Needs, Resources, Goods, and Allocation Mechanisms in a Post-Labor Economy

We develop a unified economic framework for post-labor societies, in which autonomous machines perform the majority of production, scientific discovery, infrastructure management, and resource allocation. In this regime, energy costs approach zero, machines recursively produce machines, and technological progress becomes endogenously driven through machine-based production and scientific systems. The economy is formalized as an integrated structure linking resources, goods, and human needs under physical, spatial, temporal, and relational constraints. Resources include material inputs, location, time, and machine capacity, which jointly define a constrained production set. Goods are categorized as abundant, limited, or relational, while human needs are multidimensional and partially conflicting. Scarcity persists even under extreme abundance due to coordination limits, positional competition, and incompatibilities among heterogeneous needs. Scientific development and machine capital are modeled as a coupled recursive system, forming a closed machine--knowledge feedback loop that enhances future production capacity. We analyze three allocation mechanisms: market-based, algorithmic, and hybrid, and compare three governance regimes: centralized, decentralized, and hybrid. All mechanisms operate under explicit resource constraints, and outcomes are shaped by structural competition over access to resources, infrastructure, and governance, influencing the distribution of scarce and positional goods.