Scarcity and Abundance

They've always been linked. The challenge is keeping them in check.

Recent “If this isn’t nice, what is?” moment.

Last week, a few people I respect shared thoughts on scarcity and abundance. Seth Godin compared them to two kinds of games—-one where someone has to lose for you to win, and one where everyone can win. Scott Galloway and Kyla Scanlon examined how scarcity, especially of attention, continues to drive value in our economy, and how businesses thrive by keeping it that way.

Without scarcity, abundance loses meaning. Without abundance, scarcity destroys what’s left. Neither’s going away, so I’m most interested in how things tip out of balance, and how our individual actions can keep both in check.

In nature, lean seasons follow lush ones, and balance returns. Through the centuries, humans broke that rhythm. We wanted more than the next season could give, got scared of losing what we had, and tried to keep others from taking it. Markets, politics, and technology only sped things up—-our wants grew bigger, faster, and far beyond our actual needs.

That same pattern drives industries like finance, fossil fuels, industrial farming, and attention-driven tech (often supercharged by private equity and other flawed investment models). They create plenty of wealth for a few, but deplete the resources communities and ecosystems rely on. They’re built to take more than they give, eroding the very resources that keep us in balance.

Peter Drucker was right:

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

When efficiency serves extraction, the gap between scarcity and abundance widens. Closing it starts with seeing abundance not as endless more, but as enough to sustain and share fairly.

Sometimes that’s systemic, like clean energy grids, public libraries, universal healthcare that keeps people well. Sometimes it’s personal, like lending a neighbor a tool, bringing a meal to a sick friend, or simply catching yourself in a moment that feels complete and saying, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

I hope all of this feels obvious. Still, we’re hit daily with messages that blur common sense, so it’s worth saying again: life isn’t about squeezing more out of ourselves or each other for excess. It’s about knowing when what you have is already enough and choosing to help keep that balance for everyone.

Take a few minutes today to consider:

- Where in your life do you already have enough, but still act from a feeling of scarcity?

- What’s one area of your life that already feels abundant, and how could you share it with someone else?