The difference between abundance and scarcity defines all of our interactions in the marketplace today (and almost all of our interactions are, indeed, relegated to the marketplace). It’s on this margin where we make the choice to be generous or withholding, communitarian or solitary, mindful or suspicious.
“Modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity,” Marshall Sahlins writes in The Original Affluent Society, his theory concerning the affluence of the hunter-gatherer society.
This should come as no shock — after all, the allocation of scarce resources is presented as a central tenet of capitalist economic theory. No wonder a system predicated on pitting its adherents against one another for survival breeds contempt and untethered greed, as well as accelerating levels of anxiety and depression.
While our modern version of capitalism is excellent at increasing profits and raising GDP to unprecedented heights, and can be rightfully credited with lifting millions out of abject poverty, these are insufficiently supportive metrics for the full spectrum of human welfare.
