One of the more difficult problems for the human is how resources should be distributed. Every animal seems to have to deal with the problem of resources in one way or another. They must somehow obtain nutrients. Many “lay claim” to a space or territory. They will defend their resources with violence.
There is perhaps an economical-like process in the brain. There are patterns and cycles in nature that affect the lifestyle of biological beings. Most animals are swayed by nature because of a lack in their physical structure, cognitive capabilities, social skills, and/or other features such as these. One may dominate nature to one’s desire, assuming one has the ability to do so safely. Although good economics is the efficient use of resources. The other generates the problem of ethics, which spreads through practically all interactions with the other, including economical interactions. Best practices are left to the business class, who may be practical, and even limited by the law, but not bound to ethics.
One would perhaps need to start from what the humans need and work backward from there. Like other animals, nutrients and space seem first. Ancient humans were known to hunt, farm, settle, and migrate. This is all pre-civilization, and thus before any formalization of mental content.
There appears to be a set of highly efficient ways to live in any given area that can be discovered through the scientific method. This notion can be extended to the planet and beyond. There are certain aspects of life the human would focus its attention towards in order to live well, though this isn’t an exhaustive list they are; medicine, technology, matter sciences, and brain sciences. The earth and the biological material seem resilient to destruction, the human is comparatively less so.
The resources society uses are represented in monetary exchange. An item’s value appears to represent its scarcity, desirability, and the resources put into the item. This generates for the merchant what seems like a game-theoretic problem of whether an individual who didn’t want the item then wants it now, and whether the individual that did want it before wants it again.
America has what seems like a nested rule. The federal government is on the top, then the state government down to the local level. Institutions run all the way through, so below the local level government there are businesses, schools, places of worship, etc., then finally personal homes. Yet we see the business class taking control of many aspects of life.
Proof of post-scarcity is the amount of waste. There seems to be massive waste from overuse and underuse. Technology makes it easy to reproduce perfect copies of images and sounds. This seems to have ended the scarcity of certain types of artists. The sun provides massive amounts of harvestable energy. We only use a fraction of the energy from the sun we could be using. We have enough knowledge and capability with farming to provide food for everyone. Not only do we not provide for everyone, but we waste tons of food. We can actively and passively teach everyone many different arts, but we force people into myopic lanes. It is a post-scarcity world, yet the humans do not act as if it is so. Perhaps the waste is based on an acknowledgment?
