Artificial Material Scarcity

Artificial material scarcity - colloquially spoken as Artificial Scarcity in the GVCS TED Talk - is a condition where in the absolute abundance of material resources - namely: rocks, plants, water, sunlight, air - from which all wealth is created - their distribution is poor - causing poverty, hunger, resource conflicts, corruption, social ills, psychological disintegration, loss of meaning, etc.

Artificial scarcity involves high efficiency of production and low efficiency of distributing the resulting wealth among the populace. Great abundance is enjoyed by the few, and deprivation is suffered by most. This is confirmed by standard data on the distribution of wealth in society, where it is generally accepted as true that a decreasing fraction of the population continues to reap an increasing portion of income. See Gini Coefficient

This is the status quo which may be addressed via the Open Source Economy.

The Open Source Ecology Paradigm works on creating the open source economy by creating Distributive Enterprise.

See Practical Post-Scarcity Video:

Practical Post Scarcity from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

Practical Examples

Evolution from Salesmen to Producers to Environmentalists to Community Stewards

In the case of salespeople, we could predict a transition to open source product development. The evolution is the reduction of profit from resale - when an individual captures only a small fraction of value. This is not Productive Value, but Parasitic Value - where resellers capture a small part of the productive value of somebody else.

Naturally, this scenario leads to minimum profits - and the tendency to maximize the number of sales to make a living. This contributes to a negative feedback of advertising and consumerism to push excess goods onto the population. This does not help the world because it is a runaway condition.

On the other hand, if a person is a producer, and the entry barriers to production are lowered via open source design and equipment - then the former resellers could become producers. They gain skills, and capture the full value of production. The transition to producerism appears inevitable as more open information and lower cost tools become available. The limiting factor is the producers' willingness to learn - as this will determine the limits of complexity created - and thus limits of value capture.

However, the producer scenario also leads to minimum profit as more people engage in this. So the next step is the producer becoming their own materials supplier. This is a step towards environmental consciousness - as materials come from nature and stewarding production implies stewarding natural resources - which are the feedstocks of production.

The producer who also produces their feedstocks is able to capture the full worth of value added to raw resources. Information and energy is added to raw resources to turn them into valuable products. By definition in the long term - producers cannot destroy their feedstocks - ie, they cannot destroy the environment.

In this ecological stewardship case, we still need to address overproduction - which currenlty cancers society with continued ecocide and genocide in the broad sense. From the OSE perspective, balancing natural life support systems with growth implies a return to local economies. Local economies involve an immediate feedback loop between production and consumption - and thus tend towards a stable condition while producing human prosperity and cultural/scientific advancement.

Localization does not mean that we cease global trade. That is unrealistic. The North would die in the absence of coffee, or durian. Global trade should continue - but not in its current form where market manipulation by third parties dominates. Global trade should be relegated to those goods which it was initially designed to address: exotics that cannot be produced locally in a practical way. We should be importing coffee - but not apples or steel from China - or other goods that can be produced readily at home. Today's global trade should be recognized for what it is: large scale manipulation by financial interests. The solution is not protectionism, but elimination of institutions that discourage local production. Ie, the creation of Free Markets, defined as the true Open Source Economy where Competitive Waste is eliminated.