[ExI] Abundance Economy

[Kelly Anderson]

I personally doubt there will ever be more than ten billion humans on
earth. We're very close to peak population now. Only in Africa are we
still growing in numbers, and I can't see how that will last long.
There's just something about being in a city that stops people from
wanting to have babies, and more and more people have moved to cities.
So yes, I think we can have abundance, even if we can't each have 50
acres...

-Kelly

On Thu, Jan 9, 2025 at 1:59 PM Ben Zaiboc via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> Long ago, in a galaxy... well, quite a while ago, anyway, spike said:
>
>  > The economy of abundance doesn't apply to some things, such as raw
> materials, energy and land.  Regardless of how easily we can manufacture
> anything we want, there are fixed quantities of some things.
>
>
> These things are limited in absolute terms, true, but does that mean an
> abundance economy isn't possible?
> Absolute limits and apparent (or practical) limits aren't the same thing.
>
> I've remarked before that 'resources' aren't fixed in quantity, despite
> what many sustainomaniacs would have us believe. People usually fail to
> factor in the level of technology available. Technology and Resources
> are intimately linked. The higher your level of technology, the more
> resources are available to you. We're no longer limited by the amount of
> coal we can mine, because we discovered oil. Now we are finding ways to
> do without oil. When we learn to turn carbon, silicon, aluminium, etc.,
> into just about anything we want, people will laugh at the idea of
> limited raw materials. We will never run out of those things as long as
> we remain on the earth.
>
> Energy is almost unlimited, given the right technology to harvest it.
>
> Available land, in the distant past, was a tiny fraction of what it is
> now (because we have more than just animal skins and wood fires to keep
> us warm, etc.). When you consider that we could put every single person
> on the planet on Madagascar, with room left over, you realise just how
> much liveable space the earth has (without even considering the seas).
>
> Obviously, we don't yet have the technology to realise an abundance
> economy, but I don't think we're far off it. Robotics and AI are
> advancing in leaps and bounds, Nanotech research is happening all over
> the world, in the background. One day nanotech will be a big thing.
>
> I think the biggest obstacle to an abundance economy will be human
> psychology (mostly manifested as politics and resistance from big
> business (which are just about the same thing, these days), as well as
> authoritarian states that want to keep strict control of their
> subjects), not land, energy or raw materials.
>
> --
> Ben
>
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