We are already in a post-scarcity world, we have been for decades.
The problem is inequalities and the inefficiency of how we use the resources, it doesn't look like we'll change that soon, sadly. I'm more prone to think that in a "virtual" economy we'll still have miserable workers to empty the chamber-pots of the lucky ones who are plugged in the new world.
> We are already in a post-scarcity world, we have been for decades.
It's only a post-scarcity world if you define scarcity by absence of enough resources to satisfy the bare-minimum required for existence. People don't want to live at the subsistence level, and we're not evenly remotely close to having enough resources to satisfy everybody's wants.
> People don't want to live at the subsistence level, and we're not evenly remotely close to having enough resources to satisfy everybody's wants.
What people want is defined by society. Somehow some people want to be alone in a 2 tons EV, a 200 sqm mansion for a family of 4 and retire at 40. Others are tremendously happy with a much, much less resources intensive lifestyles.
You would also need to define what is part of the subsistence level. I'd put it roughly at what my grandma wanted: food, shelter, healthcare, some leisure time.
A bit more than that is absolutely doable in a civilisation that went from one farmer to feed 1.3 people to one farmer to feed 60 people.
>What people want is defined by society. Somehow some people want to be alone in a 2 tons EV, a 200 sqm mansion for a family of 4 and retire at 40. Others are tremendously happy with a much, much less resources intensive lifestyles.
You just undermined your own assertion. If what people want was defined by society, then everybody would want the same things. But in fact as you stated they don't; some people want a lot, some people want little. There's no way you're going to stop people wanting nice things short of killing the 90% of the population that aren't ascetics, which you'll never be able to do (at least in the US) because that's also the part of the population that owns most of the guns.
We don't have a fully globalised culture yet, what an average American wants isn't what an average Japanese wants. Of course even then, there are disparities and outliers, but we can't really overlook that if you "want" an SUV or an Apple Watch, that's quite likely going to be because the people around you find it valuable.
I'd go even a bit further as to say that what is important is probably what people "need", not "want". Apparently we mostly "want" as much as we can have anyway, because that used to be helpful for not dying before being able to reproduce enough.
> because that's also the part of the population that owns most of the guns
The problem is inequalities and the inefficiency of how we use the resources, it doesn't look like we'll change that soon, sadly. I'm more prone to think that in a "virtual" economy we'll still have miserable workers to empty the chamber-pots of the lucky ones who are plugged in the new world.