Scarcity

And the fading prospects of abundance.

We often rush from one place to another, trying to overcome the scarcity of time. Parents and children often bemoan scarcity of family connections. Students grappling with one assignment after another, face scarcity of retention. Banks and corporations cut interest rates and salaries because of economic scarcity. The government hikes the price of energy and food, thanks to a new resource scarcity. The economic experts acknowledge sudden market collapse due to scarcity of demand or capital. The newsreader has to read and deliver messages as fast and as concisely, given the general scarcity of attention. Musicians compete ever harder given the scarcity of fans. Artists young and old, often suffer the scarcity of patronage. The police cannot control crime in a big city by virtue of manpower scarcity. Tens of thousands of people die every year because of scarcity of doctors and medical assistance. UNICEF cannot protect nor provide shelter for millions of homeless children, due to a global scarcity of funding. Revolutions and civil dissent often fizzle because of scarcity of good leadership. Even liberation of the self, inside modern society often faces a scarcity of direction or dedication. Add the general scarcity of clean air, water and safe habitat.

The overarching presence of scarcity also equates to insecurity within the ‘human psyche’ regardless of which nation we live in or what job or status we hold within a given society. Scarcity of this or that, also impacts social relations and shapes contemporary culture. Yet, scarcity is not just an absence of abundance. The underlying presence of scarcity, reveals two facets almost like the duality of Nature. One, that impulsively makes any species strive harder regardless of the scarcities and consequent insecurities. Two, it also widens our understanding of limits, of atomization within society which causes most scarcity to occur in the first place. The following essay is a bid to extrapolate human tendencies, the crisis of late capitalism and resource scarcity. The possibility of transition towards a society of post-scarcity. Is it even possible?

“Scarcity is an economic concept where individuals must allocate limited resources to satisfy their needs.” (Gemini, Google AI). This definition fails to explain the nature of scarcity and how it is directly related to the “ecological succession” of every species. Objectively speaking, scarcity is not just a “concept” but a recurring reality across human and non-human societies alike. Abundance, scarcity and coping mechanisms together define the overall well-being of any species. The experts tend to argue endlessly about the coping mechanisms that we possess, as means to overcome scarcity. Prehistoric and neolithic societies faced major scarcity, however mostly imposed by a precarious natural world, and all the unknown dangers and opportunities. However, the current set of scarcities that we experience, especially as common people, are an outcome of an exploitative class structure as well as massive overshoot of population, deadly unchecked technological power and limitless extraction, consumption and pollution. As long as we live inside a finite planet there is always a price to pay. After all there is "No such thing as a free lunch" (Robert A. Heinlein's science-fiction novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress).

There exist thousands of types of scarcity, underlying the entire structure of modern techno-industrial civilization. One that is webbed inside a “global empire” based on hierarchy and common insecurity and crisis, wielding multiple forms of scarcity for all. Well, all except the super rich and powerful. As explained by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri -“Empire is characterized fundamentally by a total lack of boundaries: political, social, cultural, racial and ecological. Empire’s rule has no limits. First and foremost, then, the existence of Empire posits a regime that effectively encompasses the spatial totality, or really that rules over the entire ‘‘civilized’’ world.” (Empire, Harvard University Press). By that logic, the most privileged within the “Empire” will obviously gather more power (resources and opportunities) while avoiding most scarcity.

Precisely why for a very long time, the weakest, poorest and most “wretched of the earth” have faced every form of scarcity while the powerful and technologically clever continued to thrive in abundance. A paradigmatic form of “biopower” - a duality creating immense material abundance for a few, while predicating “scarcity of everything important” for you and me, and everyone else including the entire non-human world. But rising scarcity begins to undermine any ruling order and class.

By all means we are now living in an “age of general resource scarcity” (Hainan Natural Science Foundation of China 2023). Hindsight based on ‘Fed Chair’ Alan Greenspan’s now-famous reference to “irrational and insane exuberance” (1996) or the more recent “infinite growth is not possible on a finite planet…” by Dr. William Rees (Canadian Society for Ecological Economics). In spite of the massive abundance of material production and acquisition as well as technological progress (plus all the freedom to do things) scarcity also is compounding alongside tyranny as “forever conditions”. 150 years of mass industrialization across the earth, has signed-on the entire world into an insane trajectory, as explained by EO Wilson in 2014. “Mid 1960s onward we can clearly study ecological loss, as a trajectory leading towards a disturbing scarcity of biodiversity.” which fits perfectly with our disregard for ecological limits and love for abundance. Is current form of civilization in context of ever rising scarcity, complicity involved it the making of it as well?

Questions of free time, leisure, creative hobbies, mindfulness, abundance, rejuvenation and personal autonomy, sound inspiring in a world deprived of attention, mutual aid and facing eternal scarcity of time and resources. After all, free time is an outcome of social privilege. Yet this mode-of-life predicated within late capitalism, increasingly appears not only unsustainable, indeed most artificial and partly insane. Especially if we look back at the entire span of human history.

By all means, one can set aside history and also live in complete disregard of ecological limits, while believing that scarcity will be dealt by human ingenuity and advanced technology. For almost every social scarcity, technology will provide a fix, sometimes at the press of a few buttons only. But way mightier is the promise of technology about future abundance—”as an all-presiding agent over decision making and the forthcoming human condition.” (Murray Bookchin - Post-Scarcity Anarchism)

While that may redeem a select bunch of people, at best a minority numbering millions, it will not lead the survivors towards any Utopia nor provide new abundance. The “Empire” will remain as is, if not eventually destroy all it’s savants, gatekeepers and loyal subjects. A set of experts who wish steady depopulation insist so with mantras like “shrink towards abundance”. What FA Hayek rightly predicted as a “Road To Serfdom” totally missed the fact that capitalism is inherently and eventually anti-ecological. It exploits abundance as much as it loots while creating overall scarcity. Similar to what Bookchin emphasized as “Competition and accumulation constitute its very law of life as in production for the sake of production...”

Human beings have resorted to violent struggle over scarcity of resources throughout history. Be it for survival or prosperity or surplus or the making of previous and current empires. Yet the size of the conflict has now amplified beyond scale, as human population and consumption spiked preposterously thus entering an age of scarcity. What I believe to be an obvious outcome, are various forms of resistance, however small or big, using a diverse bunch of strategies and coping mechanisms. New subcultures and ecological consciousness, however violent or passive in nature, scientific or spiritual, are unraveling as movements against the “Empire”. The same devious “biopower” within which global poverty made a sharp rise between 2019 and 2022 from 8.4% to 10.2% (OECD 2023) worth roughly 805 million people, while at the same time a tiny set of people made billions of dollars. 2781 in all.

To imagine and actualize post-scarcity, the social dialectic has to evolve. And indeed it is changing. Human beings across nations and classes are reconsidering not only their long term prospects viz-a-viz the biosphere and biophysical limits, but also divesting from systems which have existed for a long time contrary to our actual potential and needs defined by Nature. The question of scarcity versus abundance, points to what all must be abolished or left behind and what all may take place and can be conceived. Ever new coping mechanisms, acts of resistance and transformations are appearing, optimistically akin to seeds of anarcho-ecology, germinating as future societies. “It is not justice any longer that is being demanded, but rather freedom of humanity from centralized forms of organization and production…” (Murray Bookchin - Post-Scarcity Anarchism)

Many people emphasize a natural diet freeing themselves from industrial food, processed meat, dairy and an overall “synthetic diet”. A growing number of people are boycotting fossil fuels and models of infinite growth. Many people prefer an extended family instead of the monogamous one. Groups practice reproductive and sexual freedom as against patriarchy and sexual repression. Those who prefer tribalism as a way against individual atomization. Farmers who practice permaculture instead of monoculture. Experts who emphasize on community resilience and restrict material consumption. The indigenous and the radical eco-warriors who identify as “Biocentric” and oppose “Techno-fix”. All those who encourage mutual aid and not competition. Diverse and globally connected citizens collectivize against war, illegal occupation, sale of weapons, past present crimes against humanity etc. Cells of independent media which provide authentic analysis of news. And finally, all forms of anarchy as a final permutation of resistance, against totalitarian power, hierarchy, elite tyranny and centralization. In a global context however a minority, the people mentioned above are growing in numbers, at the front lines of a planetary conflict, against what Hardt and Negri defined as “Empire” which is also at the core of a world defined by scarcity.

Is a no-brainer that between scarcity and the potential for post-scarcity appears outright confrontation. People allover the world now realize one way or another, that  our hubris and blunders follow “inexorably from the very logic of limitless capitalist production and acquisition.” (Empire by Micheal Hardt and Antonio Negri). Then the mechanisms of pacification (one can hardly speak here of harmonization) are bound to fail, given the current trajectory of industrial civilization and the state of the natural world. As much as excess CO2, the scarcity of food, affordable energy, clean water, public safety and shelter will wield devastating consequences in the years to come.

Scarcity will also be weaponized and privatized, as seen recently with the case of COVID vaccines (2021-22) to control and restrict people, while serving the larger interests predicated not so much by human beings as much by technological maxims and models of infinite growth, assimilation and acquisition. Interests and plans which aim to destroy the very biological integrity of advanced and primitive lifeforms—including human beings. Unquestionable technological innovation also requires infinite energy and distribution. Human energy use, be it as per “Net Zero” or “business as usual” or be it non-renewable versus green colored, be it for an Indian or American, will rapidly decline at a global scale during the next 50 years. There is zero evidence at hand, that money, free markets, legislation, progressive institutions and mainstream economics can self-correct and make the right decisions. Hell no!

What we may learn about scarcity and survival from those at the fringes of civilization is immense, be they human or non-human entities. Essentially to live within the limits defined by Nature, by which I mean that the essential guidelines are all ecological and not so technological. Even if the guidelines equate to overall downsizing according to scarcity of resources, all be it still ensures a better quality of life and work for a majority of human beings, across generations.

The downsizing also includes the elimination of systems that facilitate the concentration of power. Like the divine emperors and great conquerors of the past, the billionaires and their private systems will also have to be liquidated over time. Future society will be shaped, better organized, by scarcity and not by abundance, lasting a long while if not centuries. I sense, that there is nothing more oppressive than privilege based on private abundance, because within that logic, which is always framed by “privileged” human beings, the entire planet is fair game for exploitation, domination or destruction. That ideology has to go at any cost.

While we all can dream of abundance and free time, for now we must strive against real structural scarcity. Positively undergo major changes towards post-scarcity. The problems and absurdity of an old society may thus reveal the methods and means that will shape the new.

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