This ignores another resource - power. Power is built in to all resources, to the degree that you can deny resources to others.
If resources are distributed they won't stay that way. Hence you can really "distribute" them freely, but rather "allocate" whereby some authority maintains the distribution, and hence has control over the resource in some capacity.
From that perspective, lack of scarcity is never guaranteed to exist because equal distribution is not guaranteed to persist, without intervention at least.
It's also a (conservative?) idea that control of resources is what binds society in terms of motivation. that co-dependence is actually a good thing. At the very least, even though I don't agree that society couldn't exist without scarcity, I do agree that:
- current society is built on scarcity, and won't seamlessly transition to a viable post-scarcity just because you remove scarcity.
- American society is dependant of tribal power-struggles more than most, and hence will fare even worse.
- Many nations are not so abundant that they are too far from scarcity. Without long-term planned fail-safes, small disasters can bring it right back. Governance is mostly hands off - citizens are left to themselves, which is why most think in terms of self-preservations.
If resources are distributed they won't stay that way. Hence you can really "distribute" them freely, but rather "allocate" whereby some authority maintains the distribution, and hence has control over the resource in some capacity.
From that perspective, lack of scarcity is never guaranteed to exist because equal distribution is not guaranteed to persist, without intervention at least.
It's also a (conservative?) idea that control of resources is what binds society in terms of motivation. that co-dependence is actually a good thing. At the very least, even though I don't agree that society couldn't exist without scarcity, I do agree that:
- current society is built on scarcity, and won't seamlessly transition to a viable post-scarcity just because you remove scarcity. - American society is dependant of tribal power-struggles more than most, and hence will fare even worse. - Many nations are not so abundant that they are too far from scarcity. Without long-term planned fail-safes, small disasters can bring it right back. Governance is mostly hands off - citizens are left to themselves, which is why most think in terms of self-preservations.