Source: Ludwig von Mises Institute
by Andy Fischer
“A growing chorus of technologists and futurists now argue that scarcity is ending. Artificial intelligence will automate cognition. Robotics will automate labor. Energy capture will scale beyond planetary limits. Manufacturing will approach zero marginal cost. In this telling, the central economic problem that has defined human civilization for millennia is dissolving. This essay accepts the rise of abundance. The empirical case is strong. Real prices for lighting, calories, communication, and computation have collapsed over centuries. Extreme poverty has fallen dramatically. Automation continues to erode historically-binding constraints. But, from this undeniable progress, a stronger claim is often made: that scarcity itself will disappear. That claim is not bold, it is confused. Scarcity is not primarily a supply shortage, it is the structural condition of action under constraint.” (03/04/26)
https://mises.org/power-market/end-scarcity-future-wont-happen