The (Needed) New Economics of Abundance
by Steve Burgess
Molecular manufacturing coupled with AI could bring about a "personal manufacturing" revolution and a
new era of abundance. But abundance could be highly disruptive, so we need to design a new economics of
abundance so society is prepared for it.
Originally published in Nanotechnology Perceptions: A Review of Ultraprecision Engineering and
Nanotechnology, Volume 2, No. 2, May 8, 2006. Reprinted May 9, 2006 by KurzweilAI.net.
For centuries, we have built cultures and economies around scarcity. Economics is the "study of how
human beings allocate scarce resources" in the most efficient way and conventional wisdom agrees that
regulated capitalism results in the most efficient allocation of those scarce resources.
But what happens if resources are not scarce? What economic system would we use to allocate plentiful
resources? Is there even a point to talking about the “economics of abundance” in a culture where
economic equations are entirely oriented around scarcity? As Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine
says, "My college textbook, Gregory Mankiw's otherwise excellent Principles of Economics, doesn't mention
the word abundance. And for good reason: If you let the scarcity term in most economic equations go to
nothing, you get all sorts of divide-by-zero problems. They basically blow up."
Next
by Steve Burgess
Molecular manufacturing coupled with AI could bring about a "personal manufacturing" revolution and a
new era of abundance. But abundance could be highly disruptive, so we need to design a new economics of
abundance so society is prepared for it.
Originally published in Nanotechnology Perceptions: A Review of Ultraprecision Engineering and
Nanotechnology, Volume 2, No. 2, May 8, 2006. Reprinted May 9, 2006 by KurzweilAI.net.
For centuries, we have built cultures and economies around scarcity. Economics is the "study of how
human beings allocate scarce resources" in the most efficient way and conventional wisdom agrees that
regulated capitalism results in the most efficient allocation of those scarce resources.
But what happens if resources are not scarce? What economic system would we use to allocate plentiful
resources? Is there even a point to talking about the “economics of abundance” in a culture where
economic equations are entirely oriented around scarcity? As Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine
says, "My college textbook, Gregory Mankiw's otherwise excellent Principles of Economics, doesn't mention
the word abundance. And for good reason: If you let the scarcity term in most economic equations go to
nothing, you get all sorts of divide-by-zero problems. They basically blow up."
Next
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