The American Economic Association says [economics is] ‘the study of scarcity …’ Anything and everything in a market is implicitly defined as scarce. With scarcity as the main principle, the mindset that follows is based on commoditization of goods and services.”
— Robin Wall Kimmerer in The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World
I was listening to Ms. Wall Kimmerer’s book this morning while I drove between client appointments. And this section felt somehow like the key that turned the lock on something I’ve been struggling to make sense of for a while now.
Lately I feel like we’re living in the twilight zone. We hear on the news, from our politicians, from our religious leaders, or at our company town halls that times are tough. That our employers must lay off their most valuable employees, that our retailers have no other choice but to raise prices, that our salaries have been artificially inflated and need a reset, that AI is to blame for our loss of income, and that, as a result, us normal working stiffs must buckle down and weather the storm through whatever means necessary.
Meanwhile, the income gap between the richest of the rich and the rest of us continues to widen, our companies are reporting record profits, and the stock market continues to climb.
It’s almost as if the scarcity described by the elite few is not actually real. Perhaps there is actually plenty to go around if it wasn’t being gobbled up by greedy billionaires. Perhaps theses same people who are hoarding our society’s precious resources are doing so not just to enrich their own lives with yachts and private jets, but to create a false sense of scarcity. And maybe that false scarcity is designed not only to commoditize goods and services, but also to commoditize people.
Seen through this lens, one of the commoditization of people and the false story of scarcity, a lot of things start to make sense. Consider the following actions taken by some of our wealthiest fellow citizens in recent months:
- the push to replace people with AI (machines are easier to commoditize than people)
- the newest space race (an attempt to satisfy the craving for more and more wealth and the resources that drive it)
- the collapse of the employer-employee contract (we’re easier to commoditize if we are so busy trying to survive that we don’t have the time or energy to resist)
If you can create a sense of scarcity, whether real or perceived, you can affect the behavior of those who are experiencing it. And when those people act to protect themselves from the scarcity, they create a vicious circle whereby fabricated scarcity generates real scarcity.
Before you know it, we’re all out here fighting with each other over the last scraps of a meager existence while the tech bros, mega church pastors and paid-for politicians run off with the rest. It’s like The Great Gatsby, only in real life.
What if we just decided we weren’t going to play this game anymore? What if we chose not to fight over the scraps? What if we made the conscious decision to reject the fable of scarcity and, instead, chose to work together, to pool our resources, to shift our collective mindset away from scarcity and towards abundance?
Maybe we can do better for ourselves, for our families, for our communities, our workplaces and even for society as a whole if we reject the scarcity story we’re being fed and instead create our own story, our own lived experience, centered around abundance.
And maybe it starts with each and every one of us committing to abundance, which we accomplish by working with our friends and neighbors to put energy back into our neighborhoods and communities. Because when everyone does their part, the small investments compound at a much faster and higher rate.
It doesn’t have to be some extravagant expenditure. Our investments could be as simple as putting a few cans in the little free pantry after our grocery trip each week or volunteering a few hours at our local senior center on the weekend. Maybe we shovel our neighbor’s sidewalk after it snows or bring their garbage can up from the curb on trash day. Maybe we bring our coworker a coffee when we stop for our own morning caffeine fix. Perhaps we start a side gig providing a necessary service in your community. Something like house painting or HVAC repair or kettlecorn. Really, it’s the little things that show that we care about and that we want whats best for each other. While it might feel like just a drop in the bucket when we’re doing it, every lake, river, sea, and ocean is really just made up of lots of tiny drops, right?
So what’s the least you could do to reinvigorate your neighborhood, community, or workplace? To put some good back into the system? To invest in the success of the people around you?
Let’s work together to rewrite the false scarcity narrative and to reclaim our neighborhoods, communities, and workplaces, but most of all our people. We have the power to make the change, but we have to be willing to step away from the story we’re being fed and, instead, create our own. Who’s with me?
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