Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

by Peter H. Diamandis

In our abundant future, the dollar goes further. As does the yen, the peso, the euro, and so forth. This happens because of dematerialization and demonetization; because of exponential price-performance curves; because each step up prosperity’s ladder saves time; because those extra hours add up to additional gains; because the close ties between categories in our abundance pyramid produce positive feedback loops, bootstrapping potential, and the domino effect, and for a thousand other reasons. So you have to wonder: what does it take to make a real difference? Not much, actually. Daniel Kahneman’s calculation has lately been extended to the rest of the planet. On average, across the globe, the point on the chart where well-being and money diverge is roughly $10,000. That’s how much the average global citizen needs to earn to fulfill his or her basic needs and gain a toehold toward much greater possibility. There is no debate that life has gotten considerably better at the bottom over the last four decades. During that stretch, the developing world has seen longer life expectancies, lower infant mortality rates, better access to information, communication, education, potential avenues out of poverty, quality health care, political freedoms, economic freedoms, sexual freedoms, human rights, and saved time. But what that $10,000 figure tells us is that we’ve actually come much further. Twenty years ago, most well-off US citizens owned a camera, a video camera, a CD player, a...