From the Scarcity to the Positive Abundance System: Solar Energy, Automation, and the Self-Domestication of Humankind as Drivers of a Transition to a Post-Capitalist Post-Scarcity Society — A Positive Abundance and a Positive Future for People, Nature and the Earth

Abstract

This working paper develops an integrated forecasting model for the transition of human societies from a scarcity system to an abundance system. Its starting point is that solar electricity follows a stable learning curve and is already the cheapest form of power generation. From near-zero-cost energy the paper derives - via automation, AI and closed material cycles - a decline of the marginal costs of key goods towards zero, so that money loses its function as the manager of scarcity. Three dynamics commonly read as threats are shown to be self-limiting: superfluous positional consumption, the population explosion (via the demographic transition), and interpersonal violence (primarily as a cultural civilising process; a genetic self-domestication component is treated as an uncertain, subordinate supplement). The favourable dynamics hold only within three boundary conditions - planetary boundaries, control over the orchestrating AI, and geopolitical justice between world regions - and raise inner questions of meaning, justice and macroeconomic stability. The technical transition appears largely determined over 80-120 years; what remains open and normative is solely its distribution - peaceful or contested. If the boundary conditions are respected, the model describes a positive abundance and thus a positive future for people, for nature and for the Earth: people are freed from want and compulsory labour, nature regains land and intact material cycles, and the Earth is relieved, because solar energy replaces fossil combustion and waste disappears into closed loops. The paper closes with a framework for action (five guiding principles and 17 sequenced steps for global organizations, states and communities). Editions in thirteen languages are included in this record: English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Portuguese (Brazilian), Dutch, Italian, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Hungarian. v10 (1.3): Both works added in Hungarian (thirteen languages). New section in all languages on why holders of large fortunes might consent to the transition (book Section 10.2; working paper Section 7.5), with 40 newly verified references; new book Appendix C lists all 43 reasons with an evidence rating. Book, all languages: Chapter 3 now states when geothermal energy is clean (closed loop, full reinjection, seismic monitoring) and names the risks (CO2 at some fields, induced earthquakes). Typesetting corrections in all languages: figure labels (working paper Fig. 16), box titles in the book; Arabic edition: boxes, chapter heads, figure labels, quotation marks, dashes, hyphens, section numbers and bibliography. The Hungarian translation is the author's own and has not been reviewed by a native speaker.