Eliminating Scarcity

[leftace53]

So with all these "from each according to their abilities to each according to thier needs" threads popping up, and nice answers to these threads consisting of a post scarcity society.

Which brings me to wonder how do we eliminate scarcity? Through vast technological improvements? How do we replenish the natural resources as fast as we use them, or is that not how we will do it?

Apologies if this thread is around somewhere already.

[Delirium]

We are living in a world with finite natural resources. At the same time, human population is expanding rapidly while also having and increased standard of living (the amount of shit you consume). I doubt it would be possible have a post scarcity economy with everyone consuming at the level of the west. For that to happen i imagine that there would have to be a serious decline in human population.

What is possible is to guarantee the basic material necessities of life, food, water, housing, and health care for everyone.

[SeaSpeck]

I agree that we could eliminate scarcity in certain things, such as basic needs.

But,I would assume that it would be almost impossible to calculate all the things people would want and then some how have an abundance of those things.

I think the closest thing we could get to post scarcity would be a society where wanted things could be manufactured efficiently and distributed quickly. Unless it's possible to automate everything so supply always exceeds demand, then scarcity will always manifest somewhere.

[Gecko]

get rid of capitalism..
then equalize the living standards of america,europe,canada,australia,new zealand and japan to the third world..
no SUV's,no mcdonalds,no luxury cars,no harleys,no investments,no las vegas,no expensive sports or entertainment events,no nascar,no expensive colleges,no expensive vacations,no 200 dollar nikes,no big screen plasma tv's,no fucking useless toys such as those computers primarily used to get hooked up with porn or fucking around with silly ass video games and other wasteful activities...phase out most of the bullshit material possesions that the sheeple of the first world have and channel material production for the social needs of the entire world..
people living in europe,america,australia,canada,new zealand and japan will after a communist revolution live the same lifestyle as people in bangladesh,chad or haiti....fuck yeah thats communist justice in action..
no more white skin privilege in the world..a new communist ecology,a new communist system of material distribution and planning..fuck yeah..we can get rid of scarcity that way..communism is the only way ..i'm all down for it!

[Die Rote Fahne]

True scarcity is non-existent.

This idea that we can't provide food, clothing and shelter for everyone is absurd. The means is there. It's is, however, not in a capitalists nature to do without profit, hence them being capitalists.

The scarcity of today is manufactured.

[Agnapostate]

The elimination of scarcity would entail the provision of absolutely everything at zero prices, turning everything into a free good, just to clarify what the definition of scarcity is. Is that what "post-scarcity" advocates have understood it as?

[A.R.Amistad]

get rid of capitalism..
then equalize the living standards of america,europe,canada,australia,new zealand and japan to the third world..
no SUV's,no mcdonalds,no luxury cars,no harleys,no investments,no las vegas,no expensive sports or entertainment events,no nascar,no expensive colleges,no expensive vacations,no 200 dollar nikes,no big screen plasma tv's,no fucking useless toys such as those computers primarily used to get hooked up with porn or fucking around with silly ass video games and other wasteful activities...phase out most of the bullshit material possesions that the sheeple of the first world have and channel material production for the social needs of the entire world..
people living in europe,america,australia,canada,new zealand and japan will after a communist revolution live the same lifestyle as people in bangladesh,chad or haiti....fuck yeah thats communist justice in action..
no more white skin privilege in the world..a new communist ecology,a new communist system of material distribution and planning..fuck yeah..we can get rid of scarcity that way..communism is the only way ..i'm all down for it!


this seems like a pretty Utopian answer to the question t hand.

[SeaSpeck]

Post-scarcity is impossible. I agree that there shouldn't be a requirement to receive goods or needs. But someone somewhere will always have to put in time, work, and materials into producing a good. Something will always have to be exchanged to produce and therefore receive a good. At that, Earth has a finite amount of resources at any given time. Yes, some of them can be replenished, but not all. So, unless we can spontaneously replicate resources, calculate all human wants and needs and then automate them, it's impossible to put all goods in our society into a post scarcity position.

For example, there will probably always be scarcity in rocket ships, works of art and cruise liners. Artificial scarcity created by Capitalists can be eliminated, but consequential scarcity can not, it's a physical impossibility.

[ComradeOm]

Which brings me to wonder how do we eliminate scarcity?Through vastly increasing the productive forces of society. Partly this will be achieved through technology but the real breakthrough will be in the reorganisation of the economy/workplace following revolution. The economic tools that capitalism has developed will be used to serve and benefit the proletariat


this seems like a pretty Utopian answer to the question t hand.That's not utopianism, its misanthropic puritanism of the worst sort

[graymouser]

You have to understand that any answer to the OP is going to be basically utopian and indelibly stamped with the scars of the capitalist society we live in. That is to say, everything must be taken with a big grain of salt.

With that caveat, we can see certain positive gains to be made from a rationally planned economy. Modern commodity production focuses on selling more things, so there's a lot of waste. Both in the sense that things are manufactured to be fundamentally disposable, and that the kind of things are supposed to be part of a pattern of buying. You can look at the transportation problem for some possible answers.

The current transportation system is geared toward selling three commodities: automobiles, tires and oil. The ideal situation is that cars are replaced every 150,000 miles or so, tires are replaced every 40,000 miles or so and gasoline is consumed continuously for the life of the car. This is necessary because you are fundamentally selling those three commodities, so anyone who doesn't move toward those basics is setting themselves up for failure. If your cars last too long without expensive repair, you're not selling more cars or parts, and not returning your investment. That's a fairly big deal!

With a planned economy the goal would actually be to produce only what is needed (itself to be decided democratically), and to do so with as little effort as is necessary. So you would have a complete democratic overhaul of the transport system, probably toward using fewer, highly durable trains and automobiles. You would see a serious push toward using renewable energy in the transit system and being as efficient with it as you could, rather than gas-guzzling SUVs. Technology would be developed toward producing fewer, more durable and more efficient final products, in less time.

As you moved along that curve, essentially you'd have time and resources to spend on whatever people wanted. That's where you'd get post-scarcity. But we have almost no idea what that would mean in the real world.

[28350]

Through widespread and easily available birth control, we will be able to voluntarily cap overpopulation if it ever becomes a problem.

[Gecko]

Through vastly increasing the productive forces of society. Partly this will be achieved through technology but the real breakthrough will be in the reorganisation of the economy/workplace following revolution. The economic tools that capitalism has developed will be used to serve and benefit the proletariat

That's not utopianism, its misanthropic puritanism of the worst sort

perfidious albion...the payback will be a ***** for perfidious albion and you don't like it..do you?

[robbo203]

So with all these "from each according to their abilities to each according to thier needs" threads popping up, and nice answers to these threads consisting of a post scarcity society.

Which brings me to wonder how do we eliminate scarcity? Through vast technological improvements? How do we replenish the natural resources as fast as we use them, or is that not how we will do it?

Apologies if this thread is around somewhere already.


I suggest you read Stone Age Economics: The Original Affluent Society by Marshall Sahlins.

Sahlins makes the prescient point that there are two routes to affluence - one is producing more, the other is wanting less. I suggest a future moneyless communist society would employ both making completely free and unfettered access to goods and services produced by the voluntary cooperation of individuals, a practical reality.

Probably the major productive advantage of communism over capitalism (though there are others) will be its ability to utilise resources, material and human, that are currently diverted into socially useless production that is neverthless essential to capitalism. The elimination of banks , pay departments, door to door salemen, actuarial accountants and a thousand and one other socially useless occupations in a free access moneyless economy will, at a stroke, at least double the resoutces available for socially useful production. Indeed, some would argue that even this figure is a bit on the conservative side.

On the demand side, free access makes all the pursuit of material status symbols utterly meaninglesss and pointless. There is no point in showing off your wealth when everyone has free and unrestricted access to the wealth of society. The incessant pressure to buy buy buy which is part of the logic of capitalism's competitive and expansionist dynamic will cease altogether. We will be able to breathe easily in a relaxed society in which individuals can properly care about each other and the things that really matter.

Scarcity? Well, scarcity is a myth in the sense that it is a particular way of looking at the world. It will die with capitalism

[ComradeOm]

perfidious albion...the payback will be a ***** for perfidious albion and you don't like it..do you?I'm not English you muppet. Even then I wouldn't seek to degrade the English "sheeple" in the manner you apparently do. The purpose of communism is to increase living standards through abundance, not to purposely lower them out of spite or "communist justice"

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I think an important distinction needs to be made between consumption and acquisition. One can desire a potentially unlimited amount of things to possess, but the amount one can actually do in a day is limited. You can only spend so much time in a swimming pool. You can only eat so much chocolate cake. You can only travel so far.

But because market systems implicitly assume scarcity, they cannot deal with abundance. This is why the world production of food could feed twice the current population, yet people are still going hungry.

[HammerAlias]

We can't eliminate scarcity. Eventually, everything runs out. That includes water, air and food. No matter what policies and regulations are enacted, you cannot stop the inevitable.

[28350]

Eventually, everything runs out. That includes water, air and food.

lol.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_cycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_web
http://www.laughingplace.com/files/columns/toon20021224/pic1.jpg

So yeah, the whole circle of life thing will keep going for a while until the sun burns out. Assuming we don't kill ourselves, we'll probably be technologically advanced enough to do something about that.