Great point. I've been thinking about this in terms of the declaration 'economic growth is decoupling from resource use'. I'm sure that what's meant by that is that portions of the economy are entering a late-scarcity stage; music and books certainly don't feel scarce right now. But the statement that an economy like that is 'growing' seems to imply something untrue about the things that still are scarce.
I'm not super up on Star Trek lore, but to my understanding the setting takes place in a post-scarcity universe, where the only thing that is still scarce is latinum. Latinum isn't good for much except that it can't be replicated, so some traditions from the scarcity era use it as a medium of exchange, even though everything useful can be produced without any latinum. When a cup of earl grey is replicated, does the value of the remaining latinum go up or down compared to the (now slightly larger) economy?
It seems like there's a fundamental problem with the structure of our thought around these questions. We can imagine scarcity and it's absence, but we seem cognitively unprepared for a situation where some things are valuable and scarce and others are valuable but not scarce.
I'm not super up on Star Trek lore, but to my understanding the setting takes place in a post-scarcity universe, where the only thing that is still scarce is latinum. Latinum isn't good for much except that it can't be replicated, so some traditions from the scarcity era use it as a medium of exchange, even though everything useful can be produced without any latinum. When a cup of earl grey is replicated, does the value of the remaining latinum go up or down compared to the (now slightly larger) economy?
It seems like there's a fundamental problem with the structure of our thought around these questions. We can imagine scarcity and it's absence, but we seem cognitively unprepared for a situation where some things are valuable and scarce and others are valuable but not scarce.