Scarcity is a Disease

 

Scarcity is a Disease.

A collective Mental Illness breeding conflicts and needless death and suffering.

 

We live on a planet overflowing with resources, knowledge, technology, talent, and solutions. Yet we continue to behave as if there isn’t enough to go around. Our greatest scarcity isn’t material. It is a failure of collective mental health, imagination, compassion, empathy, unity, and wisdom.  Our planet has always had enough for us all.  We’ve only lacked the wisdom to share.

The Great Scarcity Illusion: Humanity’s most dangerous disease is the belief that we don’t have enough.  Meanwhile, millions of people, mostly children (11,000 -13,000 daily) perish due to this delusion every year.  

We have enough intelligence to send spacecraft beyond our solar system, the technology to communicate instantly globally, enough agricultural knowledge to produce enormous quantities of food sustainably, and enough scientific understanding to prevent or treat many diseases that once killed hundreds of millions of people.

We’ve created artificial intelligence, edited genes, manufactured increasingly sophisticated weapons, and moved dollars by the billions around the planet at the speed of light.  Yet we’ve not ensured that every infant and child has adequate food, clean water, basic health care, education, and a safe place to sleep.  And we don’t seem to mind. 

We are a social species capable of cooperation, coordination, and caregiving.  Our minds are even capable of wisdom.  Yet children keep dying before their parents - the greatest of all human tragedies.  Just the fear of losing a child is terrorizing. 

It appears scarcity, as we commonly understand and respond to it, is the product of our culture and social institutions. It is not an individual medical diagnosis.  But it is destructive patterns of thinking: Fear that there isn’t enough.  Suspicion that someone else will take what we need.  A perceived need – then willingness to compete - even when cooperation could leave everyone better off.

The irony? We have become remarkably sophisticated at producing things and remarkably unsophisticated at organizing ourselves to meet even the most basic human needs.

We put a robot on Mars, but getting food to a hungry child on Earth requires a committee, three budgets, five approvals, and then a miracle.  We need to examine the disease before prescribing more of the same medicine.

Scarcity is not Real. It is only in our minds.  Droughts can destroy crops. Wars will disrupt food supplies. Poverty prevents people from purchasing necessities even when those necessities are available. Climate change threatens ecosystems and livelihoods.  Some minerals, habitats, and other resources are genuinely limited here on earth.  But Neil deGrasse Tyson rightfully argues that space contains vast mineral and energy resources and accessing them could reduce conflicts over what limited resources we might have on Earth.  

If we wisely chose to sustainably use our existing resources humanity while developing the technology to access resources beyond Earth, almost no limits would apply.

Currently, the world’s resources are not distributed fairly.  Because food exists somewhere doesn’t mean a hungry person can obtain it. The fact that medical treatments exist does not mean a poor family can afford them.

There is, however, an enormous difference between acknowledging a genuine shortage and treating scarcity as the permanent condition of human existence.

Plus, a difference between having limited resources and choosing to devote enormous resources to wasteful or destructive activities that leave fundamental human needs unmet.   Consider what humanity spends on military competition, political campaigns, luxury consumption, and protecting accumulated wealth. Some of those expenditures serve legitimate purposes. But rarely do our priorities reflect our actual needs.

We have learned to count dollars with remarkable precision. We have been less successful at counting the human lives saved by prevention, the suffering avoided through cooperation, and the economic value of a healthy environment. And now we are all paying the price for microplastics.

Why do we measure what we spend more carefully than the costs we could save from prevention?  That is not an accounting problem. It’s a wisdom problem.

The Mental Health and Economic Wealth in a Scarcity-Driven World

We are a reactionary species.  That once served us well.  Fear often alerts us to danger.  But it’s destructive when it convinces us that everyone else is a threat. Anyone who believes there is never enough may hoard, distrust, dominate, or constantly compare themselves with others. Communities can do the same. So can corporations, political parties, or entire nations.

The symptoms are familiar:

• Competition for wealth, influence, attention, and political power, even when cooperation would produce greater benefits.
• Fear of outsiders, as though helping another community must weaken our own.
• Endless arguments over who deserves assistance, while insufficient attention goes to preventing the conditions that make assistance necessary.
• An obsession with short-term gains at the expense of future savings and future generations.
• The belief that security comes primarily from defeating potential adversaries rather than reducing the conditions that produce conflict.

These patterns can resemble the behavior of an anxious individual who cannot stop worrying about losing what they have.  Or, at the collective level, we call it a scarcity mentality.

It is dark humor to admit that humanity has developed nuclear weapons capable of destroying civilization yet struggle to develop the collective self-control required to keep everyone reasonably safe.  

We have mastered the technology of destruction faster than the psychology of cooperation. And that should worry us all given the current evolution of AI.

This does not mean that every disagreement, ambition, or competitive activity is unhealthy. Competition can encourage creativity and excellence. Governments must make difficult choices. Individuals need personal boundaries, financial security, and a health environment.

The greatest problems now arises when competition becomes our default response to interdependence - when fear repeatedly defeats opportunities for mutual benefit.

There is Scarcity.  And we should Worry deeply about it:   It is the shortage of qualities that would allow us to use those resources wisely.

First, a scarcity of unity. We share one atmosphere, interconnected economies, oceans, supply chains, and a microbial world that respects no national border. Yet we organize much of our thinking around competing national, political, religious, and economic identities. And then defending them with mass destruction.  We are connected in the real world yet divided in our mind’s and imagination.

Second, a scarcity of love for nature. We depend on functioning ecosystems for food, water, clean air, pollination, and countless other necessities. Yet we often treat the natural world as though it were an inexhaustible warehouse with free disposal services. The bill eventually arrives, and nature does not accept excuses.

Third, scarcity of empathy. We can see suffering in real time on our phones, then swipe to a cat video. There is nothing wrong with enjoying cats. They are excellent at providing perspective. But our ability to witness suffering has grown much faster than our ability to respond constructively.

Fourth, a scarcity of wisdom. Science and knowledge tell us what we can do.  Religion and wisdom asks whether we should do it, and the consequences that are likely to follow.  We rarely consider how our decisions affect the larger system. We have more information than ever, yet still manage to confuse technological progress with human progress.

Fifth, a scarcity of trust. Without self-evident objective Truths, there can be no trust.  Making cooperation difficult and expensive. Every agreement requires more safeguards, all  institution faces greater suspicion, and every collective project becomes a contest over motives.  Some skepticism is healthy. Permanent suspicion is exhausting and unsustainable.

Sixth, scarcity of prevention. We spend enormous effort responding to crises after crisis. Even as they become more expensive, dangerous, and heartbreaking.  We are far less consistent about investing in the conditions that prevent disease, violence, environmental damage, and poverty in the first place.

Seventh, a scarcity of humility. We are so certain our own group understands the problem and that the other group is the problem.  If only others would recognize our superior wisdom, everything would improve. Naturally, everyone else has the same thought.

Maybe the first step toward wisdom is admitting that none of us has a monopoly on it.

We Have Solutions. We simply lack sufficient cooperation.

Humanity has already demonstrated what collective action can accomplish.

The eradication of smallpox showed that countries, scientists, health workers, and international institutions can cooperate to eliminate a devastating disease that took more lives in the first 80 yrs of the 20^th Century, than all the wars, revolutions, genocides, and murders combined…during the entire century. 

The global effort against polio has brought that virus to the brink of eradication. International scientific collaboration has accelerated protecting the ozone, the development of vaccines, improved food production, and expanded access to information.

These accomplishments did not happen because the world suddenly became free of disagreement or selfishness. They happened because people found sufficient common purpose to work together and use unambiguous words to engineer solutions.

The distinction between ambiguous words like peace, democracy, or terrorism vs unambiguous words like health, prevention, interdependence, and responsibility greatly matters.

We do not have to eliminate every conflict of interest before cooperating. But we must all recognize where our interests overlap.  Then build institutions capable of acting on that recognition.

The United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals offer one framework for doing so. They connect poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, clean water, energy, economic opportunity, climate, biodiversity, justice, and international partnerships into a comprehensive, holistic, and synergistic plan. These are not 17 unrelated problems competing for 17 separate pots of money. They are the interconnected dimensions of human and planetary well-being

Clean water improves health. Education expands opportunities. Economic security can reduce vulnerability. Healthy ecosystems sustain food supplies. Strong institutions help communities manage disagreements without violence. Progress in one area can reinforce progress in others.

The challenge is to stop treating every problem as an isolated emergency and start recognizing the system in which the problems arise.

Imagine what could happen if governments, businesses, universities, nonprofits, service organizations, and community groups aligned more of their efforts around shared goals. Affordable, measurable, and achievable goals when communities unite and choose their priorities.  This is possible if they can agree on a list of half a dozen of the 169 subgoals within the 17 SDGs. 

Imagine less competition over who gets credit and more cooperation over who gets results.

Imagine organizations sharing knowledge instead of guarding their territory, and funders rewarding measurable prevention rather than waiting for a catastrophe to attract attention.

This would most likely save money, enabling more progress with the government budget. 

What a radical concept: preventing an expensive problem before paying to manage it. 

The Real Meaning of Abundance:  Abundance does not mean that everyone can have everything they want without harmful consequences for others.

Abundance can mean recognizing that we already possess extraordinary capacities to meet many essential needs, with much left for personal and community growth, provided resources are intelligently used, opportunities distributed more fairly, and waste reduction maximized, with cooperation across borders and physical boundaries. 

It means recognizing that some of our most valuable resources are renewable - in a different sense from oil or minerals. 

Knowledge grows when shared. Trust grows through truth and repeated cooperation. Skills can be taught. Scientific discoveries can benefit millions. Compassion can inspire action. A successful public-health intervention can prevent suffering far beyond the original investment. 

Love, wisdom, and unity are not commodities that must be taken from one person to give to another.  In many circumstances, the more we cultivate them, the more we have.

That is a very different model of wealth. A model of healthy wealth.

It also suggests that the solution to scarcity is not simply to produce more. We may need to produce more food, energy, or housing. At other times, we need to waste less, share better, change incentives, or stop destroying the natural systems on which abundance depends.

And sometimes we just need to change the way we think.

 

A Prescription for a Healthier World

If scarcity thinking is our collective illness, what would recovery look like?

First, we should distinguish genuine shortages from shortages created or intensified by poverty, waste, inequality, conflict, and poor organization.

Second, we should put prevention closer to the center of public policy. Healthy people, healthy communities, and healthy ecosystems are not luxuries to be pursued after the economy is doing well. They are foundations of a resilient and healthy economy.

Third, we should measure success by more than financial returns, military strength, or political victories.  Countries should use the SDGs not the GDP.  We should ask whether our decisions improve the health of people and nature, now and in the future.

Fourth, cooperation should make easier. Shared goals, transparent information, partnerships, and accountable institutions can help people work together even when they disagree about other matters.

 Finally, we should make room for a little humility and humor. We are a clever species, but cleverness does not automatically produce wisdom. Sometimes we need to laugh at our own contradictions before we can see them clearly.

 We could begin each major policy debate with three questions:

1. What human or environmental needs are we trying to meet?
2. What are the root causes of the problem, and how much can we prevent?
3. How can we work with others to achieve the greatest shared benefit?

 These questions will not solve every problem. But they may help us spend less time fighting over the symptoms and more time addressing the causes.

 From Scarcity to Shalom

I have come to think that the health of our world depends on recognizing how interconnected everything is: the health of mind, body, spirit, family, community, environment, government, and economy.

When one part deteriorates, the others are vulnerable.

A society cannot remain healthy indefinitely while neglecting the mental and physical health of its people, degrading its natural systems, or allowing preventable suffering to become routine.

 Nor can we build lasting security simply by making ourselves stronger or richer than everyone else.  Our best security depends on reducing the threats that affect us all.

Perhaps this is one way to understand shalom: not merely the absence of war, but a condition of well-being, wholeness, and right relationships.

It is an ambitious vision. But the alternative of spending enormous resources treating preventable crises while insisting that we cannot afford to prevent them is simply unsustainable…and thus, insane.

 We must be truthful about the consequences of how we use our resources. The world does not lack every resource it needs. It does not lack every solution. It does not lack people who care, scientists who understand, or communities willing to help.

 It only lacks is the unity, wisdom, political will, and institutional cooperation to bring those assets together at the scale required.   That is the scarcity worth addressing.

 And it begins with a simple recognition: We do not need a perfect world to start building a healthier one. We need to stop treating our divisions as inevitable and our shared problems as somebody else’s responsibility.  Each of us can make a difference in our family, community, and environment.

 These are enough challenges and opportunities to keep us busy without inventing additional reasons to fight.

 We have enough intelligence and even Artificial Intelligence to create astonishing technologies. We just need the wisdom to use them well.

 We already have enough resources to make substantial progress. Now we need the will to organize them around human and planetary needs.

 And if we can learn to cooperate in the face of shared threats, we may discover that the greatest shortage was never simply a shortage of things.  It was a shortage of us working together.

 Perhaps the world’s most urgent health initiative should begin with a checkup on our collective state of mind.  And don’t believe everything you think.  Especially when you think there isn’t enough to go around.