A World Without Scarcity

Imagine a world where you never go hungry, you never get sick, and you can build a house just by imagining it. At first it sounds like heaven, but C.S. Lewis uses it to describe his fictional version of hell:

What's the trouble about this place? Not that people are quarrelsome-that's only human nature and was always the same even on earth. The trouble is they have no Needs. You get everything you want (not very good quality, of course) by just imagining it. That's why it never costs any trouble to move to another street or build another house. In other words, there's no proper economic basis for any community life. If they needed real shops, chaps would have to stay near where the real shops were. If they needed real houses, they'd have to stay near where builders were. It's scarcity that enables a society to exist.

It's always challenging when you see a character in a book that reminds you of yourself. Later on this "hard-bitten man" is rebuked for trying too hard to improve people's lives in hell, while at the same time he ignores the benefits of heaven. Challenging stuff for a capitalist to hear.