# Post-Scarcity

## Purpose

Post-scarcity asks which constraints technology can remove, which institutions remain necessary, and how abundance changes meaning, power, and obligation. This chapter is an index and a method: it shows how to explore the subject without collapsing documented history, current research, reported experience, fiction, community belief, and Oracle synthesis into one truth claim.

## Reading Method

1. **Locate the Tile.** Read its Primary Class to learn what kind of thing it is, then its Inquiry Domains to learn which questions it can illuminate.
2. **Name the material mode.** A science-fiction, mythology, political-mythology, experiential-report, or established-science label identifies context; it is not a score of spiritual or personal importance.
3. **Read claims layer by layer.** Begin with the literal-and-empirical layer, then the cultural-and-historical layer, and only then the symbolic-and-divinatory layer. An evidence state applies to one bounded claim, not to the Tile as a whole.
4. **Open the sources.** A concept-specific citation can support a history or bounded claim. A class-level contextual citation only locates the Tile in a wider field. Neither one certifies every interpretation.
5. **Follow typed edges.** Compare the exact verb and rationale. “Fictionalizes,” “opposes,” “echoes,” and “investigated-by” are not interchangeable. A resemblance edge is not proof of historical influence.
6. **Integrate through action.** Use Gift, Shadow, Threshold, and the integration practice to identify one grounded choice that remains useful even if a favored ontology is wrong.

## Worked Comparison

1. **Abundance** is a Forces Tile centered on Liberation & Transcendence. Its literal layer is **not-applicable**; its symbolic question is: “Where is surplus and access placed within liberation & transcendence shaping the situation, and what would make the response more accountable? Answer by testing how surplus and access placed within liberation & transcendence changes the conditions under which every actor chooses against agency, release, transformation, integration, and the limits that freedom must still honor.”
2. **Post-Scarcity** is a Systems & Regimes Tile centered on Civilization & Ecology. Its literal layer is **not-applicable**; its symbolic question is: “How can the gift of Post-Scarcity be practiced while its evidence status remains explicit? Answer by testing how the post motif meeting a binding limit shapes outcomes even when no participant intends the whole pattern against shared survival, place, stewardship, access, feedback, and unequal exposure to risk.”

Compare these examples by asking what changes when the class, evidence state, or edge verb changes. Do not treat the most vivid Tile as the most factual. When a reading crosses into health, identity, conspiracy, or current politics, show the card’s safety flags and preserve an alternate explanation.

## System Links

- [How to Use](HOW-TO-USE.md) for reference, reading, and game workflows.
- [Graph](GRAPH.md) for edge semantics and provenance.
- [Divination](DIVINATION.md) for reflective reading rules.
- [Glossary](GLOSSARY.md) for Classes, Domains, Modes, and Evidence States.
- [Source Registry](../research/SOURCE-REGISTRY.md) for source tiers, scope, and rights.

## Canonical Tiles

- [Abundance](../cards/forces/sfoc-forces-abundance.md) — Abundance frames surplus and access placed within liberation & transcendence as a decision environment rather than a finished answer. Its evidence discipline is transparent analogy, declared invention, and practical usefulness.
- [Post-Scarcity](../cards/systems/sfoc-systems-post-scarcity.md) — The Oracle places Post-Scarcity where the post motif meeting a binding limit affects agency. It is neither mere decoration nor automatic proof, but a persistent rule environment coordinating access, behavior, and value with a declared evidence boundary.
