I was in a conversation about Iran the other day.
Not a policy conversation—a "what are the actual options here" conversation. And I went through every lever I could think of. Every tool. Every precedent. And every single path led to the same dead end. Escalation. Suffering. Another generation of resentment baked into the soil.
At first I thought I was missing something. Some framework I hadn't considered. So I went deeper.
What I found is that we're not missing a lever. We're playing the wrong game entirely.
Every conflict that feels truly intractable—the ones where brilliant, well-intentioned people on all sides keep arriving at bad options—they all share the same root.
Scarcity.
When there isn't enough (or people believe there isn't enough), everything becomes zero-sum. Your security requires my vulnerability.
We compete for the same small pile, and we build entire civilizations of justification around why our claim is more legitimate than yours.
And the tools we keep reaching for? Sanctions. Military deterrence.
Diplomatic pressure. Aid packages. These aren't solutions. They're moves in the scarcity game. They shuffle who's losing in the short term. They don't change what the game IS.
You can't solve a scarcity problem with a scarcity-based toolset. That's not a political opinion. It's a logic problem.
So here's what I've been sitting with. The only actual path forward isn't political. It's economic—at a level of abundance that makes the scarcity-driven conflicts obsolete.
AI and robotics are about to drive the cost of production toward zero.
Not lower. Toward zero. And here's the part most people miss: I'm not talking about America providing more. I'm talking about everyone having access to their own means of production. You own your production. Not as charity. As fact.
When the baseline of human existence is covered—food, utilities, shelter, education, some sense of faith or purpose—why do you fight over it? What is the conflict actually for?
Just ego and trauma at that point, which we might actually have the time and space to work on healing.
I've watched this play out working with people from wildly different backgrounds. When basic needs are met, behavior sorts itself out at a rate that's almost hard to believe until you see it.
They get to a place of abundance, and they finally have time to personally and spirtually develop, and usually end up in a good place.
Then society around them changes, the world around them changes, and they see that life can be better, and they then have something to lose, the trust and love of a community.
That's a good place to aim at.
The transition is going to be messy. There will be power structures that resist this violently—because this threatens the specific kind of power that depends on others being scarce.
But here's the question I can't stop asking:
Why wouldn't you want this?
If the technology exists to ensure every human being has enough—if we can put the tools of abundance in everyone's hands... what argument do you make against that?
It's fucking stupid not to.
Abundance economics doesn't ask people to be better humans. It makes better behavior the rational choice. And that's the only kind of change that actually sticks.
And if that IS true, wouldn't the most noble pursuit of our age be accelerating the day where we have almost zero cost basics?
And before you file this into a bucket you already have, put UBI aside for a second, if everything was so cheap as to be free and of the highest quality, that's a minor rounding error.
What if we could truly create everything we needed and we had the incentives and distribution mechanisms to deliver it to every person on earth, and it didn't require anyone else to go without?
I spend a lot of time thinking about what that world can look like, and I have for at least 15 years now.
People immediately come back with 'but human nature'
To which I respond, show me someone who isn't traumatized and isn't in scarcity, who has ample time to work on themselves
How do they tend to behave?
We all have the ability to create hell and heaven for others and ourselves, yes, but I also think we strive to make the best choices available to us at any given time.
If you change the game, you change the spectrum of choice outcomes and move toward positive sum.
And that's a world worth working towards, not fighting for.
Where's your head at on this? Genuinely curious....
I love you, thank you
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