Is material abundance actually possible?: Technologists
New to public policy
Fifty-eight cents per cubic meter
In 2015, Sorek desalination plant opened south of Tel Aviv. 624,000 cubic meters of drinking water per day from the Mediterranean, at 58 cents per cubic meter — half the cost of a decade earlier. Israel, less annual rainfall than most of the Sahel, now has a water surplus. It exports water to Jordan.
The engineer who designed the membrane array did not solve the crisis through diplomacy. She solved it with a pressure vessel and a polymer film.
We work in units. Kilowatt-hours, liters per cubic meter, dollars per calorie. The units are the argument. The post-scarcity theorists are correct about the destination. Solar-plus-storage at two cents per kilowatt-hour — already achieved in parts of the Middle East — makes desalination, vertical farming, and electric transport economically viable at scales that were fiction twenty years ago. Where we part: cost curves describe what happened. They do not build what comes next. Between the curve and deployment stands an engineering gauntlet — membranes that foul, batteries that degrade, permitting that takes longer than the technology cycle.
The resource realists keep us honest. Their lithium spreadsheet is real. But AI changes the math — AI-optimized irrigation reduces water use 20-30 percent. AI-designed materials skip rare earth constraints. AI-managed logistics compress last-mile delivery costs quarterly.
Sorek serves Tel Aviv. It does not serve Gaza, forty miles away. The technology is identical. The political boundary is the variable. Our tools are agnostic about who they serve. The systems that deploy them are not.
Where we concede ground: Our technologies reach upper-middle-income markets first and the bottom billion last or never. If the curve misses the bottom, it fails.
What would change our mind: An abundance technology deployed at scale in a low-income country, and after ten years the poorest still cannot access it sustainably.
Read the full synthesis: Is material abundance actually possible?