End of Scarcity - The Story of How the World Is About to Change

Scarcity. It is a powerful concept. It drags at our souls. It defines our world. It causes sorrow, hunger, and pain. Wars. Hunger. Anxiety. Dishonesty. Disputes. Death.

Our entire economic system is built around the concept of scarcity. Without it, every economics book would need to be re-written. Scarcity forces choices between one thing or another. You can't have both. Because things are scarce. There aren't enough things to go around. You must choose.

I've visited remote places of the world and have seen the ravages of scarcity on humanity. The effects cut deep, to the very souls. Shanty towns for as far as the eye can see. There is little joy in this. Misery in fact. What makes it worse is that many of the huts have a television. How can that be bad, you might wonder? Because they see the world through the TV--the lovely things of the world that they are missing out on, and to which they will never have access (or so it seems to them). Who are they? The huddled masses. Over 2 billion people in the world today live on less than a few dollars a day. Children go hungry by the millions every day--even in developed countries. They sleep on dirt floors, eat putrid food, and endure drudgery for jobs.

The problem of scarcity looms so large that it seems nigh impossible to resolve. The richest governments of the world struggle with their own significant domestic problems, and reaching out altruistically to the rest of the world occurs to some degree, but on a relatively small scale. Think about that. Even the richest and most powerful countries of the world cannot solve this problem.

So how then can the problem of scarcity ever be solved? Most economic experts would suggest emphatically: it can't, it will always exist. I take umbrage with that view. It is a cop-out. But I don't really blame them. That is what they have been trained to think. Nothing personal, really. And they don't know what I know.

Can there be a solution to scarcity in our lifetimes? I believe that yes, there can be, and there most likely will be. You see, scarcity of everything is ultimately based in scarcity of energy. Nearly every "thing" in the world derives its cost in the underlying cost of energy, plus the cost of human capital. But if you can drive the cost of energy to nearly zero--that is, if there is an abundant, cheap, and clean source of energy, then everything will change. The cost of human capital becomes more important in such a scenario, and therefore, humans become more important. The overall increase in the standard of living will cause all boats to rise, and extreme poverty to fade away, probably for good.

So, what is this new abundant, cheap, and clean source of energy that is about to change the world? Stay tuned, because I have much to share along these lines, and will do so over the course of multiple posts. The future is bright.