This reflection was prompted in part by a recent LinkedIn post from James Fierro on scarcity, abundance, and the changing economic question. Click here to view
It is an odd time to talk about possibility.
Perhaps we are asking the wrong economic question for the times we are now living in.
The world does not feel abundant. It feels tense, fractured, and uncertain. Wars continue. Economies wobble. People worry about prices, jobs, housing, safety, and what comes next. For many households, the language of abundance can sound detached from lived reality.
And yet something else is also true.
We are living through a period of astonishing technological acceleration. Artificial intelligence is improving rapidly. Digital tools are becoming more capable. Systems can now do things that, not long ago, seemed unlikely or even absurd. Productive capacity is growing. New forms of coordination are becoming possible.
That is what interests me.
Not the fantasy that all problems are about to disappear, but the possibility that we may increasingly be asking the wrong question.
For a long time, much of our economic thinking has been shaped by scarcity: not enough money, not enough resources, not enough opportunity, not enough capacity. That way of thinking has formed our institutions and our habits. It has taught us to ration, compete, guard, and prioritise. Sometimes rightly so. Scarcity is still real, and pretending otherwise would be foolish.
But what if some of our biggest failures today are not only failures of absence?
What if they are also failures of mobilisation?
What if, in more and more areas, the deeper question is no longer simply How do we create more? but also How do we unlock, connect, and use what already exists?
We can already see this pattern in everyday life.
In digital inclusion, the issue is often described as a lack of devices, internet access, skills, or funding. Those things matter. But often some of the needed pieces are already present: libraries, community organisations, digital tools, online services, local knowledge, and people who genuinely want to participate more fully. Yet the gap remains, because what exists is not always joined up, trusted, affordable, or explained in ways that fit everyday life.
We see a similar pattern in health access. Services may exist. Clinicians may exist. Appointment systems may exist. Community support may exist. Yet people still fall through the gaps because the system is fragmented, difficult to navigate, too digital for some, or too poorly coordinated around the realities of ordinary life.
And we see it again in skills, training, and workforce participation. Employers may need people. Courses may exist. Libraries, training providers, and online learning may all be available. But confidence, transport, guidance, affordability, recognised pathways, and practical support are often missing. The problem is not always pure shortage. It is that existing opportunity does not become reachable opportunity.
This is why I wonder whether some of our greatest challenges are no longer only about production, but about connection.
Not only economic in the narrow sense, but organisational, relational, and human.
The future may not belong simply to those who produce the most. It may belong to those who can best mobilise existing capacity for public good.
That means better systems. Better coordination. Better local trust. Better translation between technology and real life. Better ways of turning potential into practical benefit.
This is where digital inclusion becomes more than a side issue. It becomes part of a much bigger question: if society is becoming more technologically capable, who is helping ordinary people, families, seniors, and communities actually step into that capability?
Because unused capacity is not progress.
People are not included merely because a tool exists.
And abundance, if it is coming at all, will not arrive simply because the technology is impressive. It will depend on whether we can build the human systems that allow more people to benefit from what is already possible.
That seems to me one of the great tasks of our time.
Not to fantasise about a perfect future.
But to become agile enough, practical enough, and humane enough to recognise emerging possibility — and not let it sit there, unused.
The piece was developed collaboratively, blending Alistair’s lived experience with AI-assisted reflection.