food and Energy

Let’s get concrete.

Food

The planet produces enough food to feed everyone. Yet:

Millions go hungry
Billions can’t afford healthy diets
Tons of food gets thrown out every day

That isn’t scarcity. That’s policy. That’s logistics. That’s profit incentives.

That’s what happens when food is treated first as a commodity and only second as a basic human need.

Energy

Same pattern.

Solar and wind costs have crashed over the last decade. New renewables are often cheaper than new coal or gas. The tech to massively expand clean energy is here.

Yet we still have:

Energy poverty
Fossil fuel lock-in
Political systems captured by old interests

Again: not a physics problem. Not a technology problem. It’s a power problem.

We don’t lack the ability to move into a world of abundant clean energy. We lack the willingness to disrupt the people and systems that profit from scarcity.

5. What “Sustainable Abundance” Actually Means

“Abundance” doesn’t mean infinite consumption or everyone driving Lambos.

It means this:

No one is hungry
No one is sleeping on the street
No one is denied basic healthcare
No one is shut out of education
No one has to sell their entire life just to survive

And it means all of that within planetary boundaries.

I call that sustainable abundance.

Three core ideas:

Universal sufficiency is feasible. With the tech and productivity we have now, it is possible to guarantee everyone a baseline of comfort and safety.
Essentials should be unconditional. Survival shouldn’t depend on whether the market likes you this month. Housing, food, healthcare, education, and basic internet access should be treated as rights, not rewards.
Abundance has limits. The goal isn’t endless GDP growth. The goal is ending involuntary suffering while staying inside ecological boundaries.

This isn’t a fantasy where humans suddenly become morally perfect. It’s an engineering problem:

How do we design systems so that even with flawed humans, the default outcome is no one falls through the floor?

6. AI and Governance: Tools, Not Gods

People sometimes imagine a future where AI “runs everything.” That’s not what I’m arguing for.

I’m saying: if we’re serious about sustainable abundance, we’re going to need serious coordination tools.

AI can help with:

Integrating real-time data on resources, needs, and impacts
Simulating policy trade-offs before we implement them
Automating boring admin so public services don’t suck

But all of that lives inside a bigger question: Who defines the goals?

If AI is owned and controlled by a tiny elite, it will be used to optimize scarcity: Cut costs. Police the poor. Squeeze more profit out of everyone.

If AI is built and governed publicly, it could help manage abundance: Make sure food and energy actually reach people. Track inequality in real time. Help communities plan and allocate together.

The tech doesn’t save us. It magnifies whatever values we plug into it.

7. The Moral Turning Point

Here’s the real heart of the argument.

At some point in history, a society crosses a line where:

It can prevent most large-scale, predictable, avoidable suffering without wrecking itself.

Once you cross that line, staying with the old system stops being “tragic but necessary” and becomes a choice.

Right now, rich and technologically advanced countries are on the wrong side of that moral line:

People sleep outside while homes sit empty as investments
People die of treatable conditions while hospitals chase profit
People burn out in bullshit jobs while automation could free them

That isn’t nature. That isn’t fate. That’s design.

And if it’s design, it can be redesigned.

8. After Scarcity: The One-Sentence Thesis

If you remember nothing else, remember this:

Once a society has the means to prevent large-scale, predictable, avoidable suffering at a reasonable cost, failing to do so is no longer an accident. It’s a moral decision.

We already live in an after scarcity world. We just haven’t updated the operating system.

The task now is not to “dream” of abundance. It’s to take responsibility for the abundance we already have.

9. Where This Goes Next

This isn’t just theory for me.

I’m writing this as someone who’s lived in scarcity and felt the system grind people down who did everything “right.”

I believe we’re moving into a reset window for humanity – driven by AI, automation, climate stress, and global connectivity.

We either:

Use this moment to lock in a harsher, more unequal world

Use it to finally admit: we’re rich enough, smart enough, and connected enough to stop letting people fall through the cracks.

Not because it’s “nice.”

Because it’s necessary for a civilization worth inheriting.