Abundance: A New Economic Model

For most of human history, civilisation has been organised around a single governing assumption: that there is not enough. Economic systems, political institutions, and social hierarchies have all emerged from the necessity of managing limitation. Scarcity has shaped not only how we distribute resources, but how we understand security, progress, and even human nature itself. Competition became rational because survival demanded it, and the struggle for advantage was interpreted as both inevitable and necessary.

Capitalism rose to prominence because it proved extraordinarily effective at organising societies under these conditions. It rewarded productivity, incentivised innovation, and enabled unprecedented economic expansion. Entire populations were lifted into new standards of living, while technological progress accelerated at a pace previously unimaginable. Yet capitalism was never an abstract ideology operating outside material reality; it was a system designed for a world in which resources were constrained and efficiency determined who prospered.

Today, however, we are entering a moment in civilisational development where the conditions that gave rise to scarcity-based economics are beginning to transform. This is not merely another economic cycle, nor a temporary disruption within an otherwise stable order. It is the early movement of a structural shift — one that calls into question the foundational logic upon which modern economies have been built.

The Two Phases of Capitalism

Capitalism did not emerge fully formed but evolved through distinct historical phases, each responding to the material realities of its time. The first phase developed out of the feudal order through mercantilism, where wealth was treated as finite and power depended upon accumulation. Nations sought territorial expansion, controlled trade routes, and extracted resources because prosperity was understood as something to be captured and defended. Economic strategy was inseparable from geopolitical ambition, and rivalry between states was considered the natural expression of limited global wealth.

The second phase arrived with industrial capitalism, fundamentally reshaping production and labour through mechanisation. Factories multiplied output, markets expanded across continents, and competition became the primary engine of growth. Innovation allowed societies to produce more than ever before, yet the underlying assumption remained intact: resources were still regarded as ultimately limited, and economic actors were expected to compete for their share.

For more than two centuries this framework has dominated global development, surviving wars, ideological struggles, technological revolutions, and financial crises. Its durability has been so remarkable that many have come to view it as the final form of economic organisation rather than a stage within a longer evolutionary trajectory. Yet history suggests that no economic system is permanent. Each is a response to the material and technological conditions of its era, and when those conditions change, the organising logic of the system must also change.

When the Logic of Competition Begins to Fail

Across multiple domains — energy generation, digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, automation, and materials science — the cost of producing essential goods is steadily declining. Renewable energy is now among the cheapest sources of new power in many regions of the world. Intelligent systems are expanding cognitive capacity at scale, while automated production is reducing the human labour required to meet material needs. Information, once scarce and closely guarded, now moves across the planet almost instantaneously.

For the first time in human history, we possess the technical capability to provision the basic requirements of life for every person on Earth. The emerging tension of our time lies in the fact that while our productive capacity is approaching abundance, our institutions continue to operate as if deprivation remains unavoidable.

This mismatch is generating increasing instability. Inequality widens not necessarily because there is too little, but because systems designed for scarcity struggle to distribute emerging plenty. Social trust erodes as populations sense the gap between what is technologically possible and what is economically delivered. Political structures strain under pressures they were never designed to accommodate. It is therefore not accurate to say that capitalism is collapsing. Rather, it is approaching the limits of its historical usefulness. The system is encountering conditions fundamentally different from those it was built to manage.

Abundance Is Not an Extension of Old Ideologies

There is a growing tendency to interpret the future as a softened version of the present — a more compassionate capitalism, a more redistributive socialism, or a revived vision of collectivism. Yet each of these frameworks continues to assume that the central economic question concerns how finite resources should be divided. Abundance alters the question entirely.

When essential goods can be produced reliably and at scale, the defining challenge of economics shifts from allocation to organisation, from ownership to access, and from rivalry to coordination. The economy of the future will be less concerned with determining who wins and more concerned with ensuring that all are provisioned with the foundations necessary for a dignified life.

Such a transition does not eliminate markets, nor does it suppress ambition or innovation. Rather, it removes survival from the arena of competition. Human creativity is no longer forced to justify itself through economic struggle but is released toward higher forms of contribution — scientific discovery, artistic expression, ecological restoration, and the long-term stewardship of civilisation itself. Abundance should not be mistaken for utopianism. It is the practical consequence of technological maturity.

From Competition to Stewardship

Scarcity rewards advantage; abundance requires responsibility. This transition may prove psychologically challenging because competition has been deeply woven into our cultural understanding of progress. Many societies have internalised the belief that advancement depends upon winners and losers, and that struggle is the price of innovation.

Yet a civilisation capable of universal provisioning cannot remain organised around perpetual rivalry without generating unnecessary fragility. When survival is secured, the purpose of an economy expands. It becomes not merely a mechanism for producing wealth but a structure for sustaining collective stability.

In this emerging paradigm, certain goods increasingly resemble civilisational utilities — energy systems, food networks, healthcare, housing, education, and digital connectivity forming the infrastructural backbone upon which all other activity depends. Markets may continue to operate above this foundation, but they cease to function as gatekeepers of basic existence.

Growth itself will likely be redefined. Rather than measuring success purely through expansion of consumption, advanced societies may begin to prioritise resilience, wellbeing, ecological balance, and social coherence. Prosperity becomes less about accumulation and more about the reliability of the systems that support life.

Crossing the Civilisational Threshold

Every civilisation eventually encounters a threshold moment — a point at which it must decide whether to remain organised around inherited fears or step forward into newly available possibilities. Humanity now appears to be approaching such a threshold. The central question before us is no longer whether abundance can be achieved. Increasingly, the evidence suggests that it can. The deeper question is whether we possess the institutional imagination and collective courage required to organise ourselves around it.

For thousands of years, humanity has learned the disciplines of survival. We built economic systems to manage shortage, political systems to stabilise competition, and cultural narratives that taught us to endure uncertainty. These achievements should not be dismissed; they carried civilisation to its present level of development. But a new developmental task is now emerging. We must learn how to provide.

The true measure of an advanced civilisation will not be the intensity of its competition, but the reliability with which it ensures that every person has access to the conditions necessary to live, participate, and contribute. Abundance, then, is not the conclusion of economic history. It is the beginning of a new chapter — one in which humanity is called to organise its prosperity with the same ingenuity that once allowed it to overcome scarcity.