Scarcity, Regulation, and the Abundance Society Roundtable at Stanford Law
In 2022, Mauritz Kop had the honor of contributing a chapter to the book project "Scarcity, Regulation, and the Abundance Society," a special volume of Frontiers in Research edited by two leading minds in technology law, Professor Mark Lemley of Stanford Law School and Professor Deven Desai of Georgia Institute of Technology. The project culminates years of research and dialogue, including a memorable and insightful roundtable held at Stanford Law School.
The central inquiry of the project is to explore how our legal and economic institutions, which are fundamentally built on scarcity, should respond as "technologies of abundance" make scarcity a thing of the past in many industries. As new technologies like AI, 3D printing, and synthetic biology democratize and disrupt production, the book examines whether we will try to legally replicate scarcity or reorder our society to focus on things other than scarcity.
Stanford Law’s Mauritz Kop Presents Abundance & Equality Chapter at Roundtable.
The "Abundance and Equality" Chapter Edited by Mark Lemley
His chapter, titled "Abundance and Equality," was edited by Mark Lemley and connects the concepts of good governance and the end of scarcity by unifying equality with technology-driven abundance. The piece introduces the Equal Relative Abundance (ERA) principle—a post-Rawlsian framework for distributive justice designed for an age of abundance.
Professors Deven Desai and Mark Lemley
The ERA principle builds on John Rawls's "difference principle" but integrates desert-based critique, arguing that unequal rewards for contributions (due to hard work, talent, or entrepreneurial spirit) are justified only to the extent that they also improve the position of the least advantaged members of society. The chapter examines how ten key exponential technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution—including AI, quantum technology, and biotechnology—are the primary drivers of this shift from scarcity to abundance. It critically analyzes our existing scarcity-based institutions, particularly property and intellectual property law, and posits that we must begin experimenting with hybrid systems that mix the best of forward-thinking socialist and ethical post-capitalist paradigms, built on a foundation of participatory democracy.
Mauritz Kop Presents Book Chapter at 2022 Stanford Law’s Abundance Roundtable
On April 22, 2022, the project's contributors gathered for a roundtable workshop at Stanford Law School. The event provided a forum for a deeply interdisciplinary group of scholars to present their work and engage in a robust dialogue about the future of our society. The format consisted of short 8-10 minute presentations followed by 20 minutes of discussion, fostering a rich exchange of ideas.
A Convergence of Post-Scarcity Presentations and Discussions
During his session, Kop presented the core arguments from his "Abundance and Equality" chapter, outlining the tension between technology-driven abundance and the persistent reality of inequality for many across the globe. He introduced the ERA principle as a moral and political guide for distributing the benefits and burdens of our increasingly abundant future.
The roundtable featured a breadth of perspectives. Vivek Wadhwa discussed solving humanity's grand challenges, while Funmi Arewa explored the scarcity of opportunity within the digital economy. Zahr Said and Joshua Fairfield tackled the creation of artificial scarcity through intellectual property and the legal status of virtual property in the age of NFTs, respectively. Shane Greenstein of Harvard Business School offered insights on supply chains and the platformization of clothing personalization. This convergence of ideas underscored the complexity of the transition ahead and the need for holistic solutions.
Mauritz Kop publishes Chapter in Abundance Book by Mark Lemley
Musical Interlude: A Spontaneous Translation of Ideas
The roundtable was a stimulating intellectual affair, filled with rigorous debate. During lunch break, celebrating the occasion, Mauritz Kop sat down at the piano in the Stanford Faculty Lounge and performed a brief impromptu musical interlude. It was a personal endeavour to translate the abstract and often-dense themes of our discussion—the post-scarcity economy, abundance, equality, and the human condition—into the universal language of music. It was an opportunity for him to share that moment with his colleagues, connecting the analytical with the artistic.
The "Scarcity, Regulation, and the Abundance Society" project is a vital and timely undertaking. The discussions at the Stanford roundtable and the resulting publications provide a critical foundation for reimagining our legal, economic, and social institutions for a new era. These forward-looking conversations are essential for ensuring that the future of technological abundance is one that fosters not new forms of inequality, but greater justice and human flourishing for all.
Abundance & Equality: the Equal Relative Abundance (ERA) Principle of Distributive Justice
Abundance & Equality One Sentence Synopsis
This chapter connects good governance to the end of scarcity and unifies equality with technology driven abundance, by introducing the Equal Relative Abundance (ERA) principle of distributive justice.
Executive Summary
1. The technology driven post-scarcity society is upon us. Ubiquitous technologies are eradicating scarcity in many industries. These macroscopic system trends are causing our economy to transition from relative scarcity to relative abundance. A shift to abundance concerns system wide changes on a regional, national and global level, that—in addition to the economy—also affect our socio-political institutions and our environment.
For many people in the world however—in both developed, developing, and underdeveloped countries—the notion of an Age of Abundance will sound utterly bizarre and totally misplaced. There is a tension between abundance and equality.
2. Good governance considers in what manner the state conducts public policy, manages public resources and promotes overall prosperity. This chapter connects good governance to the end of scarcity and integrates equality into abundance. It provides suggestions on how resources and the means of production can be effectively managed in an affluent, “Cornucopian” society, with the aim of equitable outcomes for the masses instead of desirable results for select groups. The chapter critically examines the normative justifications of our scarcity based legal institutions, such as property and intellectual property (IP) systems, in light of 10 exponential, Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) technologies, and the post-scarcity economy.
3. Starting point is that absolute and relative abundance are not utopian. Technology will erase scarcity in more and more economic areas in the foreseeable future, but not everywhere or for everybody. This phenomenon is known as the poverty paradox. Considering that the social costs of inequality—such as a clear perception of social injustice, social exclusion, a decrease in productivity and health, and an increase in violence—are an important barrier to achieving widespread relative abundance conditions, the post-scarcity paradox must be resolved with priority.
This chapter views relative scarcity and relative abundance as temporal socio-economic categories at two opposite sides of a continuum.
4. In addition, technological progress is often at odds with the law, in particular property law, antitrust law and IP. So how should the law and our legal institutions look like in a post-scarcity society? The way in which we design our systems of property, fair competition and IP influences many aspects of how our society operates. The same applies to the architecture of our technology. As IP and ownership arrangements shape technology, technology shapes IP. As society shapes its legal institutions, legal institutions (and traditions) shape society.
5. To put present day social transformation in its proper historical context, the chapter explains—from a bird's eye view—orthodox economic theory based on scarcity, the different phases of capitalism, the stages of development of government systems and the importance of the separation of powers (EU) as prescribed by Montesquieu's trias politica, or a system of checks and balances (US).
6. To shape and clarify our thinking about the transition from scarcity to abundance, we investigate whether ideas and theories of great philosophers and economists including Marx, Kant, Hegel, Hume, Mill, Keynes, Demsetz, Schumpeter, and Rawls are applicable to the structure and organization of society during the Age of Abundance. All this requires an open-minded approach.
7. Principles of distributive justice offer moral guidance for the political frameworks and legal institutions that influence the distribution of benefits, risks, rights and responsibilities across members of society. These frameworks and systems directly impact people's lives. In finding answers to the challenges that lay ahead of us, the chapter considers distributive justice principles and methods associated with utilitarianism, egalitarianism, welfare-theory, consequentialism, equality of opportunity, luck, responsibility and desert.
8. The chapter unifies good governance with equality and abundance, by introducing a post-Rawlsian Equal Relative Abundance (ERA) principle of distributive justice. This includes defining a proper set of material and immaterial primary goods, warranting adequate, sufficient levels of relative abundance (which depend on technological evolution), and equitable results per region or group. ERA builds on the difference principle and combines it with desert-based critique, while incorporating post-scarcity values and ideals that would make sense in our new context of relative sustainable abundance conditions. Crucially, ERA integrates desert-based principles to the degree that some may deserve a higher level of material goods because of inequality in contributions, i.e., their hard work, talent, luck or entrepreneurial spirit, only to the extent that their unequal rewards do also function to improve the position of the least advantaged.
9. The chapter views the concept of society through a broad, interdisciplinary lens. While framing key aspects and goals of present-day societies and describing their shift to a state of pervasive relative abundance, we can draw historical timelines of progressing forms of society. Society as a concept can be studied and defined from various scientific disciplines, such as political science, sociology, cultural anthropology, and philosophy. The abundance society concept consolidates these notions, as much as scientifically sound.
10. During the transition to the Age of Abundance, more and more forms of global governance will be put into operation, conceptually separating the abundance society from territoriality and from the nation state. And so, the abundance society evolves into a cosmopolitan, technologically advanced global human civilization. As a large, networked sphere in which Earth's regions and nations, and people's socio-cultural identities are united. In that sense, the abundance society is a macro model of a world system.
11. A society governed by the ERA principle should in theory be able to solve the poverty trap on a global level. During the transition to the abundance society, ERA will have to be operationalized in a differentiated way. As lifting people from poverty in Europe is a different thing than achieving ERA in the US, applying equal relative abundance techniques in Asia and Africa each have their own specific challenges and dimensions. In addition to an overarching vision, this irrevocably requires customization and experimentation. Datadriven, multimethod discussions should inform the final design and regionally optimized implementations of ERA.
12. The chapter argues the need for reform and reimagining existing legal institutes based on the philosophy of canonical thinkers, as well as doctrines such as the tragedy of anticommons, and concepts such as the post-work society and a new social contract based on equal relative abundance.
13. It then offers an overview of 10 disruptive 4IR key technologies that are rapidly propelling and shaping the transformation to a post-scarcity model. These are artificial intelligence, big data, quantum technology, nanotechnology, biotechnology, 3D printing, nuclear fusion, DLT/blockchain, virtual and augmented reality, and hyper-accurate positioning.
14. After that, the chapter links these technologies to policies that will enable conversion from the legacy economy to widespread relative abundance. It gives examples of the strategic reforms needed right now, in the midst of the 4IR, as well as reforms necessary during the Age of Abundance, tailored to specific industries, economic sectors and technologies. The chapter connects the method of technology forecasting to forecasting abundance and offers lawmakers concrete policy recommendations and pathways to the next phase.
15. An Age of Abundance requires a government system tuned for abundance. When thinking about such a system, we need to reconcile social, economic, and political theory, in light of the function and purpose of the state. The chapter looks at contemporary principles of distributed justice for answers, including the notion of the market as a self-correcting mechanism in concert with the equalizing effect of central planning, and government adjustments, such as taxes and antitrust regulation.
16. The chapter posits that it is urgent to start experimenting with prototypes of systems that mix the best parts of acceptable, forward thinking socialist and ethical post-capitalist paradigms, built on participatory democracy. When searching for a post-scarcity synthesis of progressive, liberal democracy inspired capitalism and socialism that combines the best of both worlds, an important question remains who should (co-)control vital resources and the means of production. In the Age of Abundance, we are all developing countries.
17. Perhaps counter-intuitively, this chapter advises to draw inspiration from the good parts of the Chinese innovation system; provided these elements correspond with our Western way of life (freedoms) and our participatory democracy. We should combine these ingredients with implementing the ancient institution of German regional development banking, which is responsible for the continued strength of German Mittelstand industries. It avoids the limitations of traditional banking while promoting quality, productivity, stability and economic growth. Even though China is a systemic rival of the US, and their ideology is incompatible with democracy, we must still be open to learn from Chinese poverty reduction by creating a knowledge economy, developing green, decarbonizing technologies, long-term planning in combination with decentralized experimentation, and more efficient, productive state control. We should transplant the well-functioning parts from the Chinese approach that are compatible with the human rights and freedoms we cherish, into our own democratic, post-scarcity systems. What's more, we should learn from history and consider implementing measures inspired by the social New Deal programs of the 1930s that helped the United States recover from the Great Depression, such as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
18. This chapter views historic, contemporary, and future property paradigms as stages in growth of social responsibility. When addressing access vs. excludability dilemma's in a relative abundance setting, policy makers should not be afraid to experiment with different modalities of property, Roman law inspired multilayered property arrangements, common-pool resources (hybrid public-private goods), eliminating artificial scarcity, strengthening the public domain, Public Property from the Machine (=replicator), declaring/categorizing primary resources such as data as merit goods, and regulatory sandboxes. More specifically, the chapter considers both ancient and modern forms of common, collective and private property and proposes a socially equitable bundle of property rights tailored to the Age of Abundance. An ownership arrangement that connects property to liberty (and reward), and decouples it from status and respect, in particular from negative social recognition. In practice, decoupling property from status will be a quantum leap.
19. The chapter advocates for awareness of the mental, ethical, social and cultural shifts essential for change. It discusses post-materialist values fitting the post-scarcity economy, such as altruism, solidarity, and truth. Much work needs to be done in this area. These redefined values and ideals are operationalized in the Equal Relative Abundance (ERA) principle of distributive justice. Critically, post-scarcity values have to be actively embedded in our technology. Companies and the state have a mutual responsibility for the design, architecture and infrastructure of 4IR technologies. Impact assessments have to be employed. As society shapes technology, technology shapes society.
20. Given the evolutionary factor that human nature keeps striving for more (wants) even when its needs are fulfilled, the road ahead will not always be easy. Political conservatism, the implications of the theory of path dependence, and market power of incumbents that have an interest in status quo will obstruct a smooth transition. Negative sum games must be solved, positive sum games pursued. In this light, the chapter lists 15 barriers and 15 enablers of abundance.
21. The central thread through this chapter is the role of technology as an engine of change. Naturally, technology is not the prime cause for all our difficulties, nor is technology our only salvation. Having explored normative parallels between managing exponential technologies and abundance, the chapter concludes that the reforms necessary to balance the socio-economic effects of 4IR technology now, fit the trend of a shift from scarcity to well-managed relative sustainable abundance for all, on the planetary level. The proposed reforms address the identified challenges concerning the equal distribution of burdens and benefits across members of society. Thus, when policy makers execute the suggested 4IR reforms using good governance practices -being enablers of abundance-, they automatically make society ready for the post-scarcity economy. Addressing the identified systemic challenges requires cooperation on a global level.
22. The chapter ends with the utopian realistic prediction that during the Age of widespread relative Abundance, having mastered the art of good governance and equality, people will be free to spend their time on understanding the art of living, and on what it means to be human.