Abundance, what does it mean?
Well if you have total abundance, then you no longer need economics, as there is nothing
to economize, everyone has everything they want.
But unless you are in the garden of Eden there will still be scarcity.
Perhaps we should start with a definition
of how we see Elon's vision of abundance.
Well something along the lines of everything costing very little, as the all the energy
comes from renewables, all transport is electric, and bots are doing almost all the work.
Elon talks about universal basic income often, so it's likely everyone has the same income
to live on.
I am not sure what the government would be like in this scenario, my guess is they have
very little to do with monetary policy, and less active in the economy.
So you don't have to work, you have a bot to do everything for you, cook, clean, chores,
food is delivered to you, your house generates and stores energy.
You have everything you need.
So what do you do each day?
That's right, everyone is so busy focusing
on what they won't have to do, they forget to realize that they still need something
to do.
I went through a transitory retirement in my mid-20s, whilst it's nice not having to
do anything each day, it can get boring too, especially when none of your friends are close
to retirement.
It's just that people need something to do as well, and somewhere to go.
The thing is, now everything is abundant, well we get into scarcity again.
Everyone is looking for things to do, so they want to go out for dinner.
Except everyone wants to go out for dinner.
So there are either massive queues, or we are back to scarcity, and that going out to
a restaurant will cost a proportion of your UBI.
In fact everything will cost a proportion of you income.
Fine you have unlimited food and heat, but there is still only so many things to do.
What would the solution be?
Well just build more restaurants.
More parks, more theaters, more entertainment, more Disney Lands.
And we can make the bots build these.
Drug and alcohol use may likely increase as people turn to them as a solution of entertainment.
Again higher drug and alcohol use is a side effect of welfare.
So there will be a big gaping demand in the
entertainment sector.
We need people to think of new ways of entertaining us.
Or can the bots think for us at this stage, and come up with new ideas for us.
Or write stories for us, or animate a movie that is most suited to our tastes.
However, you can't make another Eiffel Tower or Pyramids, ok perhaps Vegas tried, but you
get the idea.
What if everyone in the world can now conveniently and affordably travel anywhere in the world,
and what if everyone wants to see the Colosseum.
The logistics won't work, they will need to be controlled with pricing, which is how scarcity
is controlled in the economy.
In other words your UBI may be enough for you go somewhere overseas once a year.
Remember though, we are possibly talking about the entire planet.
This is where we go back to scarcity, there are simply only so many people who can physically
go up the Eiffel Tower every day.
Alright, I am talking about some very unique scarce locations, but does it stop there?
What about the beach?
What about on a nice day everyone has the day off, and needs something to do, and the
all go to the beach, and everywhere is crowded and you have to queue for everything.
There is only so much space.
There are only so many parks.
Also now the robots can just do everything
for us, mine, farm, fish, refine, manufacturer, deliver.
Well we can all have a lot more, as they can work cheaper and more efficient.
But that doesn't mean there is suddenly more land for farming, or more fish in the ocean.
This abundance is just finding a way of depleting the planets resources at a much faster rate,
using bots, autonomy and renewable energy as leverage.
Now a pure bread capitalist may like this idea, and at this stage in the planet we have
just about removed all burning of fossil fuels, but how much of the planet are consuming.
If we have just found faster more efficient ways of extracting everything from the ground,
then are we any better off?
Now everyone can afford to have food delivered
to them, well it doesn't mean there are suddenly more cows on the planet.
Sure we can have robot farmers, but there is also the physical land.
We are currently removing large parts of the Amazon rain forest in order to find more grazing
for cattle.
There may not be enough land for everyone to have steak.
Scarcity is still involved.
On the other hand what if we have so much abundant energy we could have farms on multiple
floors.
Like a skyscraper, but growing vegetables on every floor.
Each floor grows the produce with artificial light, and therefore we can grow an abundant
amount of food that way.
This is similar to what the economist Thomas Malthus was warning everyone in the 19th century,
that human population is going to outgrow the amount we can produce, and we will run
out of food.
However, new farming techniques were discovered and we became more efficient in farming.
Well these bots may take away the dangerous
and tedious tasks, but all jobs?
Some people love their jobs.
Jobs will likely require a lot more specialized education, likely to do with programming robots,
just like how we are so familiar with computers these days.
But now people can spend all the time they like learning, or studying, as they would
have enough income to live on, and can excel at anything they so wish.
This means that people who would not have usually had a chance to explore their innovative
ideas, now do, and that we should see a lot more innovation in the world, as long as creativity
isn't suppressed.
It would depend on the creativity of AI, but I am not sure they are going to be able to
out-invent a human for sometime.
There should be ample opportunities for entrepreneurs, as there may not be a lot of other jobs required.
Just people with ideas of improving our standard of living by finding new things to do.
For example back to scarcity, well there are only so many ski fields in the world, if everyone
could suddenly afford to ski, travel, and has no job, then can you imagine the queues
on the ski fields.
It needs to be controlled with pricing, as there is scarcity.
But if someone is innovative enough to make a skiing simulator, on the sort of meta level,
like Ready Player One style, then that would allow more abundance.
The meta verse is likely more of abundance situation, although I am sure they'll make
you pay for
everything in there anyway.
What if you want to earn more though, and
there are no jobs?
Yea, that's tough, I guess you save up and buy a business, or learn a skill that still
has a demand.
You have to do something that is scarce.
No one pays for abundance, I can't sell a jar of air to anyone, there is plenty of it.
But perhaps we will see more specialized companies, highly niche.
Perhaps someone who specializes in growing the best strawberries, they are completely
organic, grown in the best soil or so.
Possibly managed by a robot, but that's not the point.
The point is we can go deeper niche into everything and specialize further, perhaps using our
robot as an aide.
Maybe there is a gardener that comes to your house with their robot, and asks you how you
want your hedges trimmed.
The robot could essentially sculpt something from your hedge and it would look better than
any human every could, and take just minutes, compared to days.
The robots could act more like a plow, leveraging what humans are already capable of, rather
than replacing them completely.
This might result in so much more leverage in many ways to improve living standards.
Also now that everyone is out doing whatever
they want each day, and getting everything delivered to them with autonomy, well suddenly
the roads are more congested, and it takes a long time to get anywhere.
Sure you get to spend that time comfortably and entertained, not having to drive yourself,
but it might mean we spend a lot more time in vehicles, as the cost of transport is so
much lower.
This really can only be mitigated by 3D roads, which means either cars fly or have multiple
tunnels.
Sure autonomy might help move traffic faster, but the cost of everything has changed from
dollars, to time.
Before it might have cost $50 and 20 minutes to go to a restaurant.
Now it becomes $10 and a one hour drive.
We have traded time for money, instead of money for time.
Are we any better off?
Of course we also have property too.
There is only so much land, and only so much land in the most desirable places.
If we have free food and energy, then it's worth spending as much as you can on a nice
property.
Sure robots can no doubt build property in this scenario, at a much lower cost than humans,
assuming there are still abundant resources, like timber.
Think how fast robots could get through all the timber on the planet and manufacturer
it for consumption.
I mean equally they should be able to replant forests.
So although building is cheaper, it just means that land costs more.
People have, for example, a million dollars budget for their home.
If the cost of building reduces, then they can afford to spend more on land.
In sparse areas where land is cheap, then you could build low cost accommodation, but
there is still only one Malibu.
So abundance here really means you are given
enough to live on, if you choose not to work.
But scarce activities will become expensive.
And how do you attain wealth in an abundant society?
You have to make something scarce.
I think humans need opportunity, at least some.
I might have sounded a bit scattered here, I was generally thinking this all through,
of how the economics of a so called abundant society might function.
Does it really add to our living standards as much as we think?
And this could be 20 years could be 100 years, but it should be the end game should be considered
and addressed.