We live in an age in which there is a widespread fear of the future. The idea of progress is being questioned or attacked openly by pre-modernists and postmodernists. Defending the future, crusading for Progress, ought to be a primary concern and goal for Objectivists. But in order to do so effectively, Objectivists need to cast off their conservative clinging to second-wave ideals, concerns and mental habits. Taking some cues from modern Epicureans as well as from hitech developers, visionaries and post-industrial esthetes like K. Eric Drexler, Michael Rothschild, and Barry Vacker , Objectivists could become a vanguard for progress.
Scarcity is a concept that covers a wide range.
There is a big difference between today's industrial wealth and a pre-industrial scarcity of resources. And yet the principal difference between abundance and scarcity is bigger and more fundamental than the difference between the extreme ends of scarcity. Abundance depends on the success and penetration of nanotechnology. The thing about nanomachines is that once they arrive, they will also be capable of building new nanomachines, like a controlled reproduction. This means that we'll leap-frog into an abundant society.