Post-Scarcity Cybernetics Simulator

The Core Problem: If modern AI and robotics automate production, why haven't human wage labor and money ceased to exist? This 6-sector Leontief network demonstrates the recursive maintenance trap: automated machinery requires specialized repair labor, finite rare-earth minerals, and continuous clean power. Without overcoming both physical bottlenecks and coordination scarcity, money and labor remain mathematically mandatory.
Conditional Scarcity
Human Workweek
14.8 hrs / wk
Down 63% from baseline
Energy Demand
11,840 GW
Grid Cap: 14,200 GW (83%)
Money Obsolescence
58 %
Partial voucher coordination
System Equilibrium
Sustainable
Maintenance capacity sufficient
Cybernetic Material & Labor Flow Graph Particle speed reflects physical input flows
Why Tokens or Money Still Persist in this State
  • Skilled maintenance labor requirement: Automated factories still suffer tool wear, sensor drift, and chassis fatigue requiring human technicians.
  • Thermodynamic clean energy ceiling: Clean generation is at 83% of peak ecological threshold (14,200 GW max).

1. The Recursive Maintenance Trap

Popular discourse often assumes that if robots build goods, all human labor becomes redundant. However, industrial cybernetics reveals a Leontief input-output recursion:

As automated manufacturing approaches 90%+, the system experiences accelerating machine depreciation and calibration failures. Robots cannot repair themselves without higher-order diagnostic tools, clean energy pipelines, and rare mineral recycling. Every automated factory shifts labor from direct assembly into capital maintenance, machine oversight, and infrastructure resilience.

2. Why Money Persists When Goods are Scarce

Money is not merely a tool of capitalist extraction; under scarcity, it functions as an information coordinate and rationing mechanism.

When essential goods (energy, surgical healthcare, specialized microchips) remain finite, abolishing money overnight without an algorithmic replacement yields either severe queues, black markets, or authoritarian rationing. Models like the Cockshott-Cottrell Labor Voucher system replace circulating fiat currency with non-transferable labor tokens to measure socially necessary labor-time until absolute physical abundance is unlocked.

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