Scarcity Mindset
The Economic Theory of Scarcity is a Dystopian Farce
Fiction loves putting the concept of scarcity at the core of its stories, creating depth and motive for characters, science fiction especially. From Thanos and his iconic snap to James Cameron’s Avatar and the evil humans harvesting the resources of Pandora, acting as a plague for Eywa and the Na’vi. The Walking Dead would not be a story if humanity wasn’t fighting for resources from Walkers and from each other, and while Dune is a great example of civilizations evolving to utilize resources such as “Spice” at their disposal for interstellar travel, conflict over this finite resource is what led to the destruction of House Atreides by Baron Harkonnen and his House.
I’m willing to bet that villains and antagonists are more known for having the motive of scarcity at their core development, leading them to mitigate and/or control that risk, but that being said, protagonists and heroes are not immune from having the concept in the back of their minds. Tony Stark was haunted by the threat of Thanos. Luke Skywalker feared the ending of the Jedi, seeking to bring their order back from extinction. And even in a real-world sense, the fear of the continued existence of the human race has been a major factor in Elon Musk’s desire to inhabit Mars. Now to be fair, he also believes that this new age space race inspires hope and excitement for the future, but again, scarcity is a looming factor for not only him, but all of us.
We all feel the finite nature of our existence which in turn creates a constant state of anxiety, even if that state is minute, it is still present. Death of loved ones. Being able to make ends meet. It is engrained within us to believe that life within the universe is finite, including the life of resources, creating a scarcity mindset that must be constantly confronted and battled if we are to not only succeed, but thrive in the time God has given us for our mortal existence. It is an emotion that corrupt leaders and countries have tapped into and abused in order to gain control, using sophist ideology like Marxism to justify the collective distribution of resources under government command.
What Does the Scarcity Mindset Do to People?
“God does not play dice with the universe.”
Having a scarcity mindset creates despair and lacks the ideal conditions for hope to live. When the premise of everything we seek to achieve lies on finite resources, opportunities, and capabilities both individually and collectively, the question “what’s the point?” has to be asked somewhere along a person’s life journey. It’s always seemed to me to be the key depressing factor with secular values and institutions due to the limiting nature of temporal affairs. However, without taking a jab too hard against Atheism, or a lack of religious belief one may have, the overarching concept of scarcity seems to go contrary to two scientific laws: the Law of Conservation of Mass and the First Law of Thermodynamics.
It bears asking because according to these scientific axioms, not only is not matter created nor destroyed, but energy is also merely converted from one state to another. Things just simply are and always have been, so it seems that rather than addressing scarcity directly, we need to reframe our thinking around the concept and the fallacies and potential consequences of having a scarcity mindset.
The Law of Conservation of Mass*
Simply put, the Law of Conservation of Mass, also known as the Conservation of Matter, states that mass of an object, or objects, is constant no matter how the atoms and molecules rearrange themselves. A simple example being water changing states from solid to liquid to gas. Another more complicated one would be the burning of a piece of wood, the matter changing into both smoke and ash. Anyone who has taken a high school or college chemistry class has run these numbers with stupid equations like CuCO3 (s) → CuO(s) + CO2 (g). Me personally have said many a prayer trying to harmoniously rearrange the numbers and letters to merely pass assignments and not flunk out.
Now I’m not going to pretend to know the details and intricacies of chemistry or physics, because I simply don’t, but I do understand with the emergence of relativity in the early 1900s that the notion of mass underwent a “radical revision” as we began understanding a little more. However, while mass may have lost its “absoluteness”, matter was seen to be equivalent to and interconvertible with energy, especially the closer we are near to speeds that travel as fast as light. Regardless, because of this intimate relation both energy and mass seem to have, the principle was updated to being better understood as the Conservation of Mass-Energy.
Enter the First Law of Thermodynamics.
*Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2011, July 19). conservation of mass. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/conservation-of-mass
The First Law of Thermodynamics*
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that both matter and energy cannot be created nor can they be destroyed, and that the amount of energy in the universe is constant. Again, things just simply are and always have been. Energy can be changed, moved, controlled, stored, or dissipated, but it cannot come from nothing, nor can it be reduced to nothing. Every process known to the natural world transforms, moves, and utilizes energy and is a foundational principle for physical science. Going back to the burning log example, yes smoke and ash are consequences of a change in matter, however, it doesn’t account for both the heat and light in the forms of energy.
Energy that enters any particular system must either be stored or used, and a system cannot output more energy than it contains without some sort of external source to rely on for more energy. The First Law of Thermodynamics is an absolute physical law and everything in the entire universe is affected by this law and applies to all matter and energy. Together with the other two laws of thermodynamics, these laws form part of the baseline for all modern science and no exceptions or contradictions to them have ever been observed.
Science has shown that the First Law of Thermodynamics applies to all matter and energy, no matter how much or what the conditions are. While the looming question of "where did all of the matter and energy in the universe come from?” remains, if nothing natural can create nor destroy, then can something supernatural do that? Without going too far into that potentially awesome fiction concept, observation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics shows us that the energy in the universe is becoming less usable—and I’ll add: to us at this moment. I say this only because the First Law of Thermodynamics shows us that nothing in the physical universe can create or destroy matter or energy. Therefore, it is up to us to learn how to utilize other forms of energy we thought impossible to harness, which is something we have done since the dawn of our species.
*First Law of Thermodynamics (allaboutscience.org)
God Wants You to Be Rich
It’s a hard concept for a lot of people to even consider the fact that God cares about our finances, let alone wants us to have an abundance. To that I simply ask to “consider the lilies of the field [and] how they grow.”* It’s a basic and foundational principle of faith that God will provide, no matter our circumstances. Now we will get into the weeds of both poor and corrupt use of an individual’s agency and both the personal and collective consequences of that, but all that aside, Christ also taught in that same sermon to not put our hearts into that which “moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal”, but to give them to heaven and the things of divinity. So, the paradox remains: do not treasure treasures and yet, have enough resources to accomplish what we desire.
For starters, it is my personal and strong opinion that the mindset of just wanting enough for our own household and needs is one of the most selfish things anyone could want in this life. Where is the charity in that kind of lifestyle? Where is the progression? That lifestyle is fixed and has a ceiling, neither of which I believe people should accept, especially those of faith. It’s an interesting fact that the more surplus an individual has, the more likely they are to give that surplus to causes and organizations that they believe in and who have need for that surplus. In fact, a study in England between 2010 and 2019 showed that the proportion of those who donated in the upper socio-economic group tended to be higher than those in the lower socio-economic group. And, between 2018 and 2019, 38.9% of those in the upper socio-economic group had given money to organizations versus the 19.7% of donors in the lower group.
So, if you’re a person of faith, why wouldn’t your deity want you to earn wealth, knowing that the odds of you giving to the poor and needy goes up?
Secondly, our access to resources is not fixed, and therefore we must put to rest the self-deprecating humility of wanting enough for our household only, despite our finite minds arguing in favor to the contrary.
*Matthew 6:28 KJV
The Petroleum Age
Before the first oil well in 1859, fuel for lamps materials for candles, lubricants, and other purposes came from whales, and for years, mankind hunted and harvested the creatures for what they provided*, mainly their blubber and spermaceti**. The demand for these whale-based products—particularly oil—rose so high, that the market demanded efficiency with the whale hunting and harvesting processes, becoming dangerously skillful, nearly putting the great mammals of the ocean into extinction. The looming possibility of killing off the creatures forced mankind to adapt and find an alternative solution, ultimately leading to one of the greatest energy transitions we’ve seen occur on this planet.
If we go back to our conversation on the perceived usability of the universe’s energy dwindling, this is but a small example of how mankind has learned to utilize a form of energy, that prior to doing so, was thought to be impossible, that being the use of petroleum within the earth. It testifies that energy is neither created nor destroyed, but rather just changes forms. Today if we utilized whales for energy, the current demand would call for 28,000,000 whales harvested every year, and that’s just to power America, let alone the world, China being the biggest consumer of energy in 2023.
*God Wants You to Be Rich: How and Why Everyone Can Enjoy Material and Spiritual Wealth in Our Abundant World by Paul Zane Pilzer, p. 35-40 of the 1995 copyrighted version
**Spermaceti is not the sperm of a whale, but rather the waxy substance found within the head cavities of sperm whales which was used to make candles. The best imagery I can think of is the scene within Avatar: The Way of Water and the rich, golden substance humans get from the whale like creatures.
Man Wants You to Be Poor
“Nobody wants to get rich slowly.”
First and foremost, businesses and individuals demand money and resources. The obtaining of money and resources demand marketing, marketing demands attention, and attention creates a sort of awareness, so to speak. We’ve all heard the term “If it bleeds, it leads” and there is a lot of application by modern media utilizing that principle to this day (2020 anyone?).
Political media uses it on a regular basis every election cycle, creating dogmatic chasms within society and political parties. The health industry is notorious for doing this with vaccines, new medications, and the latest and greatest of health studies. And basic everyday products tap into this evolutionary part of our brains when doing comparisons between their brand and knockoff competitors. This is not the only way to grab attention. With the obsession the current generation has with fame and recognition, they’ve learned to leverage current media platforms to create “thumbstoppers”, and often do so by creating content that lands somewhere on the Outrageous Spectrum.
The question is not whether attention is grabbed through dramatic or fear-based means, but why? Why are our collective eyes diverted and whiplashed from one topic to another through marketing and modern propaganda tactics?
My theory? Man wants you to be poor—they want you to be distracted by frivolity.
Bureaucratic and corporate systems demand dependency, and the quickest way to create dependency is through scarcity and claiming the solution to life’s woes are theirs and no one else's. Kind of like an abusive relationship. Not only does this create a slave-ish like life where we live paycheck to paycheck, bound by our golden handcuffs and focusing only on our household’s income, it creates a fixed mindset that dictates a variety of rules stating that progression and success cannot be obtained outside of their parameters, that being, remaining within a salary or an hourly wage.
In my personal opinion, our modern understanding of finite resources stems from a poorly constructed study by the Club of Rome in 1972, called The Limits to Growth. The 197-page report came to shockingly dystopian conclusion—that the physical resources on this planet would be exhausted within the next few decades, wiping out most of humanity by 2100. More specifically, it was predicted that we’d run out of gold by 1981, mercury by 1985, tin by 1987, zinc by 1990, petroleum by 1992, and copper, lead, and natural gas by 1993. Not only are my words being written and read in 2023 and beyond on devices that utilize silver, gold, zinc, tin and more, the world hasn’t come to a screeching halt. The reason? Simply put, the study did not factor in the ultimate resource—people.
Faith Cannot Coexist with Fear
“The ultimate resource is people—skilled, spirited and hopeful people.”
We have the God-given ability to create—to innovate and dream of things not yet come to pass. We are not just some consuming cogs in the machine that exhausts our surrounding natural resources, despite a variety of people arguing the contrary. “Limited resources” and similar slogans are terms and concepts that those with arbitrary power use to control distribution through dystopian-like policies and lobbyists.
Those who hold fast to doomsday and Marxist ideologies demand attention, feeding an ever-anxious beast while those who truly believe and have faith in mankind's continued success, they don’t care who gets the credit, just so long as genuine progress and hope are stapled ideals within society.
Our attention always is drawn somewhere. The question is, what will we give our attention and energy to? Fear or faith? Scarcity or abundance?
