What is the main argument Robinson is making?What is a reasonable counter argument to this economic argument?

Switzerland, calculated that if all the energy consumed by households were 16 divided by the total number of humans alive, each would have the use of about 2,000 watts of power, meaning about 48 kilowatt-hours per day. The society's members then tried living on that amount of electricity to see what it was like: they found it was fine. It took paying attention to energy use, but the resulting life was by no means a form of suffering; it was even reported to feel more Possibly some of the richest two percent of the world's population have stylish and meaningful to those who undertook the experiment. decided to give up on the pretense that "progress" or "development" or So, is there energy enough for all? Yes. Is there food enough for all? Yes. Is 'prosperity" can be achieved for all eight billion of the world's people. For quite there housing enough for all? There could be, there is no real problem there. Same for clothing. Is there health care enough for all? Not yet, but there could a long time, a century or two, this "prosperity for all" goal had been the line taken; that although there was inequality now, if everyone just stuck to the be; it's a matter of training people and making small technological objects, there is no planetary constraint on that one. Same with education. So all the necessities program and did not rock the boat, the rising tide would eventually float even the for a good life are abundant enough that everyone alive could have them. Food, most high-and-dry among them. But early in the twenty-first century it became water, shelter, clothing, health care, education. clear that the planet was incapable of sustaining everyone alive at Western Is there enough security for all? Security is the feeling that results from being levels, and at that point the richest pulled away into their fortress mansions, confident that you will have all the things listed above, and your children will bought the governments or disabled them from action against them, and bolted have them too. So it is a derivative effect. There can be enough security for all; their doors to wait it out until some poorly theorized better time, which really but only if all have security. came down to just the remainder of their lives, and perhaps the lives of their If one percent of the humans alive controlled everyone's work, and took far children if they were feeling optimistic- beyond that, apres moi le deluge. more than their share of the benefits of that work, while also blocking the project A rational response to an intractable problem. But not really. There was of equality and sustainability however they could, that project would become scientifically supported evidence to show that if the Earth's available resources more difficult. This would go without saying, except that it needs saying. were divided up equally among all eight billion humans, everyone would be fine. To be clear, concluding in brief: there is enough for all. So there should be no They would all be at adequacy, and the scientific evidence very robustly more people living in poverty. And there should be no more billionaires. Enough supported the contention that people living at adequacy, and confident they should be a human right, a floor below which no one can fall; also a ceiling would stay there (a crucial point), were healthier and thus happier than rich above which no one can rise. Enough is a good as a feast- or better. people. So the upshot of that equal division would be an improvement for all. Arranging this situation is left as an exercise for the reader. Rich people would often snort at this last study, then go off and lose sleep over their bodyguards, tax lawyers, legal risks- children crazy with arrogance, love not at all fungible- over-eating and over-indulgence generally, resulting health problems, ennui and existential angst- in short, an insomniac faceplant into the realization that science was once again right, that money couldn't buy health or love or happiness. Although it has to be added that a reliable sufficiency of money is indeed necessary to scaffold the possibility of those good things. The happy medium, the Goldilocks zone in terms of personal income, according to sociological analyses, seemed to rest at around 100,000 US dollars a year, or about the same amount of money that most working scientists made, which was a little suspicious in several senses, but there it stood: data. And one can run the math. The 2,000 Watt Society, started in 1998 in