Economics-how to achieve universal high income, no poverty, and no need to save money

 In a laissez-faire framework, a world with no poverty and very little need for precautionary saving would require a sustained, broad-based productivity revolution that collapses the cost of essentials while expanding widespread ownership of capital and open, competitive markets that let prices transmit those gains everywhere. It’s not guaranteed, but it becomes progressively more plausible as positive supply shocks compound and institutions let entrepreneurs scale them without distortion [1][3][6].

What would need to happen

1. Energy becomes superabundant and ultra-cheap

• Order-of-magnitude declines in the levelized cost of reliable power (generation + storage + transmission) make water, food, cooling/heating, and logistics dramatically cheaper, pushing the floor of living standards up worldwide without central planning [1][6].
• With energy as a near-negligible input, desalination, fertilizer synthesis, cold chains, and computing become inexpensive at scale, compressing the delivered cost of essentials even in remote and low-income regions via market entry and competition [1][4].

2. Automation and AI massively raise labor productivity

• Robotics, AI, and software take over routine and hazardous tasks, allowing fewer hours of human labor to support far greater output; prices fall as firms pass through cost reductions in competitive markets [3][6].
• Creative destruction reallocates capital and labor from low-productivity to high-productivity uses; laissez-faire avoids propping up incumbents so the diffusion of productivity is fast and broad [3][5].

3. Housing, health, food, and education supply constraints are liberalized

• Zoning, licensing bottlenecks, monopoly privileges, and import barriers are relaxed so entrepreneurs can scale low-cost construction methods, clinics, telemedicine, credentialing alternatives, and agricultural tech; prices then fall toward marginal cost as entry expands supply [3][5].
• When the most regulated, scarcity-prone sectors are opened to competition, the biggest cost-of-living items drop, which does more to end poverty than transfers can, because purchasing power rises permanently with productivity [2][5].

4. Widespread capital ownership and frictionless finance

• As the capital share of income rises with automation, broad ownership of diversified equity and productive assets lets even low-wage workers earn capital income (dividends, rents on intellectual/financial capital), lifting “universal income” through markets, not mandates [2][3].
• Zero-commission investing, fractional shares, low-cost annuities, and micro-insurance spread globally; with deep, open capital markets, households can smooth income and insure major risks, reducing the amount of precautionary saving they need to hold at any point in time [2][6].

5. Global openness and price flexibility

• Free trade, mobile capital, and flexible exchange rates transmit cost declines across borders, while domestic price flexibility ensures savings pass through to consumers quickly; protectionism and price controls would slow or block these gains [2][4].
• Rule of law, strong property rights, and contract enforcement encourage long-horizon investment, compounding productivity and spreading low-cost goods and services at scale [5][3].

6. Money remains sound and policy avoids distorting positive supply shocks

• When prices fall due to higher productivity (benign disinflation), policy should not try to re-inflate; letting the price level reflect real efficiency gains preserves incentives to innovate and keeps essentials cheap [1][2].
• Avoid bailouts, windfall taxes, or price mandates that entrench high-cost producers; profit-and-loss is the feedback mechanism that reallocates resources to the most efficient uses [3][5].

Would saving really be “unnecessary”?

• Even in a much richer, cheaper world, time preference, uncertainty, and investment opportunities remain—so some saving will always be rational. What can change is the amount of precautionary saving people feel they need if essentials are ultra-cheap and insurance/annuity markets are deep, reliable, and low-cost [2][6].
• Think “radically less necessary,” not “unnecessary”: when food, water, electricity, connectivity, and basic shelter are a tiny share of income, unexpected shocks are less ruinous and private financial products can handle more risk pooling, reducing the need for large cash buffers [1][6].

Milestones that would signal we’re on that path

• Energy: firm, 24/7 power available below one cent per kWh at scale; storage cost curves below $20/kWh; desalination costs well under $0.30/m3 delivered near demand centers through private build-out [1][6].
• Housing and services: large cities liberalize land use; modular and automated construction cut delivered housing costs dramatically; telemedicine and AI tutors drive down effective costs of care and learning with open entry and price freedom [3][5].
• Finance: near-universal access to low-cost index investing, annuities, and micro-insurance; seamless cross-border payments and property registries that protect small investors and entrepreneurs [2][4].
• Macro: sustained, broad-based total factor productivity growth; widespread pass-through of cost declines to consumer prices; extreme poverty continuing to fall to near-zero as markets integrate [1][2][4].

Bottom line

• A future with no poverty and far less need for saving is conceivable if we get compounding, market-led productivity revolutions—especially in energy—plus open institutions that allow entry, competition, and capital formation everywhere. The mechanism is not centralized redistribution, but persistent positive supply shocks, creative destruction, and widespread asset ownership that make essentials cheap and incomes high across the distribution [1][3][5][6].
• It’s a direction, not a guarantee: the main obstacles are political—barriers to entry, protectionism, monopolies, and price controls—not technological potential. The more laissez-faire the environment, the faster these gains diffuse and the closer we move to eradicating poverty in practice [3][5][4].

Sources

1 Classical Economics by Murray Rothbard

2 Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholar's Edition, by Murray Rothbard

3 A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

4 Human Action, Third Revised Edition by Ludwig Von Mises

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5 Marxism/socialism, a sociopathic philosophy, conceived in gross error and ignorance, culminating in economic chaos, enslavement, terror, and mass murder by George Reisman

6 Economic Thought Before Adam Smith by Murray Rothbard

In addition:

Here’s additional detail—still within a laissez‑faire, market‑led lens—on how a future with no poverty and much less need for precautionary saving could emerge, what would signal progress, and what could derail it:

Key mechanisms that lift the living floor

• Compounding positive supply shocks: step‑changes in energy, computation, materials, and logistics reduce the cost of essentials and push the aggregate supply curve right, raising real incomes most for the poor as competition passes through lower costs to final prices [1][6].
• Creative destruction and diffusion: rapid exit of high‑cost producers and fast scaling by efficient entrants spread productivity gains broadly when markets are open and prices are flexible, rather than protected or administered [3][5].
• Global transmission: free trade and mobile capital propagate cost declines across borders; net importers of inputs (energy, fertilizers, components) see stronger real income gains that filter directly into lower consumer prices for essentials [2][4].

Why “less need to save” becomes plausible (but not zero)

• Cheaper essentials reduce ruin risk: when food, power, water, connectivity, and basic shelter are a tiny share of income, an adverse shock is less catastrophic, so households don’t need as large precautionary buffers to keep living standards stable [1][6].
• Better private risk pooling: deep, competitive finance—low‑cost annuities, micro‑insurance, and diversified equity access—lets people insure longevity and income volatility, substituting priced insurance for self‑insurance via excess cash balances [2][6].
• Higher asset ownership: broader participation in productive capital shares rising returns from automation and scale economies, raising baseline income even for low‑wage earners and smoothing consumption without coercive redistribution [2][3].

What must happen in the real economy

• Energy abundance end‑to‑end: not just cheap generation, but reliable storage, transmission, and wholesale‑to‑retail pass‑through that collapses the delivered cost of water (desalination/pumping), fertilizer, cold chains, and data, particularly in last‑mile markets [1][6].
• Entry and supply expansion in bottleneck sectors: liberalized housing supply, open healthcare provision (including telemedicine), flexible education markets, and competitive logistics so productivity gains in inputs translate into lower end‑user prices where households spend most of their budgets [3][5].
• Open trade routes and contestable markets: minimal tariffs/quotas and avoidance of state monopolies, letting entrepreneurs arbitrage cost differences and deliver essentials cheaply across regions [2][4].

Institutional and policy preconditions (laissez‑faire compatible)

• Strong property rights and contract enforcement: secure titles and reliable courts lower the cost of capital and speed the scaling of innovations that make essentials cheaper [5][3].
• Price flexibility and sound money: allow benign disinflation from productivity to pass through; avoid attempts to “re‑inflate” that would blunt real‑income gains from positive supply shocks [1][2].
• Resist intervention that freezes the old cost structure: avoid bailouts, windfall taxes, price controls, and protectionism that keep high‑cost producers alive and slow diffusion of cheaper alternatives [3][5].

How this shows up on the ground (leading indicators)

• Price signals: persistent declines in the price of firm power, clean water, staple foods, basic shelter per square foot, and broadband—accompanied by rising variety and service quality as competition intensifies [1][6].
• Investment patterns: surging private capex in energy storage, desalination, cold chains, modular construction, and AI/automation, alongside shrinking capex in legacy high‑cost providers—classic reallocation [3][6].
• Trade and logistics metrics: falling freight and delivered‑goods costs, rising cross‑border variety, and reduced volatility of essential goods prices as supply webs thicken [2][4].
• Financial inclusion: mass availability of low‑fee index funds, fractional ownership, annuities, and micro‑insurance products, with rising household asset ownership across income deciles [2][6].

Typical misconceptions to avoid

• “Post‑scarcity” means no prices: even with cheap energy, land, skilled labor, time, and attention remain scarce; prices and property rights are still needed to coordinate trade‑offs efficiently [1][5].
• Central planning can substitute for markets once energy is cheap: knowledge is dispersed and incentives matter; profit‑and‑loss remains the fastest feedback loop for adopting and scaling what works [3][4].
• Poverty ends via transfers alone: durable poverty reduction comes from productivity and entry—lowering the price of essentials and raising real wages—rather than administratively moving purchasing power around [1][5].

What could derail the trajectory

• Protectionism and national monopolies that block technology diffusion and keep local prices high despite global cost declines [2][4].
• Regulatory choke points in housing, healthcare, and utilities that cap supply and convert productivity gains into rents instead of lower consumer prices [3][5].
• Policy attempts to offset benign disinflation, or ad‑hoc taxes/subsidies that mute competitive pressure and slow creative destruction [1][2].

Bottom line

• “No poverty and less need to save” becomes credible when compounding supply‑side productivity—especially in energy—meets open, competitive institutions that allow rapid entry, pricing freedom, and widespread capital ownership, letting market forces push the cost of essentials toward trivial levels while lifting incomes across the distribution [1][3][6].
• The decisive variables are not central plans, but how quickly markets are allowed to reallocate capital and labor and how widely households can own productive assets and access low‑cost financial risk pooling [2][5][4].

Sources

1 A Theory of Socialism and Capitalism by Hans-Hermann Hoppe

2 Classical Economics by Murray Rothbard

3 Capitalism by George Reisman

4 Human Action, Third Revised Edition by Ludwig Von Mises

5 Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, Scholar's Edition, by Murray Rothbard

6 Economic Thought Before Adam Smith by Murray Rothbard