Excepts from VRNet Lecture series

On Scarcity In the Modern Economy

Or

Why do we still have jobs when we have Fab’s that can utilize nanoengineering to manufacture things?

This is one of the fist questions generally asked in Collegiate level economics. Before the advent of nano-scale engineering and assemblers Scarcity was the primary determinate of all economic activity. This is still true today. However, we live in many ways what has been described as a post-scarcity economic environment. Individuals still buy and sell goods, but the most important determinant for adding value is no longer labor, but rather efficiency of design. However, this still does not tell the entire story. While assemblers can rearrange common atomic structures into more useful strata, they cannot assemble the atoms themselves. So Carbon is still carbon, silicon is still silicon, palladium is still palladium.

This is the fundamental root of modern scarcity: uncommon material. Adding value is no longer simply adding a mine to a parcel, as a mine can be assembled and disassembled automatically. Rather it is the need to acquire atoms that are not naturally abundant (barring cyclotronic atomic fusion which is energy intensive and this does not really address the problem satisfactorily) and the ability to create a plan for their assembly that will meet demand.

So while it is effortless to fab a chair, or a concrete house from dirt, it is nearly impossible to fab a flexi screen from dirt. You need a few more essential ingredients, and thus demand.