Item — HN Reader

> 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.

2 comments

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.