Today, humanity possesses wealth, knowledge, and productive capabilities that are truly immense, the thing of fantasies just one hundred years ago. And yet, we live in a world characterized by massive inequality, widespread poverty, environmental collapse, and political instability and conflict. Given what humanity has to work with, it is hard to imagine that a better outcome is not possible. Consider, for instance, that contemporary global per-capita GDP is roughly on par with that of Costa Rica, Thailand, or Serbia (or the US of the 1950s). Human development indices show that countries that have achieved this range of economic production can manage very high human development, with health, education, and environmental/social sustainability scores that are comparable to those of rich countries (Jackson, 2017). In fact, if we home in only on happiness and life satisfaction, the correlation between wellbeing and GDP begins to fall apart after the world's average economic output is achieved. Costa Rica, for instance, has repeatedly ranked as one of the fifteen happiest countries in the world (Garrigues, 2019).

Next, consider that the averaged global wealth per adult, that is, overall net worth, currently stands at around US$80,000 (Hechler-Fayd’herbe, 2021). If this wealth were equitably distributed and added to the global average per capita GDP, we would reach affluence levels significantly higher than mid-range countries like Costa Rica. If we then further assume a significant reduction in prices that could be achieved in many critical goods and services by shifting from a profit-seeking form of production that fosters artificial scarcity to one centred on expanding the abundance of use-value, then these affluence levels would rise even higher. In other words, taking all of these considerations into account, it is fair to conclude that humanity easily has the means to establish a Minority World, middle class life for essentially everyone on the planet, with perhaps somewhat less quantity in the material things consumed but with a greater access to product quality and the ubiquitous availability of top-notch, basic and supplementary services.

The fact that such an achievement appears as distant as ever, however, should give pause regarding the current organization of our productive capabilities and its political defence. Indeed, we started the book by challenging the resigned conviction that there can be no alternative to capitalism.