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How much are concepts of post-scarcity and abundance economics just ideological/idealist or do we really observing their beginnings already?

For example:

  • healthcare: gets more and more expensive
  • food: good organic food does not get cheaper
  • water: not a problem where it is really abundant since centuries. Some lakes are gone however for example to water an agglomeration like Los Angeles.
  • good air: not abundant in large urban areas, air pollution has arrived even in Germany, a country which has been looking at this for long time
  • work: try to get a well paid job without advanced qualification
  • housing: everywhere scarce with exception of deep, partly abandoned rural areas (3D printing can be a solution, but i.e. in Germany not possible due to unmet requirements regarding energy efficiency standards)
  • education: either not free or of declining quality (i.e. German schools would need billions of investment to catch up)
  • family/parenting: women are allowed and expected to make career which creates additional pressure if they target both having kids and high life quality

How to recognise then an empirical evidence that we move to abundance and post-scarcity (sounds like promise of communists in old times actually)?

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  • $\begingroup$ Housing is not "everywhere scarce". Look ar rural Japan or rural Spain etc. It's only scarce where people are agglomerating, which is cities. $\endgroup$
    – Fizz
    Aug 17, 2018 at 5:53
  • $\begingroup$ You mean land maybe? @Fizz $\endgroup$
    – J. Doe
    Aug 17, 2018 at 5:56
  • $\begingroup$ No, I mean housing. Rural Japan is depopulating. The same thing is happening in Eastern Europe, and to a lesser extent in Spain. $\endgroup$
    – Fizz
    Aug 17, 2018 at 5:57
  • $\begingroup$ @Fizz well okay an abandoned house middle-in-nowhere is sure a place to live and try to become a self-sustained farmer because there are no other jobs; but then we have to define what means actually inequality. $\endgroup$
    – J. Doe
    Aug 17, 2018 at 6:23
  • $\begingroup$ I'm not terribly familiar with post-scarcity arguments, but what you said in your last comment probably summarizes the issue: decreases in absolute poverty etc. are coupled with increases in inequality etc. so it depends how one wants to look at the problem. $\endgroup$
    – Fizz
    Aug 17, 2018 at 7:55

1 Answer 1

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Okay I have done some research.

Possibly, abundance could be available soon along these lines:

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