On the myth of abundance

A scarcity mindset may be of use after all

Most experts these days confidently declare that we are no longer in a world of scarcity, but in a world of abundance. It is a myth. While there are more abundance in certain categories, many of the important ones are extremely scarce. Surely we have more food, electricity, alcohol, cars and one-night-stand apps than ever. But some of the most important criteria of life are severely lacking.

Housing is the most glaring example. It’s is extremely hard today to either rent or buy a house. The US make fewer houses today than the 1960s average when this statistics was started tracking by FRED. This explains the spike in housing prices that lock out younger generations from acquiring one. The average age to buy a house now is 35, versus 29 in 1984, according to Bloomberg. In the end, not so much abundance in housing after all.

Thanks to the Internet, we are now living in the age of information. I can call my parents who are 12,000 miles across the globe at zero cost. That used to cost at least 3 cents per minute. We have come a long way. But that does not mean we are better connected. In fact we are deprived of real human connection and everyone is more lonely than ever.

With a swipe on your phone you can see what everyone in the world is doing, but it’s about as real as the charcoal lines on steak commercials (they use pencils to draw them in). People embellish their online lives to prove they are happy. Combine that level of widespread deception with the insane distribution of the Internet and most of our lives are beyond terrible compared to everybody else and I’m sure all those Instagram models feel the same way too.

We are not living in the age of abundant resources either. Economies growing at 2% annually is not abundant, but barely hanging on. If we are getting richer 2%, over a productive human lifetime of 60 years we would only be 3.2x more prosperous than when we started. If that is 10% annual growth, we are looking at 304x more prosperity over a human lifespan.

It’s obvious we are at the low end of abundance, and that leads to low birth rate, low happiness, and low social mobility. The hedonic treadmills we run every day buying stuff or posing online is just us trying to cover for that fact. In those respects we do have abundance, but those are abundance that are cheap, easy to acquire, and fleeting.

Perhaps a mindset of scarcity is a better approach to living. Understanding that everything is scarce: housing, time, friends, family, money, resources. It is a tough way to live. But it’s a better representation of reality and it’s always good to have reality on your side.