Empirical methods Prescriptive and policy Post-scarcity is a theoretical economic situation in which most goods can be produced in great abundance with minimal human labor, so that they become available to all very cheaply or even freely.
[4][5][6][7] Futurists who speak of "post-scarcity" suggest economies based on advances in automated manufacturing technologies,[4] often including the idea of self-replicating machines, the adoption of division of labour[8] which in theory could produce nearly all goods in abundance, given adequate raw materials and energy.
Even with fully automated production, limitations on the number of goods produced would arise from the availability of raw materials and energy, as well as ecological damage associated with manufacturing technologies.
[22] Bookchin claims that the expanded production made possible by the technological advances of the twentieth century were in the pursuit of market profit and at the expense of the needs of humans and of ecological sustainability.
The accumulation of capital can no longer be considered a prerequisite for liberation, and the notion that obstructions such as the state, social hierarchy, and vanguard political parties are necessary in the struggle for freedom of the working classes can be dispelled as a myth.
[23] Karl Marx, in a section of his Grundrisse that came to be known as the "Fragment on Machines",[24][25] argued that the transition to a post-capitalist society combined with advances in automation would allow for significant reductions in labor needed to produce necessary goods, eventually reaching a point where all people would have significant amounts of leisure time to pursue science, the arts, and creative activities; a state some commentators later labeled as "post-scarcity".