In a previous post, I needed an example of an extreme sacrifice that didn’t make sense even from a naively altruistic perspective. I chose ice cream.

On the one hand, I think this was a clear-cut example. Agonizing over dessert purchases usually isn’t the best altruistic use of one’s mental energy. On the other hand, I imagine that treating ice cream like a necessity, not to be forgone even for critical health services, must sound awfully entitled the substantial majority of humans who lived and died without ever getting to try it. For most of history, just making ice in the middle of the summer would seem like magic. And now here I am, taking for granted my salted caramel double fudge sundae that the kings of yesteryear could only dream of. I’d sound almost as ridiculous as a spacefaring billionaire who can’t imagine life without weekend excursions to the Kármán line.

I don’t think this is of practical relevance to me as a consumer of ice cream. Projected forward though, I think it may say something about the long-run future of civilization. What if our descendants make spending choices that would elicit a similar reaction from us? Perhaps next time the product in question will literally be space travel. Just as I’d fly across the country to visit my grandparents for the holidays, perhaps my grandchildren will make an annual tradition of leaving their Moon colony to see family back on Earth.

From my perspective in 2024, that implies a much more worrisome tradeoff. I’m optimistic that future generations won’t have to choose between ice cream and vaccines in particular—that they’ll have ample resources to tackle poverty, environmental degradation, and most other injustices one might care to name while living what I’d regard as a life of luxury. But like effective altruists in the frozen dessert aisle, those with disposable income could instead allocate it towards maintaining an even higher standard of living for themselves. Not because they’re greedy in the typical sense, but because their luxuries have somehow become necessities.

It would be reasonable to guess that some amount of economic growth will render this pattern irrelevant. If not 10-fold, maybe 100-fold. Surely, by the time most people are billionaires (in real terms) there will be plenty to go around. There are only so many ways to spend money on yourself!

But maybe we just haven’t had the opportunity to invent more. Today, technologies our ancestors never imagined are a bigger portion of the economy than charity. I see no reason that won’t be true going forward. “Oh, I wish I could donate, but my ꙅꙅ꙰ႺのⱾ၏ᗄ needs repairs….” Is it hypocrisy to scoff at that if I enjoy ice cream?

It seems too strong to say there will never be a post-scarcity economy. But in the spirit of Hofstadter’s Law, it will take longer than you think. We can’t rely on near-term developments like superintelligent AI to solve this problem. And if you want to get off the treadmill, you’ll probably have to do that yourself.