MAIN IDEA:

This book promotes the idea that humanity has now achieved superabundance. the authors define it this way:” When the abundance of resources grows at a faster rate than population increases, we call that relationship “superabundance.” To support this idea, the authors provide statistical data about resource availability from history and its progress till our time. Unlike most economists and historians, they look at real resource availability as expressed in the amount of resources available per unit of time spent to acquire these resources. Here is a nice graphic representation at the high level:

This book is the most detailed scientific analysis of humanity’s economic development since the beginning of industrialization when the civilized part of humanity broke out of the Malthusian trap by moving to more or less democratic capitalism. The authors convincingly reject the ideas of popular and well-paid doomsayers and provide data-based support for the ideas of Julian Simon that the only scarce resources are productive and innovative humans. The authors provide the framework that includes key components of the superabundance development:

MY TAKE ON IT:

I agree entirely with the authors of this book, and I have been a big fan of Julian Simon ever since I first learned about his work some 25 or 30 years ago. The only point I would like to make regarding this book is that it is mainly directed to the past and present, while humanity is now approaching the point when AI is making the industrial society of the last 300 years outdated. I think material abundance is here to stay, and the world population is becoming stable and well-provided with the necessities of life. However, I think that the inevitable obsolescence of the need for human labor would cause massive disruption and revolutionary changes in the structure of society. The result would be one of two outcomes. It could be a totalitarian society with massive suppression of individual freedoms with the subordination of individuals to the will of others above them in some hierarchical structure. Alternatively, it could be some form of free, but not necessarily democratic, society where individuals have the resources to pursue their happiness any way they want without regard to others as long as they do not invade the personal space of these others. We currently have two samples of these two types of society. The prototype of a future totalitarian option could be contemporary China, where people are more or less satisfied materially but strictly subordinated to the communist party hierarchy. The prototype of a future free society option could be America of XVIII-XIX centuries before the closure of the frontier when everybody could get property on land. The totalitarian option would be pretty bad because it inevitably includes continuing the fight for power and place at the top of the hierarchy. The second option would be much better. However, it would require implementing property rights on something that would provide individuals with sufficient resources. In my opinion, it could be the formalization of the common inheritance of knowledge accumulated by humanity as property equally belonging to all and a subject for compensation from individuals who use more of it to those who use less.  It would require some suppression of individuals whose pursuit of happiness requires control over others. Still, it would be much less violent than a constant power struggle in a totalitarian society.