Hi ruthgrace,

This is my first post on this forum but I had to jump in.  Pls be gentle, as I'll try also. I'm not directing this at your post as much as trying to collaborate with it.  Hopefully, not making a forum etiquette mistake.

I love, love the topic of abundance.  It's literally my life's obsession.  I've worked on it for 20 years and started a company towards that end 7 years ago.

You did a great job putting all the info together with sources. I'm fully convinced that abundance is THE future and is actually attainable in a mere 2-15 years, with caveats.  To accomplish this, I've created a plan that's underway but that's for another post.

What most people don't reference about Abundance.

Abundance in many areas drives it in others.  To reach full abundance, where literally everything is abundant (and cheap enough for all to afford), you simply need to make the root drivers abundant.  When things become truly abundant, a few things happen.  The price drops because it's literally too cheap to sell.  The thought of selling grass clippings seems silly but water was too, before it got mopolized became scarce in bottles.  If enough people in a community had the capability to cheaply make excess of a thing, that thing becomes abundant.  All we need to do is foster an environment where thing-making magic boxes became affordable.  The economy will do the rest and policies would quickly fall as public opinion migrated.

What are the root drivers of all abundance?

To drive any group into becoming a civilized community working towards abundance, you only need to give them money and energy.  Making these two pieces abundant to them will drive the rest at the fastest exponential rate they can tolerate.

For example:

Starting with a hypothetical village in Nowhere, Africa...

Should some entity donate and install a mythical factory to build clean energy systems and pay operating costs for a few years, this factory would satisfy both requirements.

The salaries could be extremely low, compared to the developed countries, yet very high for the local cost of living.  This is direct cash to those people which has a huge multiplier effect.  I had placed it around 20x but another comment's referenced link suggests that it may be 100-500x.  Either way, this money is going to create an economy around local goods & services plus importing consumer goods.

What gets imported?  I would suggest that things like kitchen and home appliances, followed by transportation and farming goods would be initial candidates.  Since these require energy, they would propagate from the factory workers first.  However, the benefits would reach others and grow interest.

Second level multipliers would stem from local service providers (food, water, building materials, daycare style support things) which would rise in wages paid. Others would include installation and service work on the appliances imported.  I'm sure the rest of the picture is clear that this eventually builds to a full community, exponentially approaching a developed community.

Once the standard of living rose to where more people than just the employees could afford the energy systems, the parent company of the factory could reduce the discount on the system and begin to break even.  Beyond that, it might take longer to return it's investment or a profit, if that ever became viable.

So what was the resulting multiplier effect of the cost of installing the factory plus the up-fronting of a few years' operating costs?

If said factory cost $10M and the operating cost (including materials) was $5M/yr for 5 years, that would total $35M.  We have our denominator.

But the numerator is much more difficult.  Some may suggest that it's the salaries plus their second level effects.  I don't think that's fair.  I think that we should include every benefit this community received out to the full reach this new commerce reached.  If a local school or university was built nearby after a decade, wouldn't that count?  I could be optimistic here, but I see it literally changing every aspect of everyone's life that's involved... beyond the seeable future.

In other words, our numerator seem undefined or in lay terms, immeasurable. Even if it was only 100x after time, this would be directly beneficial from the day construction began.

Isn't this the goal of EA?

It's for this reason that I'm severely confused as to why EA and other similar entities focuses so heavily on policy, research, awareness and other things that only may lead to some potential future benefit.  To my way of thinking, outlined here, wouldn't this type of path be more desirable?