abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

Drucker believed that society went through such rearrangements regularly, with Western history showing a ‘sharp transformation’ every several hundred years. All of which meant that within a few short decades, ‘society re-arranges itself – its world view; its basic values; its social and political infrastructure; its arts; its key institutions.

While the Second Disruption was marked by a relative freedom from scarcity in motive power – coal and oil rather than muscle and wind moving wheels, pulleys, ships, people and goods – the defining feature of the Third Disruption is ever-greater abundance in information. For some this signals the completion of the Industrial Revolution, marking an

Its meaning is obvious: there is more than enough technology for everyone on Earth to live healthy, happy, fulfilling lives. What stands in the way isn’t the inevitable scarcity of nature, but the artificial scarcity of market rationing and ensuring that everything, at all costs, is produced for profit.

As with preceding disruptions, this shift represents a transformation in energy as much as work. Just as the First Disruption depended on the energy of domesticated animals, humans and the elements, and the Second was powered by the condensed solar energy of fossil fuels, the Third Disruption sees a move away from hydrocarbons and back to renewable

In a society emphasising energy abundance through efficiency as much as extreme supply, the idea that 127 calories of fuel would be used to fly a calorie of iceberg lettuce from the US to the UK, as is presently the case, will be rightly viewed as absurd.

The possibility of most people finding happiness and meaning is impossible as long as these things are commodities – subject to profit rather than need.

we stand on the brink of a paradigm shift in resources. Some see that as a route to fantastic personal wealth. As Peter Diamandis, co-founder of Planetary Resources put it, ‘I believe the first trillionaires will be made in space and the resources that we’re talking about are multi-trillion-dollar assets.’

‘while the psychological barrier to mining asteroids is high, the actual financial and technological barriers are far lower. Prospecting probes can likely be built for tens of millions of dollars each’. While $2 billion might sound like a lot, it is comparable to the sunk cost for a new rare earth mine, which MIT presently puts at around $1