Elon Musk’s Prophecy and the Post-Scarcity World

At the end of the 18th century, Thomas Malthus argued that population growth would always outpace food production, leading inevitably to famine and collapse. For a time, he seemed right. Scarcity defined life for most of human history. But Malthus failed to anticipate the compounding effect of innovation.

The Industrial Revolution shattered the old equilibrium. Energy was no longer limited to muscle, wind, and wood. Coal, then oil, multiplied human productivity. Standards of living rose not because people became morally better, but because production exploded.

Yet scarcity remained real. Energy was still costly. Labor was still central. Intelligence did not scale.

In the late 20th century, economist Julian Simon argued that the real resource is not land, minerals, or fuel, but human ingenuity. Scarcity, he insisted, is economic, not physical. When something becomes scarce, prices rise, innovation follows, substitution occurs, and abundance returns.

Simon famously bet environmental pessimist Paul Ehrlich that commodity prices would fall over time. Simon won.

Elon Musk has recently made a prophecy that a future is coming in which every human being will effectively be a “billionaire” in purchasing power, where work becomes optional, and where material scarcity largely disappears.