When Adam Smith wrote about economics in the 18th century, the basic premise was that natural resources were limited while human desires were limitless. This is what we call scarcity. As a result, economics became the practice of addressing infinite desires through finite means of production. Hundreds of years later, I’m here to question this premise. What if scarcity isn’t the natural law of things that economics works within, but the output of the system in which it tries to maintain itself? To be clear, scarcity isn’t a natural constraint, but an engineered tool.

The traditional view of economics says that resources are scarce. For instance, the Earth produces a limited number of diamonds. If everyone wants a diamond ring, that’s natural scarcity: not everyone can obtain what they desire. To combat this scarcity, we’ve created economic systems to fairly and efficiently allocate these diamonds. These frameworks include models such as supply and demand. These models create the need for markets, because markets are the most efficient mechanism for dealing with the inescapable natural limitation.

There might be a need to look at this differently as we head into the 22nd century. With our mature economy and technological advancements, the material production of goods often exceeds immediate basic needs. This suggests the potential for abundance rather than scarcity. What if the issue Smith wrote about so long ago is actually solved now? If that’s the case, then the scarcity we experience isn’t natural at all but artificially created to sustain demand, effort, and profit margins. If you remember your economics class, you’d know that if supply is higher than demand, the cost of goods declines so that more people buy the goods.

A company that not only pretends that supply is low but also markets its scarcity, it can maintain its price point. The company achieves this by limiting access rather than supply. Examples of this strategy include artificially limiting a product’s lifespan, restricting the free sharing of knowledge or technology through intellectual property, or structuring key assets like housing and education through debt and asset inflation.

The Value in Limitation

If the economy works in this way, scarcity is no longer an issue to be solved. The system is now dependent on it to keep functioning. To control assets, the system relies on scarcity to sustain demand. Essential goods like housing, healthcare, and higher education are no longer seen as utilities, but financial assets or investment vehicles. People no longer buy homes to raise a family, but to flip them or to receive income from rent. Higher education is not a place to learn, but an investment made in hopes of a higher-paying job.

These misguided beliefs ensure that their cost is driven up by speculative return, not production cost. By increasing the barrier to entry for fundamental security, the system guarantees competing demand for high-wage jobs and continual work to maintain a baseline existence. By limiting access, demand for basic needs remains sustained.

Goods as Status Signals

If goods are tagged as limited access, those who obtain them can use them as status signals. As I mentioned before, you can’t own a home anymore. It has become a status symbol. It’s not about owning one home, but owning multiple homes. In the system, status is a zero-sum game. If you rise in status, that means I’ve fallen. Consequently, this means our perceptions of each other sustain demand for these goods. The consumer is driven to buy the next best thing to maintain their status.

In the race to maintain status, many people turn to debt, including credit cards and loans. Credit cards, in particular, allow consumption to outpace income. Not only is the consumer paying for the good today, but they will also be paying for future debt. In a sense, future income is used to satisfy present demand. This buy-in to debt perpetuates the need for labor, as work becomes mandatory to pay off the interest.

The Justification of Labor

If resources and basic needs were widely abundant, the system would lose leverage over the labor force. To maintain a level of production, the system must ensure that people not only work but work ceaselessly, regardless of the system’s ability to provide for them. This is done by creating a gap between a person’s need and their ability to meet those needs without continuous effort. In other words, the justification of labor relies on limiting access to two things: a secure baseline and guaranteed leisure.

We work because we are afraid of falling below the baseline, where our needs cannot be met. As the basic needs we’ve discussed increase, the idea of not working becomes impossible. This is coupled with the fear of losing money, debt, bankruptcy, and falling into poverty. These are our constant motivators to head into the office on a Monday. The fear is worse for those who work entry-level and service jobs, as wages are strategically placed slightly above a sustainable living wage, ensuring that a lapse in employment triggers a crisis.

There’s really no such thing as enough, or the line at which a person can stop working, in our economic system. If there is a line for enough, it constantly moves. Individuals my age and younger may not know how to feel about owning their own home, as “financial assets” increase in value faster than wages. People work with the intention of achieving financial freedom, but yesterday’s retirement goals will mean little today as this continues.

The Moralization of Work Ethic

To ensure labor continues, we’ve culturally reframed work from a practical necessity to a moral virtue. If you remain idle, you’re cast as someone lazy and unproductive. This is how we internalize the necessity of labor as we judge ourselves and others for any perceived lack of effort. We conform to the system in hopes of moral excellence, dismissing its high demands as something we should overcome. If you don’t, you’re weak.

As a result, professional identity tends to be the source of meaning in secular cultures. Questions of what you do are equally replaced with who you are. This is why we tie our identity to our professional output. This ensures that we work not only for money, but for a sense of meaning, belonging, and self-worth. Labor is used as the primary source of self-validation. The moralization of the work ethic makes us believe that we are what we do. It rests on the assumption that our sense of self depends on our actions and their results.

Maintaining Value

The reason and justification for this entire system is to preserve value. The way we preserve and even increase value is through manufactured scarcity. If the value of goods were tied solely to how they were used and were available to everyone, the monetary value of most goods would plummet. Everything is a commodity. It’s our perception that gives it any value. The product’s value is not dependent on its usefulness, but on its cost, rarity, and its ability to signify high status. If everyone has access to the same high-quality product, its value diminishes. Therefore, value is maintained by ensuring that the product remains difficult or expensive to obtain.

Wealth experts will tell you that the way to wealth is to invest in stocks, real estate, and other investment vehicles. Want to know why it’s very difficult to acquire wealth? The value of these investments must also be maintained. Preserving value means limiting the general public’s access to these investments. If the general population had access, yields would fall in value. Value is thus maintained by suppressing widespread purchasing power in relation to the cost of investment.

Real estate has been hit the hardest with this idea of value preservation. Owners “invest” in homes not to live in, but for the speculative profit they can generate by being owners. When viewed as an investment, the goal is to increase the home’s value to flip for profit. This artificially limits access to housing by driving up home prices, thereby creating a scarcity of affordable shelter.

Seeing Through the System

The illusion that I’m trying to break in telling you all is the illusion of scarcity. We live in a system that tells us that we are inherently flawed. It says our value depends on money, time, and status, all of which are seen as limited. The economic structure is a physical manifestation of the mind’s belief in lack. The only way we can remove ourselves from this devastating cycle of high value and low value is to see ourselves as inherently perfect and independent of the system. Whether scarcity is natural or manufactured doesn’t matter if we don’t see ourselves as dependent on it.

The system makes us believe that we have to do to become. To find meaning in this world, we must work, acquire, and suffer the consequences of scarcity. The system doesn’t want you to know that you already have value, and this value can never be given to you or taken away. If you believe this, you won’t need economics. You won’t need external validation of money, status, or work to boost your self-esteem. You should already know that you are perfect with or without these things. And that’s all that they are… things. Isn’t it ironic that we can assign value to things, but we can’t do the same for ourselves?

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