Asking the Right Questions
Economic scarcity is a concept fundamental not only to the science of economics but to biology – to life itself. After all, the primary scarcity for all of us is … time! We know we’re all going to die, but we don’t know when. And even when we force ourselves to think about our mortality, planning for our legacy can still be a challenge. We can ask about legacy planning for all society, too. To whom is it left? And who will do that planning?
There is no scarcity of ideas about how to mitigate scarcity. This is the province of ideologies, of politicians’ promises, and technocratic engineering projects. Lately, a cottage industry has emerged for scarcity’s dialectical opposite … abundance. This industry seems to have taken off from the criticism and commentary around the best-selling book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, entitled, simply, Abundance. The authors insist that they are not seeking to promote a new ideology but simply inviting readers to look at the many well-intentioned regulations, legislation, and norms which claim to be in the public’s interest, but, instead, hamper that reduction of scarcity which we all want. For their efforts, the authors have been met with name-calling; they are “neoliberals.” They presumably favor market solutions to regulation and permitting. That label is an epithet because neoliberalism is supposed to be yesterday’s economic philosophy – a relic of the late 20th century. It’s time for something new and hopeful — but what, exactly?
Striving for a world of abundance is nothing new, of course. It dates to at least the early 16th century, and Thomas More’s Utopia. In recent years, British Marxist Aaron Bastani has written his Fully Automated Luxury Communism, supporting the dream of many “techno-optimist” Silicon Valley types that developments in AI will make all our lives much better, full of leisure, etc. – if only the political establishment would allow it. To Klein and Thompson, the obstacles to abundance lie mostly with local and state governments. Bastani sees the enemy at a higher central level (possibly capitalism itself). If we continue with the Hegelian dialectic for a moment, since scarcity is opposed to abundance, then there should exist a synthesis: a world of less scarcity, but perhaps not entirely free of scarcity. Our political and technocratic solutions must always aim to lessen scarcity – utilitarianism comes to mind, the greatest good for the greatest number. And, ultimately, the value of our society will be measured, after we have all gone away, by how many lives, and by how much, its members benefited.
The main difficulty with this methodology is the problem of measurement. If one person’s life is made better, by $X, for five years, then lost, and another person’s life is made better by only $X-5, but for ten years before loss, are the gains equal for both? Again, time is the primary scarcity to be addressed, for all of us. Obviously, dollars can’t be the only measure of quality of life. There is something more to abundance. What do I make from the scarce resources I consume – resources like food, water, air? Do I contribute to more for others with my consumption? This quandary is why economists tend to focus their measurement on dollars. There is a dollar value assigned to everything. What about debt? David Graeber, the great anarchist thinker, published his magisterial Debt: The First 5000 Years in 2011. He maintained that money and markets are never anything more than expressions of debt – and always have been just that, explaining wars and law and property, in their entirety, through human history. Scarcity, yes – but abundance? Perhaps existing only in our imagination?
Klein and Thompson argue that administrative burdens are the main constraint to abundance. It’s all about the hoops and delays that governments create – supposedly to guarantee fairness, or equity. But the administrative burden is not just about filling out forms and waiting for approvals, permitting, but also includes taxation (debt, measured in $). Administrative burden is a form of debt collection. Governments have granted themselves the authority to do all this – and, if the people continue to place confidence in their government, its authority will remain unchecked. We have elections for this purpose. And the political process, including elections, functions according to the dynamic of relative power. Who will mobilize the most voters? Are the elections fair? In the end, it may come down to questions of who “deserves” the benefits of abundance more.
Distribution of scarce resources: income, education, clean water and air, public safety, health care – all must be allocated by political power. Typically, the power actors are those who want to protect what they have vs. those who believe they deserve more. In that dialectical tension, the synthesis becomes a question of “why not create more for everybody?” Zerosumism, on the contrary, might be a good name for the source of much social tension. If society could only create more of everything, there would not need to be conflict between the Haves and Have-nots. Since it can’t, there will always be a market for ideas like Abundance or Bastani’s FALC – they’re better than civil war!
There is much political froth around “Zerosumism.” Leverage, the grist of political influence, comes from organizational prowess, mastery of communication platforms, identifying special interests, recognizing class interests, manipulating ethnic or linguistic differences, and negotiating cultural diversity in general. Housing, transportation, school curricula, even availability of capital, all hang in the balance of this political froth. Abundance only overcomes scarcity incrementally – at varying rates of speed. It is a battle, and one success can serve as an example for the next. It may be critical to choose the campaign with the best prospects for success, then prioritize that struggle above others that are shakier. This requires analysis, asking the right questions – not making empty promises.
–William Sundwick
Warp and Woof 