Item — HN Reader

> does economics support that statement always?

Economics itself is the enemy. It is the source of that statement. It's so ubiquitous that we cannot even conceive of a life without it. The friend wanted scarce things, so naturally she wanted everyone in society working to produce those things for her.

Economics arise out of scarcity. There is not enough for everyone, therefore we must economize, we must decide who gets the limited amount of goods and resources.

We assume everyone should be working because if they aren't they are getting resources without contributing back their own resources, such as their limited time, body and cognition. That's an inherent unfairness, and is the "they're getting a free pass" sentiment that's all too common. I'm working, why aren't they?

To fix this, we must somehow achieve the fabled post scarcity society. Automate everything so thoroughly the price of everything becomes literally zero. This destroys the economy. It doesn't matter anymore whether people are working. There is no further need to economize if everything is abundant.

"I mean, I’d like to be able to buy more stuff" must still be satisfied, except she doesn't even need to buy it any longer, it just sort of materializes like it grows on trees. That is the dream.

Necessary technological upheaval aside, the one major roadblock to achieving the dream is artificial scarcity. We've got corporations conjuring up scarcity where there is none. The internet is the closest to artificial scarcity we've ever been, and it is so subversive it destroys their business models. The entire intellectual property industry must be wiped out if the dream is to be achieved.

3 comments

We're getting close to post-scarcity on calories at this point. You can feed someone three meals of rice and beans for under an hour of minimum wage labour in most of the developed world, which is pretty neat even if the extra money is going to housing and non-food essentials.

> Economics itself is the enemy. Economics arise out of scarcity.

Scarcity is a timeless fact of life in a finite world, it's not some abstract invention by "economics".

The problem isn't that more people want more things than they can have. The hardest possible life is that of a single human alone on a planet abundant in all natural resources. People and our inventions and our work and our ambitions to improve things for the next generation are the very things that reduce scarcity for other people we share this planet with.

> Scarcity is a timeless fact of life in a finite world

I agree, and I think the rest of your post contains the key idea:

> reduce scarcity

Scarcity will never be zero, and it doesn't need to be. It just needs to be infinitesimal, close enough to zero for economics to become irrelevant.

Well, my ancestors would already say that our scarcity is effectively zero.

Yet we still have political arguments about healthcare and I get irritated when my AI service says I'm out of quota, two things that didn't exist 4 or 5 generations ago. Unless you consider whiskey and opium to be healthcare. It's amazing what we've adapted to.

Scarcity can and is manipulated, see de Beers!

Yes. All forms of artificial scarcity must be declared to be literally illegal. Diamonds are nothing, we've got the entire intellectual property industry to contend with.

This was tried and we ended up with intellectual property rights because encouraging the creation of works was more important than having zero/poor quality works but a free for all.

> To fix this, we must somehow achieve the fabled post scarcity society. Automate everything so thoroughly the price of everything becomes literally zero. This destroys the economy. It doesn't matter anymore whether people are working. There is no further need to economize if everything is abundant.

sure but the people opposing automation are the people on the left - the socialists and neo-luddities. the ones that are for automation are the billionaires - this makes your class warfare rhetoric more complicated..

> the socialists

Every socialist wants post scarcity deep down. In fact, it's what Marx promised them since the beginning.

Socialism is an ideological and practical dead end. They must be resisted at all costs. It's still an economic model. They won't destroy the economy, they will centralize it in the hands of the state.

Don't seize the means of production, distribute them. Give everyone an AI and a replicator.

Personal manufacturing capabilities. We must attack things like the very concept of trillion dollar semiconductor fabs. Everybody should be able to make their own things. Just like we can magically conjure up free software on a laptop at home.

> neo-luddities

Don't know enough about this to write coherently about the subject.

> the ones that are for automation are the billionaires

Contemptible, but I believe we have better chances of success if we try to collapse capitalism from within.

> must attack things like the very concept of trillion dollar semiconductor fabs

Computers used to be the size of these fabs. Now we have them in our pockets. Not because we need to attack or rebel or something. It's because a lot of people worked very hard over many decades to make it possible. And it wasn't out of the goodness of their hearts -- it's because they had bills to pay and mouths to feed.

No matter how smart you are, it is not possible to create a GPU in one's basement. And no matter how holy you think you are, you need incentives to invest the time and effort to make this happen.

> No matter how smart you are, it is not possible to create a GPU in one's basement.

Is this really such a law of the universe or just insufficient technology?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30043719

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46178789

I mean, there's not like some "big silicon" conspiracy keeping people from homelabbing their own chips. I suppose we'll find out at some point, but it sure as hell isn't possible in 2026 AD.

Socialists want to seize the means of production in order to democratise it and move towards communism, which is exactly a post-scarcity post-state destruction of the [capitalist] economy. It is entirely compatible with giving everyone AI and a replicator - the free association of producers and all that. Marx would disagree that you can skip the state part on your way to communism, sure, and I think he’s probably right, but maybe not.

> in order to democratise it

Don't believe that even for a second.

> move towards communism

Has never happened, and I don't believe it ever will.

We have better chances of collapsing capitalism from within.

> We have better chances of collapsing capitalism from within.

Isn't that what Marx says? Capitalism is unstable and collapses from within. He identifies socialism as the next stage (seizing the means of production) that then leads to communism (fully distributed ownership and no real state).

We may of course disagree that these stages are what would actually happen. So far when the state seizes the means of production, it becomes highly authoritarian and doesn't want to relinqish power and move towards actual communism.

It's possible that Marx was right about that specifically, and that capitalism will destroy itself naturally through sheer technological innovation by automating everything to the point economics becomes irrelevant.

I'm deeply suspicious of any socialist or communist who desires to implement a socialist state, however. His prophecy must come true naturally, it cannot be forced via government mandates.

Socialists want to get rid of capitalism as the economic model and then transition to post scarcity. I want to keep capitalism until it destroys itself by making everything abundant and automated.

There is no need to "seize" anything. We merely need personal manufacturing technology.

Personal manufacturing tech isnt something he envisaged I guess!

Still need food, water, energy and raw materials though. Some kind of collective action seems needed, however that is arranged politically.