The Myth of Scarcity and the Politics of Sufficiency
When the Wellbeing Economy is about the Wealth of Enough
I’ve spent years swimming in the strange waters of economic theory, and the deeper I went, the more I realized how much of the modern world is organized around a ghost story. It’s the story of scarcity. You’ve heard it. Resources are limited. People always want more. There's never enough to go around. So we compete. We work harder. We hoard. We measure progress by how much we produce, how fast we grow, and how efficiently we extract value from everything from oil fields to human bodies.
It sounds practical. Rational, even. But it’s a story that collapses under close inspection.
The thing about scarcity is that it’s not neutral. It’s not just a condition, it’s a design principle. Neoclassical economics treats scarcity as an unavoidable truth, something written into the fabric of the universe. But what if it’s not? What if it’s a socially engineered premise, one that conveniently justifies inequality and endless accumulation?
The very concept of “scarcity” as it is used today, was injected into mainstream thought by neoclassical economists. In this usage, it doesn’t refer to the actual availability of resources, but to a discrepancy between supply and demand. Supply and demand, in turn, are circular idea (we determine demand by looking at fluctuations in price, and determine price by looking at fluctuations in demand). So really, it’s all a carefully crafted myth, specifically designed to rationalize support of what Robert Nozick called Utility Monsters (individuals that we give all out utility to so that they can use it to maximize utility and control the evolution of society)
Amartya Sen, in his work on famines, showed that “starvation is the characteristic of some people not having enough food to eat. It is not the characteristic of there being not enough food to eat.” That difference is everything. Scarcity, in most cases, is not about physical limits. It’s about access. It’s about power. It’s about who gets to decide what’s enough, and for whom.
You start to see it everywhere. We’re told there’s no money for universal healthcare, but the state will conjure billions overnight for bailouts or war. We’re told there’s not enough time for rest, even as productivity soars and automation grows. We’re told there’s not enough land, but entire cities sit half-empty while housing costs explode.
The old economic models assume people are utility-maximizing machines with infinite desires. It’s a tidy assumption. It keeps the growth machine humming. But it also keeps us trapped in a psychology of lack. Always reaching, never arriving. The wellbeing economy movement offers a different compass. It asks, instead of how much we can grow, how much is enough? Instead of chasing profit, what would it mean to prioritize thriving?
That word “enough” isn’t as modest as it seems. In a culture addicted to more, enough is a radical idea.
Ivan Illich once wrote that “a good education teaches people the limits of their needs.” He wasn’t calling for austerity. He was calling for freedom from the manipulative tug of manufactured wants. Sufficiency isn’t about settling. It’s about sovereignty. It’s about knowing what truly matters and protecting it from the machinery of commodification.
Of course, this rubs up hard against the scaffolding of capitalism. The entire logic of market economies depends on scarcity to justify prices, competition, and control. Sufficiency cuts through that logic. It says: not everything needs to be monetized. Not every problem needs a product. Not every value fits inside a price tag.
This is why the wellbeing economy is more than just a policy trend. It’s a cultural pivot. It’s a way of saying: we no longer accept an economy that thrives on our insecurity. We’re ready to build something else, something that listens to the body, honors the Earth, and remembers that relational wealth matters more than individual surplus.
Audre Lorde said, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” In a world built on scarcity, to live as though you are already enough, to treat others as though their worth is not up for economic negotiation, is revolutionary.
The future of economics won’t be shaped by marginal utility curves. It will be shaped by whether we can remember how to live together without fear, without hunger, without the illusion that wholeness lies just beyond the next purchase.
We don’t need to grow forever. We just need to outgrow the scarcity myth.
And maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll learn that sufficiency was never about limits at all. It was about coming home.
Great post. The scarcity myth, alongside the idea of the rational, self-interested economic man, both need busting! An essential point you highlight here is the concept of manufactured desire driven by insecurity. Before 'marketing' became marketing, it was candidly termed 'consumption engineering', which tells us all we need to know (no shade to marketeers :)) Relearning enoughness feels like the essential work.
Time is the only scarcity. We can't buy more of it, we've all got about eighty years of it, give or take, and depending on forces beyond our control we may have less. That's why other people want yours: whether it's helping them in their goals or wasting your time so you're not a threat they want it. Don't give it to them: know what you're about and spend your time on that. People who want your time want power over you and the desire for power should be the first clue they shouldn't have it. True peace and justice comes from an organic and holistic society of individuals creating good rather than a few individuals creating power. Find the thing you want to be about and be the change you want to be.