Abundance is an excellent product name. It implies that nobody will have to decide who gets the last one.
Tesla's Master Plan Part IV presents a future built around AI, physical products, and broadly shared prosperity. Its guiding principles include the assertion that growth is infinite.1 TechCrunch revisited the abundance promises on October 1.2
An ambition this large deserves smaller questions. What gets cheaper first? Who can buy it? What must be built to deliver it? Which promises depend on other people doing their part? Those questions give a vision something to do after the presentation.
An imaginary abundance subscription
Picture a fictional service offering everyone a household assistant. The machine cooks, cleans, and repairs things. The promotional image contains no charging cable.
Suppose the technology works. There are still manufacturing costs, maintenance arrangements, liability questions, and households with different needs. Producing a capable machine does not decide how it is financed or whether the owner can afford the service when something breaks.
Now suppose competition makes the machine much cheaper. That would be a real gain. We need not diminish it because a better life remains more complicated than a product order.
The amusing leap happens when an improvement in one capability becomes a complete settlement of scarcity. A machine could save a person hours without choosing who controls those hours. A cheaper service could expand access while somebody else captures much of the benefit. Useful progress has distributional questions. They are allowed to attend the launch.
In our imaginary abundance company, the cheapest plan gives customers unlimited possibility. Actual interventions require the professional tier.
The things that cannot be copied into more of themselves
A digital instruction can be distributed widely. A specific location, a particular person's attention, and a shared public space present different problems.
These constraints do not prove that technological progress is futile. They help identify where the next decision sits. More efficient production can make many things accessible without making every desirable thing equally available to everyone at once.
Consider an invented neighborhood with abundant automated construction. Houses become easier to build. The residents still disagree about where to place them, how to fund utilities, and who bears the disruption. Construction has improved. Collective decision-making has acquired an extremely energetic contractor.
The contractor's brochure explains that disagreement is an obsolete feature of human civilization. The residents would like to retain it until the drainage plan is finished.
A mission needs milestones
A broad vision can organize useful work. The test is whether the organization can name an intermediate result whose success or failure changes its next decision.
For our fictional household machine, that might be a reliably completed task, an affordable maintenance contract, or a measurable reduction in the owner's workload. Each would deserve attention. None needs to arrive carrying the entire future of humanity.
A clear milestone also makes criticism less theatrical. We can ask whether a stated capability has improved and whether the product serves its intended user. We do not have to choose between believing in civilization and believing in the receipt.
Abundance might eventually describe a meaningful improvement in people's lives. Until then, it should have a specification, a price, and somebody responsible for support.
The future can keep its ambitious name. Please attach the delivery terms.