Administering Abundance: Post-Scarcity Futures from Keynes to Captain Picard

Author: Oliver Friedli

Field of Study: Business Administration

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 67

Timeslot: Morning

Abstract: In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological progress would solve the economic problem of scarcity and free humanity from grueling labor. Yet the post-scarcity futures in economic speculation and science fiction diverge dramatically: where some portray liberation, creativity, and freedom, others predict bureaucratic control, social engineering, and technological domination. To understand this split in post-scarcity visions, this study examines Keynes’s “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” alongside science fiction works such as "The Machine Stops," Brave New World, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. These works illustrate how the problem is not simply how abundance is produced, but how it is administered. Visions diverge depending on whether abundance is governed through trust and social cooperation or through centralized control. By placing economic theory with cultural imagination, this paper explores how post-scarcity futures reflect deeper questions about governance, human desire, and freedom.