I think I made a post on this based on a review of the book awhile ago, but now I have read the actual book. My verdict: It was okay, but did not live up to the promise of its fantastic title. It stitches together a lot of disparate ideas and headlines to try to come up with a coherent big picture, and doesn’t quite succeed in my opinion.

Basically, the book forecasts a coming era of extreme supply made possible by a number of technologies. First, solar energy making energy abundant and cheap. Second, asteroid mining making materials abundant and cheap. Third, biotechnology making health care and food abundant and cheap.

“Fully automated” means there won’t be a ton a work to go around for humans. And this won’t matter if the abundant energy, materials, health care and food are spread around because there will be plenty for everyone.

“Luxury” means the supply will be so high that prices will be low or even tend toward zero.

Where “communism” comes in is that with supply so high and prices tending toward zero, the rich and powerful will try to ration and control the supply of goods and services to the rest of us so they can charge for them and get rich. So join me, comrades, as we the people must own the means of production in order to keep this from happening. Also, something about local business and worker cooperatives but I didn’t find this convincing.

A few things bother me. The first is the idea of “layers of limits”. Let’s say technology allows us to solve a lot of our current problems. Bringing in, say, ten times more materials from off planet may create a waste problem unless we can get the idea of a truly circular economy (i.e., 100% recycling of materials) going.

Second, this argument seems to foresee a sort of end of technological history. The government may fund a lot of basic research, but market discipline is what drives a lot of applied science and technological research from there. The government many things but it is not disciplined. If all our needs and wants are met, there will be no markets driving further progress. But history suggests that capitalism will always convince us to want more, and to consider yesterday’s wants to be tomorrow’s needs. This seems to be human nature, so unless artificial intelligence is taking over technological progress and pursuing it for the sheer joy of puzzle solving, it seems to me there will still be a role for a private sector.