Post Scarcity

[Adil3tr]

Isn't post scarcity economics central to Marxism? I have always thought of this as the most powerful concept. Communism isn't just a matter of attitude, its also needs to knock material barriers to human achievement.

[ckaihatsu]

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One thing I think we need to keep in mind about the aggregate of available goods and services is that 'scarcity' is *not* a blanket term. (This can be particularly significant when discussing productivity and economic matters with pro-market types.)

As meow is pointing out, certain things are *already* post-scarcity -- my favorite example continues to be breathable air, which is *so* prevalent and available that it wouldn't even be worth trying to *commodify* it, and we know how virtually *everything* gets commodified.... (Although I *have* heard rumors of pay-for-use "clean-air booths" in the polluted urban centers of some of the world's largest cities.)

So, in generic material terms, some goods and services are just *easier* to procure than others, regardless of the economic system -- theoretically *two* (or more) abundant-to-scarce / easy-to-hard continuums exist, one measuring availability to an average individual (within personal reach, like water or the time of day), while another could gauge availability according to the terms of the market.

What we can do as revolutionaries is to posit a *third* continuum that realistically models what would be abundant and scarce given the world's working-class control of the means of mass production. Even with free access, though, *some* goods and services would *still* remain "scarce" -- simply unrealistically procurable no matter how advanced the technology and political economy. (Could we promise tourism to Jupiter in a post-capitalist society? Probably not.)