Three Futures: An Honest Analysis of Civilizational Probability
“Prophecy is the art of appearing wise by being vague. Intervention is the art of shifting probabilities through deliberate action.”
The Stakes of Honest Uncertainty
Here’s the dirty secret about futurists: they’re all lying to you.
Not maliciously—most genuinely believe their predictions. But every TED talk about “the future of work,” every breathless Medium post about AI utopia, every doomsayer hawking bunker subscriptions commits the same sin: overconfidence masquerading as clarity.
They present their preferred outcome as inevitable. Their feared outcome as avoidable through “raising awareness” (the thoughts-and-prayers of policy). And the messy, blood-and-mud complexity of actual history? Smoothed away in the final edit.
This is intellectually dishonest. Worse, it’s strategically stupid.
The Unscarcity Project operates differently. We acknowledge what every poker player knows: the future is a probability distribution, not a destination. The path to abundance-based civilization is one of several trajectories, each with distinct mechanisms, each with intervention points where deliberate action changes the odds.
This article examines three civilizational futures with clear eyes—because understanding where we’re probably headed beats confident delusion:
Scenario A: Star Wars — Elite capture leads to techno-feudalism (~62% probability, the default)
Scenario B: Trojan Horse — The EXIT Protocol succeeds, elites defect to abundance (~28% probability, the hope)
Scenario C: Patchwork World — Partial adoption creates coexisting systems (~10% probability as fallback if B partially succeeds)
These numbers aren’t predictions. They’re honest assessments based on historical patterns, game theory, and ten thousand years of evidence about what humans do with power. More importantly, they’re mutable. The entire purpose of the Unscarcity framework is to shift these odds.
Let’s examine each with the kind of rigor you’d want from your oncologist.
Scenario A: Star Wars — The River’s Current
Probability: ~62%
Timeline: 2025-2045
Mechanism: Elite capture of AI, robotics, and energy
The Vision
By 2045, the world resembles a high-tech feudal system with better UX.
A small class of technology owners—the heirs of today’s AI labs, sovereign wealth funds, and the seven people who understood transformer architecture early enough—control the infrastructure of abundance. They own the robots, the AI agents, the energy grid, the genetic patents, the life extension clinics.
The masses aren’t enslaved in the traditional sense. That would require effort. They’re simply economically unnecessary. The factories run without them. The fields harvest without them. The code writes itself. The decisions optimize themselves.
A permanent UBI exists—enough calories and Netflix to prevent revolution, insufficient for dignity. People have bread, screens, and carefully managed dopamine. They do not have purpose, agency, or power.
The new aristocracy lives in bio-secure enclaves, extends their lifespans by decades, and sends their children to terraform Mars while the rest of humanity marinates in subsidized obsolescence, scrolling through content generated by AI trained on the culture they used to create.
This is not a conspiracy. It’s thermodynamics. Power flows downhill unless you build a dam.
Why This Is the Default (Not a Warning—A Weather Report)
The Star Wars scenario requires no coordination, no trust, no novel institutions, no courage. It is simply the industrial revolution pattern repeating at digital speed—and we’ve run this experiment before.
Consider the mechanism:
1. Capital Concentration
AI and robotics require massive upfront investment. Those who own capital today capture the tools of abundance tomorrow. This isn’t ideology; it’s arithmetic.
The latest World Inequality Report tells the story in one brutal statistic: the richest 0.001%—fewer than 60,000 people—now own three times more wealth than the poorest half of humanity combined. The top 10% control 75% of global wealth. The bottom 50%? They split 2%.
That’s not a starting position. That’s a final score.
2. Winner-Take-All Dynamics
Network effects and economies of scale favor consolidation like gravity favors falling. The best AI gets more data, improves faster, attracts more investment, attracts more users, generates more data. Rinse, repeat, monopolize.
OpenAI’s valuation went from zero to $150 billion in five years. That’s not market competition—that’s escape velocity.
3. Regulatory Capture
Incumbent power holders shape the rules to preserve their position. This is not cynicism; it’s job description. Intellectual property law, data ownership frameworks, “safety regulations” that somehow always require billion-dollar compliance departments—moats protecting existing players while wearing the clothes of public protection.
Every regulatory agency eventually gets captured by the industry it regulates. It’s called the iron law of oligarchy, and it has a 100% historical hit rate given enough time.
4. No Coordination Mechanism
The transition to abundance requires unprecedented global coordination. Scarcity-era institutions—nation-states, corporations, political parties—are structurally incapable of this. They’re running steam-age software on problems that require quantum thinking.
In the absence of coordination, power follows existing gradients. Water doesn’t run uphill without pumps.
5. Human Nature (The Part No One Wants to Talk About)
Fear, tribalism, and status competition are older than civilization. Elites have always protected their position. Egyptian pharaohs built pyramids to ensure their status extended into the afterlife. Mark Zuckerberg bought 700 acres in Hawaii.
Why would this time be different?
Historical Parallels: We’ve Seen This Movie
The pattern is ancient. Every major technological revolution follows the same arc:
The Agricultural Revolution (10,000 BCE): Farming produced surplus, enabling specialization. The surplus was captured by priest-kings and warrior elites. The majority became peasants, legally bound to land they didn’t own. This system persisted for ten thousand years. That’s not a bug. That’s the default.
The Industrial Revolution (1750-1900): Mechanization multiplied productive capacity by orders of magnitude. Factory owners captured the gains. Workers faced 16-hour days, child labor, and subsistence wages until violent labor movements—actual violence, actual dead bodies—forced redistribution. Even then, the Gilded Age made the robber barons richer than any pharaoh.
The Digital Revolution (1990-2020): The internet promised decentralization and democratization. We were all going to have personal websites and equal voices. Instead, five companies captured the majority of value. Data became the new oil, controlled by platform monopolies. Gig economy workers have less job security than factory workers in 1890—but with an app to manage their desperation.
Each revolution increased total wealth while concentrating control. The AI revolution will be no different unless deliberate intervention changes the pattern.
The question isn’t whether the pattern will repeat. The question is whether we’ll do something about it.
This Isn’t Science Fiction—It’s Current Trajectory
I’m not warning you about a possible future. I’m describing where we’re already going.
Observe:
-
Wealth concentration is accelerating: In the United States, the top 1% now owns 40.5% of national wealth—more than any other OECD country. The average member of the bottom 50% holds $9,000. The average member of the top 1% holds $16.5 million. That’s not inequality—it’s two different species sharing a tax jurisdiction.
-
AGI timelines are collapsing: In 2020, median expert predictions put AGI around 2060. By December 2024, Metaculus forecasters average 25% chance of AGI by 2027 and 50% by 2031. CEOs of OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Anthropic all predict AGI within five years. The window for intervention is measured in electoral cycles, not generations.
-
Life extension is being developed privately: The first generation of radical life extension will be available to those who can afford the San Francisco Bay Area’s private medical facilities. This creates a biological class divide—not just different bank accounts, but different lifespans.
-
UBI discussions are already framed as appeasement: When tech billionaires advocate for UBI, listen to the subtext: “Give them enough to not riot while we automate their jobs.” That’s not liberation. That’s crowd control with a wellness brand.
Star Wars isn’t speculative fiction. It’s the current trajectory with no course correction applied.
Success Criteria for Scenario A (How You’ll Know We Lost)
How do we know if we’re in the Star Wars timeline? The markers are observable:
- By 2030: AI capabilities concentrated in 3-5 global entities. Open-source alternatives exist but lag by 2+ generations.
- By 2032: First commercial life extension therapy available only to individuals with net worth above $50M.
- By 2035: UBI exists in 10+ countries but remains pegged at subsistence level. No political mechanism exists to increase it.
- By 2040: Unemployment exceeds 30% in developed nations. “New jobs” are servants for the elite class (security, personal services, experience design for the wealthy).
- By 2045: A permanent two-tier society is normalized. The “baseline” class accepts their role. Political agency has collapsed.
This is the default. It requires no novel action. It is the river’s current.
To avoid it, we must swim.
Scenario B: Trojan Horse — The EXIT Protocol Works
Probability: ~28%
Timeline: 2025-2040 (requires critical mass by 2035)
Mechanism: Elites voluntarily defect to abundance
The Vision
By 2040, the transition to abundance-based civilization is underway. Not because the masses revolted (spoiler: they rarely do successfully). Not because governments suddenly became enlightened (even bigger spoiler). But because enough elites took the deal.
The EXIT Protocol offered the wealthy and powerful something their money could no longer buy: meaning, legacy, and time itself. In exchange for decommissioning their extractive power structures and integrating their assets into the Foundation, they received priority access to the Frontier: life extension, interstellar exploration, consciousness research, and founding roles in humanity’s next chapter.
Critically, they were reframed not as losers surrendering their winnings—but as founders building something worth owning. The architects of the transition. The ones wise enough to trade obsolete power for enduring significance.
The tipping point came when the first prominent defector publicly embraced the protocol. Then another. Then a sovereign wealth fund. Then a nation-state. The cascade accelerated as defection became high-status. By 2035, clinging to the old order became an embarrassment—the social equivalent of still having a fax machine.
This is not utopia. Inequality persists during transition. Some elites hoard longer than others. The process is messy, with regional collapses and institutional failures. But the overall trajectory shifts: abundance is distributed, the Foundation is implemented, and humanity dodges techno-feudalism.
The Mechanism: Why Would Anyone Give Up Power?
The EXIT Protocol is not altruism. It is strategic self-interest applied to post-scarcity conditions. It works because money is about to stop working.
Consider the game theory:
The Elite’s Dilemma in 2025:
- Option A (Hold): Maintain current wealth and power. Continue extractive capitalism. Protect assets through legal and political capture.
- Option B (Exit): Trade assets for Frontier access and founding status. Embrace abundance distribution. Relinquish control.
Option A seems rational under scarcity logic. But scarcity logic becomes obsolete when abundance is achievable. The critical insight: money is valuable only in a scarcity economy.
In a post-scarcity world, dollars cannot buy:
- Life extension (it requires civic trust and global coordination, not capital)
- Interstellar missions (coordination and resource pooling, not cash)
- Consciousness research breakthroughs (open collaboration, not NDAs)
- Legacy (meaning, not monuments that crumble)
Here’s the pitch to a 72-year-old billionaire: “You have $10B and statistically ten years to live. That money cannot extend your life—medical breakthroughs require the kind of global coordination and data sharing you cannot purchase with any number of zeros. But if you integrate your institutional knowledge into the Foundation, you become a founding contributor. Priority access to life extension protocols. You trade obsolete wealth for time itself.”
The EXIT Protocol offers elites what they truly want: to matter in the future, not just the present.
The Pitch Variants
For aging billionaires (The Mortality Pitch):
“You can be remembered as the last of the pharaohs, or the first of the founders. Vanderbilt is forgotten. Washington endures.”
For dynastic wealth holders (The Legacy Pitch):
“Your children will inherit a world where your capital is worthless. Leave them money in a collapsing system, or leave them founding status in the new one.”
For visionaries (The Frontier Pitch):
“You want to go to Mars, merge with AI, explore Titan. These require planetary coordination impossible under nation-state capitalism. The Frontier exists only in the new architecture. Join, or watch from Earth while others explore the stars.”
For power-seekers (The Status Pitch):
“Early defectors will be celebrated. Holdouts will be seen as cowards clinging to obsolescence. You can be a founder or a fossil.”
Historical Precedents: Elite Defection Is Real
Elite defection is not unprecedented. History shows that ruling classes voluntarily relinquish power when offered dignified exits:
The Meiji Restoration (1868, Japan): Samurai elites—2 million hereditary warriors consuming 30% of national budget—voluntarily dismantled feudalism in exchange for founding roles in the modern Japanese state. The alternative was colonization and irrelevance. Defection was rational. Japan industrialized in decades while avoiding civil war.
The British Aristocracy (1900-1950): Landed gentry gradually ceded political power in exchange for cultural prestige and economic integration. The alternative was what happened in Russia. They chose to be wealthy commoners rather than executed nobles.
South Africa’s Transition (1990s): Apartheid elites surrendered control in exchange for amnesty and economic participation. The alternative was civil war. They calculated correctly.
The pattern: Elites defect when the cost of holding exceeds the benefit of exiting, and when the exit preserves dignity.
The EXIT Protocol applies this pattern to the AI transition.
The Critical Timeline: 2025-2035
The Trojan Horse scenario requires early success. If the first defectors don’t emerge by 2030, the window closes. Techno-feudalism consolidates. Network effects lock in. Star Wars becomes inevitable.
The key milestones:
- 2026-2028: Proof-of-concept. At least one major philanthropist, tech founder, or sovereign wealth fund publicly embraces the protocol and begins asset integration.
- 2028-2030: Early adopter cascade. 5-10 high-profile defections. Media coverage shifts from “fringe experiment” to “serious alternative.”
- 2030-2032: Institutional tipping point. A nation-state adopts elements of the MOSAIC. A major corporation restructures around Impact Points.
- 2032-2035: Mainstream legitimacy. EXIT Protocol becomes the default framework for next-generation wealth holders. Scarcity thinking is culturally obsolete among opinion-makers.
If this timeline is achieved, Scenario B becomes likely. If not, we default to Scenario A.
Scenario C: Patchwork World — The Realistic Fallback
Probability: ~10% (as independent outcome; higher if B partially succeeds)
Timeline: 2025-2150
Mechanism: Regional adoption creates coexisting systems
The Vision
By 2050, Earth is not unified. It’s a patchwork of coexisting civilizational models—and that might be okay.
Zone 1 — Unscarcity Regions: Northern Europe, Singapore, parts of East Asia, select city-states, and network communities have implemented the Foundation framework. They have functional MOSAIC governance, Impact economies, and abundant baselines. Life expectancy exceeds 120 years. Citizens are free, purposeful, and thriving.
Zone 2 — Hybrid Economies: North America, parts of South America, and India operate dual systems. Legacy capitalism persists alongside Foundation pilots. UBI exists but is politically contested. AI governance is partial. Wealth inequality remains high but no longer existential.
Zone 3 — Holdouts: Authoritarian states, captured democracies, and regions controlled by legacy oligarchs resist the transition. They maintain scarcity-based control. Citizens are economically trapped. Brain drain is severe.
Zone 4 — Collapse Zones: Regions that couldn’t manage the Labor Cliff. Permanent economic depression, warlordism, or neo-feudalism. Humanitarian intervention from Zone 1 is ongoing.
This is messy, uneven, and contested. But it’s also stable. The zones coexist for decades. Over time, comparison effects and migration pressures gradually shift the balance toward abundance. By 2150, convergence becomes likely.
Why Patchwork Is Realistic
The assumption that humanity will adopt a single civilizational model is ahistorical. Major transitions always proceed unevenly:
- Democracy: 200+ years from Atlantic Revolutions to current spread. Many regions still resist.
- Industrialization: Began in Britain in 1750. Still incomplete in 2025.
- Internet adoption: Reached 50% global penetration only in 2017—25 years after commercialization.
Global adoption of abundance-based civilization within 20 years would be historically unprecedented. Patchwork is the realistic expectation given human social friction.
The Comparison Effect: How Convergence Eventually Happens
The critical dynamic isn’t military conflict. It’s visibility.
When Zone 1 regions visibly outperform Zone 3 holdouts across every metric—life expectancy, mental health, innovation, environmental sustainability, happiness—political pressure to transition becomes overwhelming.
This is how democracy spread. Not primarily through war, but through demonstration. Citizens in authoritarian states looked at democratic neighbors and demanded change. The same applies to abundance.
The Brain Drain Mechanism:
If Unscarcity regions offer universal baseline dignity, Frontier opportunities, and transparent governance—then every talented individual in Zone 3 has incentive to leave. Over time, Zone 3 collapses from talent exodus.
The Demonstration Effect:
One successful pilot is worth 1,000 white papers. When Singapore or Estonia implements a functional MOSAIC and demonstrates lower crime, higher innovation, and greater life satisfaction, neighboring regions face overwhelming pressure to adopt the model.
Convergence timeline: 3-5 generations (by 2150). Not ideal, but survivable.
Key Variables That Shift Probabilities
These scenarios aren’t fated. Specific variables determine which path we take:
1. Speed of AI Capability Growth
- Fast takeoff (AGI by 2027): Favors Scenario A. Elites capture capabilities before coordination is possible.
- Moderate takeoff (AGI by 2030-2035): Opens window for Scenario B. Time exists for EXIT Protocol adoption.
- Slow takeoff (AGI after 2040): Increases likelihood of Scenario C. Patchwork adoption has time to develop.
Current trajectory: Metaculus gives 25% probability of AGI by 2027. Industry leaders predict 5 years. This is fast takeoff territory—favoring Scenario A unless intervention accelerates.
2. Elite Defection Rate
- Zero early defectors by 2030: Scenario A becomes 80%+ likely.
- 1-3 high-profile defectors by 2030: Scenario B becomes 40%+ likely.
- 10+ defectors by 2032: Scenario B becomes 60%+ likely.
This is the most manipulable variable. Finding and converting the first defectors is the highest-leverage intervention point.
3. Energy Transition Timing
- Fusion breakthrough by 2030: Abundance becomes undeniable. Accelerates all scenarios.
- Fusion delayed until 2040+: Scarcity persists longer. Strengthens status quo (Scenario A).
4. Demonstration Success
- Early Foundation pilots fail visibly: Discredits model. Scenario A strengthens.
- Early pilots succeed: Demonstration effect accelerates Scenario B or C.
5. Public Consciousness
- Techno-feudalism is normalized: Scenario A becomes culturally accepted (“that’s just how technology works”).
- Abundance expectations rise: Pressure for Scenario B or C increases.
Intervention, Not Prophecy
This analysis is not prophecy. It is intervention.
The act of clearly articulating these scenarios changes their probabilities. When elites understand the EXIT Protocol as strategic opportunity rather than surrender, defection becomes more likely. When publics understand the default path as techno-feudalism rather than inevitable progress, political will shifts.
The goal is not to predict the future. The goal is to make Scenario B more probable and Scenario C an acceptable fallback.
We reject false certainty. We embrace honest probability. We acknowledge that the default path is grim. And we act anyway.
Because the alternative to trying is the certainty of Scenario A.
The scenarios are known. The variables are understood. The timeline is clear.
The question isn’t “Which future will happen?” The question is “Which future are we building?”
Now we build.
Related Articles:
- The Sovereign EXIT Protocol — How superpowers and billionaires transition
- The Labor Cliff — Why default paths lead to capture
- Proof-of-Diversity — Making centralization architecturally impossible
- Free Zone Economics — Why patchwork succeeds
Sources:
- World Inequality Report 2026 — Global wealth concentration data
- Inequality.org — Top 1% ownership statistics
- 80,000 Hours AGI Timeline Review — Expert forecasts
- Metaculus AGI Forecasts — Probability distributions
Status: Living Document
Last Updated: 2025-12-17
Next Review: Quarterly reassessment based on elite defection indicators and pilot outcomes
