A theoretical or emerging economic condition in which advances in automation, artificial intelligence, and energy production reduce the marginal cost of essential goods and services to near zero, making basic needs such as food, shelter, healthcare, and information widely available without significant labor input. In a post-scarcity system, traditional market dynamics organized around competition for limited resources begin to weaken, shifting social focus from survival and accumulation toward distribution, governance, and meaning. The concept frequently appears in speculative economics and science fiction as a stage where productivity is so high that material deprivation becomes a political choice rather than a technical necessity.
In modern discourse, post-scarcity is often linked to techno-optimist visions that include universal provisioning models like Universal Basic Income and highly automated production networks, but critics argue that abundance in output does not automatically translate to abundance in access. Ownership, infrastructure, and power still determine who benefits, meaning that post-scarcity technologies can coexist with inequality unless paired with deliberate social policy.