The price of life. - Philosophical Sink

At the moment, a person's occupation is a means to survive, through  the acquisition of money which is used to pay for sustenance, a place to  live, and peripheral desires.  The acquisition of these things drives  many in their ambitions. Some are lucky enough to have combined their  passion with the means to survive; they get paid for doing something  they love. For some, the attraction is the abstract idea of  wealth rather than what it can buy. But the wealth is what gets the  rest. Survival is purchased; is contingent on affording it.       

What if it weren't?       

Right now, the energy required to produce certain things, like  food and materials, drives their value. Imagine if we tapped a source of  energy and found it to be, while not infinite, at least practically  inexhaustible. If the energy were surplus to such a degree, the price  would become meaningless. Then anything could be had simply for the vanishingly small price of the energy required to make it.     

What happens to capitalism, since it depends on the  competitiveness of industries to drive the market? With surplus energy,  the market is no longer necessary because there is nothing left to be  offered or to buy. There is nothing worth paying for, because everything  can be had - can be thought up and made - by individuals for practically  nothing. A population is limited by the least plentiful resource. This  scarcity determines the upper limit to a population's growth, in numbers  and potential. Energy is the limiting factor now, but when it becomes  inexhaustible, the capacity of the entire system will increase until it  is stopped by the next limiting factor.     

Energy and matter are interchangeable, so the next limiting  factor would   have to be something that is not strictly defined as  either: human   imagination. When this happens, acquisition of wealth,  whether for itself or for its associated rewards, will no longer be a  driving force. The ambitions of a person will be stripped of abstract  value, leaving only personal valuation and aspiration. This will be the  only reason for doing anything, not because you must, but because you want to. Our actions will no longer be dictated by survival.       

This might seem idyllic, a life without worry or danger. But this  is itself the danger, that we become too comfortable, everything within  reach, that we forget how to aspire, how to reach beyond what we have  to what may be waiting for us to discover it. Laziness and indolence  will become so easy to fall into, and, once succumbed to, one has no  need to ever escape, and so never will.      This means the only thing maintaining our own development will be  our own ideas. If one can sustain the edge of their senses, and the  strength of their will, and the thirst of their curiosity, then nothing  will be hidden from them, and no goal set that cannot be achieved.