I've been thinking a fair bit about scarcity as of late. One of the conclusions I've reached is that although scarcity is real, it's also manufactured.

I don't mean to imply that it's manufactured nefariously, but rather that it is manufactured as a byproduct of other forces. When an item is truly scarce, its availability is less than the demand for it; whereas manufactured scarcity is the scarcity of an item because of the scarcity of a proxy, in this case money.

I don't know how long this shift has been in progress, but one thing that is clear to me is that over my lifetime I've seen a shift towards a transactional state of being. That our relationship with the world around us has become outsourced. This is evident in a shift away from community and self-reliance to one where we look to hire out almost all aspects of our lives.

This transactional nature has byproducts, one of which is that the scarcity of money (the common component of this transaction model) ends up translating into a perceived scarcity of other things. An example of this is food waste. Recent statistics suggest that we waste between 30-40% of total food production in the United States, yet people go hungry. There is no scarcity of food, period. But this mini-essay is not about how to solve that problem, I simply state it as an illustration of how one's lack of money can make non-scarce items seem scarce.

So why do I bring this up? Well, this morning I was watching a video where it was asserted that our water treatment plants are constantly being threatened by alleged foreign hackers, and that many communities are at risk due to these vulnerabilities. When asked why these vulnerabilities haven't been addressed the most common reason stated is the lack of resources (i.e. lack of money). I sat there thinking to myself - "well that's silly, I can help and have the skills and am willing to do so for free as a form of civic duty". Losing access to clean water would be devastating to a community and warrants an "all-hands-on-deck" response.

Now, whether or not my local utility would take me up on my offer is a different question, but this gap is not because of a true scarcity. It's due to a focus on the transaction.

I think there are many examples like this, and I believe they will grow if we continue down the path of transitioning our communal relationships from a shared sense of kinship and obligation to one that is purely transactional, where value is only understood in terms of money.

What I ask is that we truly scrutinize claims of scarcity and look to what we have to offer our family, friends, neighbors, and broader community. Let's do our best to eliminate perceived scarcity and thrive together.