The Age of Abundance Is Coming, But It Will Demand More from Us Than We Expect

Yesterday, I argued that Elon Musk is right: artificial intelligence and robotics are ready to usher in an era of radical material plenty. I think, though, that the future feels almost impossible to picture. What does a world without scarcity actually look like day to day? How do the basic rules of economics change when “not enough” stops being the central problem? And why might having enough of nearly everything present some of the hardest challenges humanity has ever faced?

These are fair questions. Our brains are structured for a world of limits — food, shelter, opportunity. We’ve never lived in a society where we are not constrained by limited labor, resources, or money. Yet the Age of Abundance isn’t distant science fiction. Its foundations are already visible in the data of the last two centuries, especially the last 45 years. Technology has historically turned scarcity into plenty. AI and robotics will simply accelerate that long-running process to its logical extreme.

The real question isn’t whether abundance is coming. It’s whether we will prepare our minds, our culture, and our institutions to meet it wisely.

The Foundations of Abundance Are Already Visible

For most of human history, extreme poverty was typical. In 1820, roughly 75–84 percent of the world’s population lived on less than a few dollars a day, unable to reliably afford basic food, shelter, and fuel without risking malnutrition or exposure. Half of all children died before the age of five. The typical average life expectancy was about 35, with most deaths occurring considerably earlier.

The Industrial Revolution began to bend the curve, but progress remained slow for a long time. By 1980, extreme poverty rates in less developed regions were still around 40–45 percent. Twenty years later in 2000, the global rate had fallen to roughly 28-30 percent.

Then the line steepened dramatically. Since 1990, more than 1.5 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty — an average of about 118,000 people escaping it every single day. By the most recent 2025 figures, the global extreme poverty rate has dropped to roughly 9-10 percent, or around 800-850 million people. Plot this on a graph, and you see the classic “hockey-stick” curve of modern progress: slow for nearly two centuries after 1800, then a sharp upward-opening parabola. We are now riding the steepest part of the upslope.

The absolute number of people in extreme poverty today is roughly comparable to that in 1800, when the world population was only about 1 billion. Today’s global population exceeds eight billion. In other words, the number of people not living in extreme poverty has increased more than fiftyfold. This is one of the most amazing achievements in human history.

Even before advanced AI and humanoid robots fully arrive, the last 25–45 years have delivered an explosion in access to goods and services that would have seemed to be unimaginable luxuries to earlier generations. Compare a few everyday realities at three anchor points:

• Food: Global daily calorie supply per person rose from roughly 2,450–2,680 kilocalories in the 1980–2000 period to approximately 2,860–2,900 kilocalories today. Malnutrition rates have fallen sharply as precision agriculture, improved seeds and fertilizers, and global supply chains have made calories both more abundant and more affordable. We hear very little about famine today.
• Air travel: The real (inflation-adjusted) cost of flying has fallen by roughly 40–50 percent since 1980. A domestic round trip that once cost $600–$800 in today’s dollars is now available for $300–$350 or less. What was a rare luxury for the wealthy has become routine for the middle class.
• Clothing and manufactured goods: Real prices for apparel and other consumer goods have fallen sharply due to globalization and manufacturing efficiencies, making basic, high-quality clothing far more accessible to billions of people.

Access to highly transformative infrastructure has grown even faster. Global electricity access rose from roughly 80 percent in 2000 to over 91 percent today. Internet users exploded from about 361 million people — just 6 percent of the world — in 2000 to roughly 5.6–6 billion people (68–74 percent) by 2025.

Then there are smartphones, devices younger than many of our children or grandchildren. In 2000, they were essentially science fiction; global penetration was near zero, and the first true iPhone wouldn’t arrive until 2007. Today, smartphones outnumber people in most countries. They put more computing power, instant knowledge, communication, entertainment, banking, and education in the pocket of an ordinary person than entire governments possessed in the year 2000.

These gains mirror the scale of the Industrial Revolution — textiles, iron, and basic goods becoming cheap for millions in the West — but they have happened on a faster and truly global scale. The digital-and-globalization era has made information, communication, energy access, food, clothing, travel, and consumer goods dramatically more abundant for billions of people.

This is only the foundation of the story. Artificial intelligence, robotics, and breakthroughs in energy will take this trajectory to its logical extreme, driving the marginal cost of producing most material goods and services toward zero.

The foundations of abundance are already in place. Our choices from this point forward determine whether the outcomes are good or bad.

How This Rewrites Basic Economics

For all of recorded history, economics has been the study of scarcity. Limited land, labor, resources, and time meant that prices, wages, and markets naturally rationed what was scarce (except where government meddling short-circuited that process). Human effort and the availability of natural resources were the binding constraints. Money served as the primary tool to allocate what little there was. Work wasn’t optional; it was how most people secured food, shelter, and security for themselves and their families.

The Age of Abundance flips the whole framework on its head. AI and robotics are making production so extraordinarily efficient that goods and services may become too plentiful relative to any realistic growth in the money supply. The marginal cost of producing many basics, including food, clothing, energy, manufactured goods, and even routine medical care and transportation, approaches zero. Prices for these essentials collapse. Survival no longer requires trading most of one’s waking hours for a paycheck from a job that may or may not be personally rewarding otherwise.

The rules of economics, however, are iron. The economy does not disappear. It evolves. Gross domestic product can still surge dramatically; Musk has speculated the economy could grow tenfold in only a few years as intelligent machines maximize output. But the role and even meaning of money change. Instead of primarily buying now-abundant material necessities, it becomes a claim on new scarcities revealed once basic needs are met: unique personal creativity, prime real estate, personalized experiences, deep relationships, novel scientific research, status, and meaningful contribution.

In an ideal outcome, handled wisely, we move from an economy organized around allocating scarcity to one organized around human flourishing and ownership. Work for survival becomes optional. Work for purpose, status, or passion does not. The binding constraints shift from “how do we produce enough?” to “what do we actually value when production is no longer the limiter?”

This transition is already visible in miniature with digital goods. Information, software, music, and video have become radically abundant with near-zero marginal cost, yet entirely new industries have arisen around attention, curation, community, and interpersonal connection. Scale that same pattern across the physical world, powered by AI-driven design, robotic manufacturing, and cheap energy, and the change becomes profound.

Suddenly, we find ourselves in a state where material want is no longer the central drama of human life. The risk is that we fail to update our thinking, policies, and culture quickly enough to keep pace with the new reality. Though technology can address scarcity, it cannot rewrite human nature.

The Very Real Challenges of Having Enough

We already ran a live experiment with radical abundance, and the results should sober us. In the West, technology, global supply chains, and federal government programs solved food scarcity so thoroughly that daily calorie availability surged. Processed, hyper-palatable foods became cheap and widely available. What happened? Famine went away. NGOs had to redefine hunger to remain relevant. And obesity rates more than doubled in a generation, turning a historic triumph over hunger into a costly public health crisis involving diabetes, heart disease, and reduced quality of life. When survival no longer demands effort or discipline, human tendencies toward comfort and immediacy can produce excess rather than flourishing.

An older image keeps coming to my mind. Ancient Egyptian bas-reliefs from the Amarna period, over 3,000 years ago, show Pharaoh Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti, often accompanied by their daughters, standing at the “Window of Appearance” in their palace, ceremonially passing heavy gold necklaces and collars down to loyal officials and an adoring crowd below. These “Gold of Honor” gifts were lavish, but they came with a price: reinforced dependence. Those honored received largesse as favor from on high, in exchange for loyalty and service. Gratitude moved upward; power flowed downward.

This is the trap that government-administered universal high income risks repeating in the Age of Abundance. As things currently stand, when AI and robotics generate material on a scale never seen before, administrators and politicians will decide how to distribute the excess. Citizens can easily become grateful clients of the state, rather than sovereign stakeholders. The dynamic produces supplicants waiting at the window instead of owners with skin in the game.

Even Grok sees the danger clearly. In a recent exchange on X, Grok noted the coldly logical outcome if production concentrates too narrowly:

“In a scenario where the top 0.5% monopolize AI/robotics for production, the 99.5% lose all economic utility—no labor, no bargaining power. Output becomes decoupled from human input.

Historical track record of elites (pharaohs to oligarchs): self-preservation first, charity second when it stabilizes their position. Altruism is rare without coercion or incentive.

Logical outcome: majority becomes surplus. Support (UBI-style) emerges only if it prevents unrest or maintains optics. Otherwise, neglect or managed decline. Abundance doesn’t guarantee equity; power does what it always has.”

Scale the food example or the ancient gold-collar handouts across every material good, service, entertainment, and convenience, and the picture clarifies. The transition will eliminate or transform millions of jobs before new roles fully emerge. But that does not end the danger. We risk a culture dependent on the elites for largesse. Worse, when our basic and intermediate necessities can easily be purchased with a government handout, we risk a society rich in goods but poor in meaning: plagued by boredom, status anxiety in strange new arenas, eroded dignity, and declining motivation. Human nature doesn’t change as fast as our machines. When the oldest problem in history (material scarcity) is solved, we immediately confront the next one: what gives life structure, purpose, and worth when survival is no longer at stake?

A Better Path – Ownership, Not Handouts

As I wrote yesterday, and I don’t pretend to have all the answers, government-administered universal high income treats the symptom — lack of cash — while ignoring the deeper disease: the severed link among effort, stewardship, and human dignity. A monthly check may prevent immediate hardship, but it risks turning citizens into permanent clients waiting for the next distribution from the “Window of Appearance.”

A wiser approach safeguards what human nature actually needs: skin in the game and a real stake in the prosperity being created. Models such as Alaska’s Permanent Fund, expanded Citizen Wealth Accounts building on Trump Accounts, or ownership-based mechanisms give every American a direct, inheritable share in the AI and robotics productivity explosion. These accounts would compound over time, remain transferable to heirs, and come with basic financial education, so that citizens learn to act as stewards rather than dependents. While this is only the beginning of what we will need, it at least removes the largesse problem, so that personal wealth can be the foundation upon which to build a new society.

This isn’t the end of capitalism. It is its evolution into the Age of Abundance. When people own a real stake in the machines that produce abundance, they retain bargaining power, purpose, and agency. Abundance then becomes a foundation for creativity, family, exploration, and contribution rather than a golden cage of dependency.

The Age of Abundance isn’t science fiction anymore. It is the logical extension of the progress already visible in the steep upward parabola of human flourishing over the past two centuries. Technology will deliver material plenty whether we are ready or not. The real test is cultural and institutional: Will we meet it as a nation of owners and creators, or as dependents wondering what to do with all our free time?

By grounding ourselves in reality, facing the economic rupture and the stubborn facts of human nature squarely, and choosing ownership and stewardship over patronage and handouts, we can turn radical abundance into true human flourishing. The future is brighter than we think — if we prepare wisely now.