It is pretty lucky that we are only 93 million miles away from exactly that :)
I actually did the calculations back in the early 1990s of how many dollars you could generate by capturing all the solar output combined with synthetic labor. It is something on the order of 10^24 times the entire world GDP. When you have that level of resources then scarcity ceases to be a concern.
TBH I do agree that this is possible; I just think we have a long way to go as a civilization just in terms of basic human empathy and decency in addition to the technical challenges. And the technical challenges pale in the face of the sociological ones. I think that a lot of the oppression that happens in the world isn't driven by scarcity but by bigotry and prejudice.
I think it is a bit of a circle - our economic system requires bigotry and prejudice and these in turn help support our current economic system. Break the need for oppression of the poor and my hope is we stop oppressing.
I hope you're right! A lot of the assumptions surrounding scarcity are so deeply-ingrained into the way we think that it's difficult to speculate on what would happen otherwise.
I actually did the calculations back in the early 1990s of how many dollars you could generate by capturing all the solar output combined with synthetic labor. It is something on the order of 10^24 times the entire world GDP. When you have that level of resources then scarcity ceases to be a concern.