The End Of Scarcity

CORPORATE CHRIST

For most of human history, civilisation has been organised around one overriding assumption: that resources are limited, fragile, and ultimately destined to run out. 

Entire economic systems, political ideologies, and social hierarchies have been built on managing scarcity, rationing it, profiting from it, or fighting wars over it. Yet this foundational assumption is beginning to fracture. We are approaching a historical inflection point, one where scarcity no longer defines the human future.

This article explores why the idea of inevitable scarcity is becoming obsolete, how new materials and energy systems are emerging, and why space itself may soon become humanity’s next resource frontier. Far from facing collapse through shortage, we are witnessing the early stages of abundance.

Scarcity as a Psychological Construct

Before scarcity was an engineering problem, it was a psychological one. Early societies experienced scarcity as an immediate threat to survival: limited food, limited shelter, limited energy. Over time, this survival-based fear hardened into cultural narratives. Scarcity became normalised, expected, even moralised.

Hardship was framed as inevitable; competition was treated as natural law.

Modern capitalism refined this narrative. Artificial scarcity was introduced to drive prices, consolidate power, and create dependency. Diamonds are scarce because they are controlled, not because the Earth lacks carbon. 

Housing is scarce in many cities not because land is unavailable, but because access is restricted. 

In this sense, scarcity has often been a design choice rather than a material fact.
Today, that design is being challenged at a technological level.

The End of Oil and the Myth of Energy Scarcity

The decline of oil is frequently framed as a looming catastrophe, as if civilisation itself were tethered permanently to fossil fuels. 

This framing misunderstands both history and innovation. Oil was never humanity’s final energy source; it was merely a transitional one.

Renewable energy technologies have crossed a critical threshold. Solar and wind power are now cheaper than fossil fuels in many regions. Energy storage, once the Achilles’ heel of renewables, is advancing rapidly through solid-state batteries, flow batteries, and novel chemical storage systems. 

Hydrogen, once dismissed as inefficient, is re-emerging as a viable medium for industrial-scale energy transfer.

The end of oil does not signal the return of scarcity; it marks the end of an outdated dependency. Energy is becoming decentralised, abundant, and increasingly difficult to monopolise.

Laboratory Materials and the Reinvention of Matter

Perhaps the most profound shift undermining scarcity is happening at the material level. Humanity is learning not just how to extract resources, but how to design them.

In laboratories around the world, scientists are engineering materials with properties that once seemed impossible.

Graphene, stronger than steel and thinner than paper, hints at a future where strength and weight are no longer trade-offs. 

Metamaterials manipulate light, sound, and heat in ways nature never evolved to do. 

Programmable matter suggests a future where a single substrate can become many different objects.

Synthetic biology extends this logic further. Materials grown rather than mined, cultured rather than extracted, blur the boundary between technology and life. 

Plastics made from algae, leather grown without animals, concrete that heals its own cracks; each development erodes another pillar of scarcity.

When matter itself becomes designable, running out stops being a meaningful concept.

From Extraction to Creation

Traditional economics is built on extraction. Value comes from digging, drilling, cutting, and consuming finite stocks. Emerging technologies invert this model. Value increasingly comes from creation, iteration, and replication.

A 3D printer does not care whether a design is copied a thousand times.

Software does not become scarcer when it is shared. Digital goods have already demonstrated what post-scarcity logic looks like, even if legal and commercial frameworks lag behind.

As manufacturing follows the path of computation, scarcity loses its grip. When production becomes local, automated, and customisable, the bottlenecks that once enforced limitation begin to dissolve.

This does not mean everything becomes free overnight. It means the structural justification for enforced scarcity weakens.

Asteroid Mining and the Expansion of the Resource Horizon

For the first time in history, humanity’s resource base is no longer confined to a single planet. The solar system contains vast quantities of metals, water, and rare elements locked inside asteroids. A single metallic asteroid can contain more platinum-group metals than have ever been mined on Earth.

Asteroid mining is often dismissed as science fiction, yet the physics are well understood and the economics are increasingly compelling. 

Water harvested in space can be used as fuel, radiation shielding, and life support, reducing the cost of further exploration.

Metals refined in orbit eliminate the need to lift heavy materials out of Earth’s gravity well.

Space does not just offer more resources; it offers a different scale entirely. In this context, scarcity becomes a parochial concern, tied to planetary thinking rather than cosmic reality.

Scarcity, Power, and Control

If scarcity is ending technologically, why does it still dominate political and economic discourse? The answer lies in power. Scarcity has always been an effective tool for control. When people believe resources are limited, they accept inequality as unavoidable. 

They tolerate hoarding, exploitation, and exclusion as regrettable necessities.

Abundance threatens these structures. A world where energy is plentiful, materials are cheap, and production is local undermines centralised authority. It challenges rent-seeking models and inherited privilege. It invites new questions about work, value, and meaning.

This is why narratives of scarcity persist even as evidence erodes them. The end of scarcity is not just a technical transition; it is a cultural and psychological one.

Redefining Value in a Post-Scarcity World
As scarcity recedes, value must be redefined. When basic needs are easily met, what matters is no longer survival, but contribution. Creativity, care, insight, and coordination become more important than accumulation.

This shift does not eliminate effort or discipline. It redirects them. The challenge of the future is not how to extract more, but how to choose wisely.

Not how to compete for less, but how to steward more.

Education, ethics, and emotional intelligence become central infrastructures in a world no longer organised around lack.

Scarcity and the Environmental Question

Critics often argue that abundance will accelerate environmental destruction. This fear assumes that abundance means unchecked consumption. In reality, scarcity has often driven ecological harm, forcing short-term exploitation over long-term care.

Abundant clean energy enables restoration. Synthetic materials reduce pressure on ecosystems. Space-based resources decouple growth from planetary depletion. The end of scarcity makes sustainability easier, not harder, if paired with mature governance and cultural responsibility.
The real threat is not abundance itself, but clinging to scarcity-driven habits in an abundant world.

The End Of Scarcity as a Civilisational Transition

Every major leap in human history has involved transcending a form of scarcity. Agriculture reduced food scarcity. Industry reduced labour scarcity. Information technology reduced knowledge scarcity. 

What lies ahead is broader still: a reduction in material and energy scarcity at a systemic level.

This transition will be uneven. Some regions will reach abundance faster than others. Political resistance will be fierce. Old systems rarely dissolve gracefully. Yet the trajectory is clear.

Scarcity is no longer a destiny; it is a phase.

Conclusion: Choosing Abundance Consciously

The end of scarcity does not mean the end of responsibility. It means responsibility becomes a choice rather than a survival imperative. Humanity is acquiring the tools to move beyond permanent crisis mode, beyond fear-driven economics, beyond zero-sum thinking.

The question is not whether scarcity will end, but how consciously we allow it to.

We can cling to outdated models and manufacture artificial scarcity to preserve power. Or we can redesign civilisation around sufficiency, resilience, and shared prosperity.

The future is not defined by running out. It is defined by what we decide to create next.

In recognising the end of scarcity, we are not denying limits. We are acknowledging that the greatest limit has always been imagination.

People say that a world without money is impossible. They talk of human nature and in particular the issue of scarcity. Scarcity is the foundation that our economy is built upon. It says that the Earth has finite resources and that these need to be managed somehow. Thus we have money help distribute these resources within a market. However, if you think about it, scarcity ended the day we created the technology to go into space.

The solar system has enough resources and energy supplies to meet the needs of an insatiable Earth for thousands of years if not more, by which time we can assume we would have the technology to migrate to another star system. 

Population explosion is nothing to fear either. We know enough to allow humans to live in space long term (even though it hasn't been tested as such) and the gift of life to so many individuals should be celebrated not discouraged. 

Although future cities should preferably be Eco-Cities. The reason we have none of these space cities, Mars colonies, and endless resources is actually because of money. Bill Gates cannot afford to build on the scale that human beings will need to in the future, nor can the American government. 

We have shackled ourselves with this worthless paper. People starve so that a handful of people can accumulate more of the stuff. 

As for the issue of human nature, I don’t think we are intrinsically selfish by nature. We live in a system of artificial scarcity where the vast majority of Earth’s people are piss poor. Of course, people are going to screw each other over. Add to that a media that constantly tells us we are fat, we are ugly, and the party is somewhere else, if only we had more money, and you suddenly have a neurotic planet reveling in its own greed. 

There are other systems and we need to seriously consider them. Capitalism will never save the planet from Climate Change and pollution. There is too much money to be made in it.