There's not enough resources because there's a dozen people who horde half of the wealth.

All it takes is not bring a greedy dick. So it'll never happen.

Don't forget about property rights. Pretty much all land belongs to somebody or some organization. There isn't enough available living space for everyone right now. In the future, this will be worse. Here in the US at least, property rights are practically sacred and the police exist to enforce them. There is enough land for all when you look at it from outside the game we are all forced to play, but within it, we have a real problem.

So, this made me read the article https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292924000493#b0265 which builds on the methodology of https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-32729-8.pdf which further uses the energy and materials estimates established in https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378020307512.

While it makes some gestures toward "renewable energy instead of fossil fuels", it remains pretty handwavy on the topic of critical non-renewable resources that are going to be the limiting factors. Arable land in cultivable climate, not depleted by overuse of fertilizers (which themselves are non-renewables), non-saline water (desalination is pretty energy intensive), helium, and cheap oil for making plastic, among other things. Reducing consumption was the answer 30 years ago, and even then it just would have slowed the inevitable return to no-fertilizer agriculture (immediate drop in yields), eventually no cheap plastics, no hi-tech chips (helium is essential for today's photolithography process), etc. We could hope to science our way out, and find some other ways to replace these critical resources, but short of that, the blanket approach of calculating energy and undifferentiated material mass requirements under the current technologies doesn't say anything about sustainable QOL.

*on a needs-based analysis.

Now I don't know the specifics of the study and it's nearly 4am so I'm not looking it up, but... Humanity has advanced both scientifically and in other, important areas, by having not just needs, but wants too.

But let's stick to just food. Sure, you could grow a handful of core crops to sustain the caloric and macro needs of everyone at 30% of the current production rate. But would that be enjoyable? You could eat the same gray processed slop every day to fulfill your dietary needs, because the "central intelligence" decided it's all you need. What if you wanted a slice of chocolate cake? Some carne asada, or murgh makhani, or deep fried mozzarella balls?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should ditch the entire study and not reduce resource wastage or not provide for the basic needs of everyone. We should do that, 100%.

What I am saying is that if we reduce everything to bare necessities, people lose the will to live. We don't live just to fulfill those basic needs. We live - or should live - to enjoy life. The small things like, say, having a nice (but not really healthy) pastry in a beautiful park on a sunny autumn morning. Or a cocktail on the sunny beach. These are the things worth living for.

You can't just say "oh we can drop all production by 2/3 and still be fine" because we wouldn't be fine. Is entertainment a basic need? Is having a home you like living in, a basic need? Is having nice shoes, or clothes, a need? Is makeup, nicely done nails, a need? I could go on.

Serving just the needs of people would also stifle innovation. Most of our advances are thanks to people wanting more and having the ability to achieve that. And that's why capitalism is such a poison - it pushes you down, forces you to sell yourself, with the promise of having the opportunity to get not just what you need, but what you want.

And herein lies the problem: wanting more is like drinking water. Not having enough of it kills you, but having too much want also leads to ruin. The latter is much like an addiction - but it can't be treated the same way, i.e. abstinence. Take away all the wants of a person, all the ways to get what they want, and all you are left with is a husk, a shadow of the person. A brain-dead patient kept alive by machines. Alive, sure, but can you call it a life?

What we need is sane limits between healthy wants and greed, and a framework that prevents the latter from gaining foothold. What we need is not dropping production of everything by 2/3, but ensuirng that most of that production/surplus benefits everyone, not just a handful few. You can still be a successful leader of a company (in the original sense of the word, a group of people with a shared goal/task, companions of a mission), without the requirement of owning a sizeable percentage of the world. Once we've ensured that no person goes hungry, no person goes without a roof over their head, is too cold or is too hot, the remaining surplus then can be utilised for wants.

That 30% simply shows just how much greed fucks this world up.

We practically throw away more food daily than it would take to feed everyone.