Steven Bartlett had been turning over a claim he attributes to Elon Musk: that AI, robots and more energy will bring an age of abundance in which people no longer need money. But he kept coming back to a house on Miami Beach. Even if nobody had to worry about food or bills, people would still want the best plot.
“But still, humans pursue scarcity,” Bartlett said in his conversation with physicist Brian Greene on The Diary of a CEO. “We pursue status.” Beachfront plots are finite. So are Nobel Prizes. People would still have things to compete for, even if machines could supply their everyday needs.
His question to Greene was why we keep striving. Greene’s answer moved from the prospect of automated plenty to something much older: the knowledge that we die, and the desire to leave a mark.
Abundant necessities, scarce distinction
The exchange separates two kinds of scarcity. Food and routine manufactured goods can become more plentiful as production improves. The abundance scenario Bartlett described imagines AI and robots doing much of that production, supported by plentiful energy. It is a proposed future, not a description of an economy that has already arrived.
A sought-after location is different. Building more comfortable homes does not give everyone the same stretch of Miami Beach. There is a physical limit to that location, alongside the status attached to owning it.
A prestigious prize illustrates a related limit: part of its value comes from distinguishing its recipients from everybody else. More scientific discoveries could benefit everyone without making everyone a Nobel laureate. Goods valued partly for their relative standing are called positional goods. Production can improve what people have without giving everyone a place at the top.
That distinction does not depend on Greene’s explanation of human motivation. It is possible to recognize the limits of beachfront land and elite recognition without accepting that mortality drives the desire for them. Greene’s contribution to the conversation was an account of why distinction might remain compelling after material needs were met.
The origins of Greene’s mortality argument
Greene traced his thinking to Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, which he read in his twenties. The Ernest Becker Foundation describes the 1973 book as an account of the human need for heroism: awareness of eventual death, often outside conscious attention, can push people to make their existence significant. Achievement offers a symbolic way of resisting disappearance.
Reading Becker had a dual effect on Greene. It gave him a framework for understanding a finite life, but also encouraged him to think constantly about his own death—a curious way to go through life, as he put it.
In Greene’s account, knowing that life ends can create an urge to do something special, so that “in some symbolic way you continue to exist even after you are gone.” Recognition promises more than pleasure today. It offers the possibility that other people will remember you tomorrow, and after your death.
He used dynastic kings as an example. Power gives a king command during his lifetime, but hereditary rule also lets him imagine continuing through his descendants. In Greene’s reading, the dynasty offers a kind of symbolic survival. The throne becomes a way of outliving yourself.
Greene develops the wider argument in his 2020 book Until the End of Time. In the publisher’s opening-chapter excerpt, he connects mortality awareness to commitments that extend beyond an individual lifetime: family, movements, religion, nations and creative work. Following Becker, he treats these as ways of seeking continuity and significance despite the body’s impermanence.
Those examples also broaden the idea beyond winning. A commitment to something enduring need not involve an exclusive prize or a superior address. Greene’s mortality argument concerns the search for meaning as well as the contest for rank.
The objection: ending deprivation still matters
The persistence of status competition would not make material abundance worthless. Reliable food, warmth and relief from unaffordable bills would remain gains even if some people continued competing for prestigious homes and awards. A person need not become less hungry than someone else to benefit from having enough to eat.
Bartlett’s challenge therefore bears on the stronger promise—that abundance would remove competition altogether—not on the value of reducing deprivation. Nor does the continued existence of scarce prizes, by itself, settle whether money would remain necessary. It leaves a question about how scarce goods would be allocated, rather than providing a complete economic answer.
Becker and Greene offer an interpretation of ambition, not an established explanation of every competitive act. Greene himself described mortality as part of the reason people seek distinction. His king wants power as well as continuation through descendants; the argument does not require one motive to exclude the other.
Could people choose to stop competing?
Greene allowed that recognizing the motive might help people change it. “It isn’t the case that we have to always be the way we have been,” he said.
His suggestion was that, in a materially abundant world, people might notice how much scarcity they manufacture to feel special and find other ways to achieve that feeling. That would change the value attached to winning, rather than multiply the winning positions. It would not create more of the same beachfront, but it might reduce the need to own it as proof of a worthwhile life.
Greene offered this as a possibility, not a program with demonstrated results. “I’m not particularly optimistic that that’s what will happen,” he said. The unresolved question is how awareness of a motive becomes a different way of living, especially when other people continue to reward status.
Would longer lives change the drive for legacy?
Earlier in the conversation, Bartlett and Greene approached the same problem through time. Bartlett argued that a longer horizon can change decisions: someone given a year to build a business might take shortcuts, while someone given twenty years might invest in stronger foundations. Could a much longer life similarly change what people pursue?
Greene agreed that time horizons shape choices, but doubted that extending a finite life would remove the underlying concern. In his hypothetical example, someone approaching 450 or 475 in a 500-year lifespan might confront the thoughts people now have at 70 or 80. A longer life could allow more projects without eliminating the desire to leave something behind.
His own writing supplied the tension. At thirty, taking four years to write a book could feel like an easy commitment. Now, Greene said, he chooses those undertakings more carefully. More time might change which books someone writes—even if it does not end the wish for a book to survive its author.