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Where did our belief in abundance come from?
- javajosh 3y agoWhere every other belief comes from: When a mommy belief and a daddy belief love each other very much, they make a baby belief! The more precise question is why do certain beliefs die and others keep going strong? A belief in abundance, like beliefs about justice, karma and God, give us a useful illusion of order and safety in a universe that is chaotic, unsafe, and unjust. Abundance gives us the courage to try new things, to fail, to try again. And so, amazingly, almost mystically, justifies itself, at least to some degree for some period of time. When humans multiply to the point where they threaten to poison the thin skin of life that sustains them, it may be worth reassessing.
- quickthrower2 3y agoI don’t think they mean “The Secret” style abundance here, more like “physical things (and maybe knowledge) the population has access to and can utilise for their own good”
- fifiee7f 3y agoWhat does this comment actually contribute to the dialogue beyond a glib reply to the title of the link for karma farming? "OoO from our environment obviously" yawn. >And so, amazingly, almost mystically, justifies itself, at least to some degree for some period of time. When humans multiply to the point where they threaten to poison the thin skin of life that sustains them, it may be worth reassessing. Citation needed Malthusian. This reeks of "We've burned down the house we live in" rhetoric without actually stretching its neck out enough to risk courting a quantified rebuttal.
- javajosh 3y ago>What does this comment actually contribute to the dialogue Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know YOU were reading. Let me break down the concrete assertions in a numbered list for you. Feel free to attack any or all of them: 1. The origin of belief is unknown. 2. The success of belief is the thing. 3. Belief success is best analyzed as a system of selection, not generation. 4. The selection pressure on a belief changes over time. 5. An example of selection pressure is anything contributing to feelings of safety. 6. An example of selection pressure changing is when "abundance" is linked to "externalities". And, I would also add: 7. People are very attached to belief either as identity or as comfort. 8. (Subjective) there is a profound comfort in dispelling illusions and embracing nuanced understanding of a thing 9. (Normative) you should try it! 10. A false assertion at one time can be true in another time. EDIT: 11. Malthus did not anticipate technological advance, esp ammonia fertilizer tech, that invalidated his timeline. 12. Tech advances end. An example of the end of a tech advance ending is Moore's Law.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoIt is lucrative for an individual (or group) to be able to instill (correct or incorrect) beliefs in people other than themselves. It turns out that it is even lucrative to be able to coerce others to assert such beliefs even if they silently disbelieve (as this can convince yet others to believe). These two factors make it complicated to understand (let alone model) how beliefs succeed and fail.
- ggm 3y agoAbundance and scarcity are both evidenced in deep time by feast and famine qualities in the archaeological record. We believe in abundance because it happens often enough. Extreme lack of abundance causes survival bias: dead men tell no tales. The existence of tools which demand time to make and primitive stone tool factories suggest abundance: division of labour is necessary to invest time in tool making for future benefit. There has to be a relative surplus, more food than not, less time for survival only, to make tools work. We believe in abundance because of millennia of life experience incorrectly or not. In modern times, most scarcity problems are supply chain not actual exhaustion, diamond mines and gold not withstanding. Rare earths aren't rare. Uranium isn't rare. We aren't running out of lithium. Erlich/Simons explores the reality of abundance in the earths crust. Things may get expensive or hard to find from time to time but our brains are mostly tuned for optimism. Extreme pessimism in a species is neither pleasant nor useful. Why live a life of fear, reality not withstanding? Stoicism, that's beneficial. Some hesitancy to optimism? Useful. Unremitting black depression and Calvinistic preordained hell on earth? That's jonestown by another path (Jones sold salvation in the afterlife but you know what I mean)
- hallqv 3y agoModerating optimism is overrated. Most people should make an effort to be more optimistic, due to our biological negativity bias. That will serve them better.
- strken 3y agoIf you only look at the past it's nearly impossible to tell a sigmoid curve from an exponential.
- hallqv 3y agoWhy would we be approaching a plateau?
- MrPatan 3y agoEvery sigmoid not carrying me up is close to the plateau
- quickthrower2 3y agoI don’t think we are because the sun is still chucking out a shitload of low entropy energy, most of which we don’t use. So the curve steepness will depend on if we can figure out how to harness it. And we are working on brain augmentation already (AI).
- hallqv 3y agoI agree.
- trextrex 3y agoVery interesting and insightful article. But I always find it odd when historical articles omit the role of massive resource extraction from the colonies that provided the driving force in European economies to be able to convert all the ideas into actual reality.
- p0d 3y agoDo you think the extraction of resources created wealth and progress at home and abroad? I have it fixed in my head that progress generally requires an external catalyst. In 2023, it would be very controversial to suggest Europe and the historical colonies are both wealthier as a result. I have seen how the Spanish destroyed La Paz's natural environment yet it is a bustling city. What do you think?
- trextrex 3y agoNo, I think the extraction of resources from the colonies created a lot of wealth in Europe. In fact, a very strong argument could be made that that's where our (euro-centric) belief in abundance comes from. Why the colonies were so adversely affected is a bit more complicated, and I think is more related to destruction of existing societal institutions and the installation of deliberately extractive institutions.
- jayGlow 3y agoWealth was definitely created in some colonies, the wealthiest country in the world is made up of former colonies.
- ppsreejith 3y agoWealth was definitely created in the colonies but the native inhabitants were almost always adversely affected. In the current wealthiest country in the world, it was the European migrants that benefited while the natives were mostly killed or eliminated.
- photochemsyn 3y agoSo, tell me... what's the minimal necessary agricultural footprint for a city of one million human beings. This is the social sciences are viewed with contempt by the real scientists and engineers, by the way.
- onethought 3y agoI don't understand your point. What's the minimum materials needed to build a bridge? (Depends on technology: Design, Materials, etc). Agricultural footprint is exactly the same – I mean we could build an underground farm from hydroponics if we wanted. But what does that have to do with Social Sciences? And why contempt? are you saying there is no phenomena in social interaction/groups? Where do you draw that line? Is understanding Ants and Bees contemptible? Just humans? Why?
- bell-cot 3y ago> ...minimum agricultural footprint for a city... Nicely put. But bear in mind that agricultural output of a given piece of land varies every year, sometimes greatly. Weather is the farmer's eternal frenemy, but there's also flood, disease, pestilence, vulcanism, ... > ...are viewed with contempt... Hard scientists and engineers have good reasons to sneer at much of the social "sciences". But the human and social realities which those folks claim to study are dangerously real.
- hnbad 3y ago> the social sciences are viewed with contempt by the real scientists and engineers They're not. They're viewed by contempt by techies with overinflated egos who don't realize that when looking at complex systems outside their area of expertise they're like junior developers coming into a legacy project guffawing at the needless complexity because they don't yet grasp the unwritten requirements that created the scar tissue they see as bad craftmanship. Actual "real scientists" and "real engineers" understand that the social sciences are amongst the most complex of sciences because they don't have the liberty to run isolated experiments in a vacuum, run simulations and test assumptions with a pen and paper because their field of study encompasses the complexity of the entire human brain and its interaction with everything around us. Sure, there are thousands and possibly millions of hacks in those fields but there are also thousands and millions of hacks in STEM. Imagine having your entire field judged on the musings and performance of the worst techie you know.
- e40 3y agoNorth American Indian cultures seem to have somewhat avoided this mindset. At least from what I’ve read written in the last couple hundred years.
- goatlover 3y agoOne reason for that might be that the large ice sheets in North America delayed migration to much of the continent, meaning less time for civilizations north of Mexico to develop. But there were some irrigation projects, farming, and clear cutting.
- fsckboy 3y agoI don't have a dog in the dark ages fight, but > In some remote provinces, writing disappeared entirely. The remote provinces were filled with recently conquered barbarians, and the writing that disappeared was the writing that the Roman colonists and state brought with them where they went, including back home. but throught the middle ages, Christianity kept spreading and by that period of history, where it spread, writing spread too. And from what I understand, the Moslem lands also launched on a positive slope literacy-wise.
- labster 3y agoYeah it’s amazing how people keep buying Renaissance era CT propaganda about itself. Those classics they were “rediscovering”? They only existed at all because the church copied papyrus to vellum to books. Papyrus doesn’t last 1000 years outside of deserts (e.g. Egypt).
- labster 3y ago(The “CT” is a typo)
- dalbasal 3y agoYes, exactly. The whole sequential history narrative, the Standard Model, is totally blinkered from its NW european perspective. "Civilisation," meaning societies that have cities, taxes, writing, big government, roads, aqueducts, and such.... these existed for thousands of years in Egypt, Iraq, India, China, Greece etc. Rome was such a society. Rome also conquered "The East," and the north african coast... all long established urban "civilisations." When Rome "fell," those civilisations persisted. Persia had "fallen" before them, as had Alexander's empire, Assyria, Babylon, Sumer, etc. etc. There were good centuries and bad, but they generally stayed "civilised" through thousands of years worth of political turmoil and change. They always had scribes, high priests, princes, infrastructure and such. England, France, Germany and whatnot.... These were never civilisations. They were, for short periods ruled by Rome. They had some elements of civilisation, but for brief periods with limited reach. It was never culturally rooted or widespread. They were barbarian societies, and continued to be barbarian societies. Writing doesn't "disappear" in europe, it never really existed. Concepts like Scottish or German renaissance are ridiculous. These were new civilisations being established in previously barbarian societies. They weren't renewing, they were founding. Urban civilisation is new to NW europe. 200-500 years old. England's "old world civilisation" is only 150 years older than US civilisation.
- toshk 3y agoI love how the introduction explains "historians are debating about this forever" but Im going to tell you the truth.
- golemotron 3y agoA perennial conceit.
- neovialogistics 3y agoMost discussions of economic limits in the future don't account for thermodynamics or the planetary energy budget and this article is more of the same. On the sociology side, this article doesn't even question the assumption of "our belief in abundance", a thing that I doubt you'll find much of in places like Izmir, Dhaka and Guayaquil.
- eru 3y agoThermodynamics doesn't pose a fundamental limit on economic value. The planetary energy budget is even less of an issue. For the latter, we have fission, fusion and we can grow into space. For the former: in principle you can create arbitrarily large economic value on arbitrarily small energy budgets (if you have enough time). Getting a bit philosophical and speculative: Assume computation is one way to create economic value. Eg either because computation is just useful for humans, like today, or because in the future you'll be able to simulate human beings (or other economic actors) directly via computation. Landauer's Principle [0] gives us a physical lower limit on the amount of energy we need to do a single bit operation: E >= k * T * ln 2 (where k is the Boltzmann constant). Stripping away all the constants, this tells us that as the universe expands and cools off, computation gets cheaper. The absolute minimum cost of computation is proportional to the ambient temperature of the universe. As a simple example, you can get an infinite amount of computation out of a single Joule, if you wait for the temperature to half between each operation. Of course, in practice we are far, far away from the Landauer limit being relevant. And we are far, far away from more conventional limits to economic activity. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landauer%27s_principle > On the sociology side, this article doesn't even question the assumption of "our belief in abundance", a thing that I doubt you'll find much of in places like Izmir, Dhaka and Guayaquil. İzmir is in Turkey which has seen an enormous increase in welfare over the past 200 years thanks to the Industrial Revolution. In about the last ten years mismanagement has damaged the economy of Turkey. Such a short episode in history might damage people's belief in abundance, but we can hardly blame people who are in dire straits at the moment for holding short-sighted beliefs. Many people in countries that are doing just fine, like eg the US, also like to engage in gloom and doom mongering.
- synaesthesisx 3y agoThe greatest thing about technology is that it will ultimately enable superabundance. We have a duty to leverage technology for the greater good of humanity & civilization.
- hnbad 3y agoThe problem isn't abundance or scarcity, the problem at this point is equal access. We have entire countries stuck in poverty selling their resources (human and natural alike) for a pittance like indentured servants and we have individuals hoarding and amassing more wealth and riches than they could spend or use in a thousand lifetimes. We also have a global economic system that by necessity wastes these precious resources in products that get shredded without being used, food that gets destroyed without being eaten and machines that are being run without getting to fulfill their purpose. So on the one hand we have wasteful overproduction for the rich (relatively - which, globally speaking, includes everyone on HN) and on the other we have a handful of the extremely rich (the fraction of a permille of the globally richest people) wasting the equivalent of dozens of poverty lifetimes worth of resources on their fancies. This seems like an easy problem to solve but we need the extreme poverty to maintain the narrative that enables the extremely rich to exist. In other words, no matter how much we expand the "abundance" we also need to maintain the scarcity because the differential is what enables our economic system and those benefitting from it the most. Those who have the most also have the most to lose from the elimination of scarcity.
- jojobas 3y agoIn other words, somebody should forfeit what they think is hard-earned to some foreigners for nothing. We have hard enough time convincing people to share with your actual neighbours, good luck with weird people from across the world doing civil wars and female genital mutilations.
- churchill 3y agoAnd you are the Righteous Judge of the Universe who will determine how to redistribute those resources? I live in a third-world country (Nigeria) and every part of the economy that doesn't work is because of compassionate, self-anointed do-gooders like you trying to plan the economy. The only parts of the economy that work are the chaotic parts that the government has left alone to be developed by the greedy 'individuals hoarding and amassing more wealth and riches than they could spend or use in a thousand lifetimes.' Even when the West sends foreign aid, it is diverted to politicians and used to equip armies that oppress the local populations, while countries like China that have left the market run its course have jumped from having a billion poor to lifting 600 million out of poverty. Leave the market alone, keep your compassion - nobody needs it. The amoral market is the only way out of poverty.
- 3cats-in-a-coat 3y agoIt's a mental default that everything that is not evidently scarce is abundant. It's a lazy default, intended to simplify a complex world for simple brains. Unfortunately, it's a complex world.
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- bell-cot 3y agoSounds nice...but between human nature and century-ish historical periods where various smaller groups of people were enjoying an upswing, I suspect that human beliefs in Abundance are older than Gilgamesh. The article reads far more sensibly if one reads its "we" as being confined to a certain narrow thread of western European intellectuals.
- gulavsinghyadav 3y ago[flagged]
- gulavsinghyadav 3y ago[flagged]
- avgcorrection 3y ago> > We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason … On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us? There are a couple of reasons.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dalbasal 3y ago> How did we get out of this Malthusian malaise? (dark age economics) IIRC, the dark age cliches are opposite of "Malthusian." Malthusian is about exponential growth of populations, economic activity and such while food, resources, and labour compensation cannot keep up. This is a good example of where these grand theories of Economics, Civilisation and Everything go wrong. We have been doing these obsessively for 200 years. It's notable how we are still bad at it in the same ways. Malthus, Marx or Milton Friedman and all the rest failed hard, ultimately. Their "schools" become endless apologetics machines, tasked with complexifying ideas originally appealing for simplicity and generality... For me... I want see questions. I want to see odds and chances. I want to see actual engagement with real tensions, contradictions and problems in both reality and theory. Private infrastructure? OK... Maybe. Have you examples of private infrastructure abundance? Are there any problems private infrastructure can't solve? Problems private infrastructure creates? Same for "housing." At this point, pointing to NIMBYism is cliche. It's like blaming problems on corporate greed, inherent government inefficiency, worker laziness or whatever one-liners go do well in your circle. It's not insight, even if it is true. To be interesting, you need to get much grittier than this. NIMBYism is not limited to real estate, for example. There's plenty of analogy in industry, agriculture, financial services, intellectual property. The rights, desires and demands of existing players conflict with the needs of growth, of newcomers and such. I'm not saying authors' conclusions are wrong. I'm saying that the questions are contrived to be resolved by preselected answers. They're not curious questions. Staying with housing and NIMBY... Lets start with a recognition of the central tension. When house prices go up... homeowners, banks, realtors and builders are financially strong. When house prices go down, homeowner wealth recedes. For newer, younger or poorer homeowners housing price recession is a wipeout because the mortgage/leverage puts a multiple on losses and their wealth is likely concentrated in housing. Banking/finance also comes under stress, because finance is also leveraged and likely concentrates risk. Runs, bailouts, etc. Even if banking is robust, negative price growth means a tight lending market... a local deflation of money. Even if your mayor had a housing price dial... it's not clear that we'd turn it to "abundance." Affordability would improve. Middle class wealth might tank. Banking might collapse. Meanwhile.... how "solved" is housing affordability in NIMBY afflicted markets, once NIMBYism is wiped out? It's extremely doubtful, IMO, that YIMBY affects affordability in cities like SanFran or Munich apart from (perhaps) enabling smaller houses/sites. That is affordability though, not abundance, and it is marginal. This is where econ101 guys tend to fail basic econ101 test. The proverbial Econ101 model is a model. What does YIMBY do on the model? X is quantity. Y is price. Demand trends down with price. Supply trends up. How does this look for real estate? How much does YIMBY add to total supply? 0.1, 1%, 5%? IRL the supply of housing in expensive, established cities usually doesn't change enough to meaningfully affect prices much. Not in theory, or in practice. The demand curve, OTOH, is heavily affected by interest rates, lending practices, buyer confidence in real estate as an investment. Very heavily. Stop lending, crash house prices. See Ireland, 2009. That's affordability "solved." Or rather, that's "price" solved. Except... rent hasn't decreased. Mortage payments haven't decreased much or for many. Investors are buying everything and homeowners can't get financing. Prices are lower. We need more intelligent discussion. Not this time magazine, political pamphlet, feel good simplifications. There are real, difficult, tensions. Real trade offs. Real problems that need real tactics. Chalkboard rhetoric based on generalities is pointless. It was interesting in the 19th century, destructive in the 20th and foolish in the 21st.
- nologic01 3y ago> Malthusian ideas kept coming back of course—they still surround us—but the growth genie has been out of the bottle ever since and the mindset of abundance has been a part of our culture. Never again can the concept of progress be dismissed as impossible. Mathusian ideas are to the current concept of Planetary Boundaries and the need for a sustainability transition what Aristotelian physics was to modern physics: A flawed but directionally correct early recognition and internalization that in material terms (and for the foreseable future) we (homo sapiens) form a closed biosphere system that must satisfy certain constraints. The constraints that this ground truth puts on the human condition are variable, technology dependent and still somewhat poorly understood (e.g tipping points) but they cannot be eliminated. Unhinged "free market" enthousiasts, technosolutionists and assorted economic growth-uber-alles ideologies are decoupled from reality and (given this mind set is the dominant political and decision framework globally) increasingly terminally dangerous. Their simplistic agenda hiddes fake and unsavory axioms such as trickle-down-economics and being relaxed about destabilizing inequalities that if further aggravated will be the primary path towards a new dark ages. A certain form of abundance is logically possible. We can obviously have in abundance anything that is compatible with long-term biosphere equilibrium and that is quite a lot. The missing catalyst are social technologies that will help us collectively create and enjoy what is plenty and equitably share what is not. The ideology expressed in this article, the adulation of past social inventions will never get us there. To use the physics analogy again, it is akin to Newtonian physics (it did solve many problems within its domain of applicability) whereas we actually live in a quantum mechanical and relativistic universe. The toolkit needs to be replaced or expanded as appropriate. Unfortunately there is no hint yet that we are in the process of inventing new and adapted socio-economic and political systems that will get us to a sustainable abundance phase. The world is run by vested interests that will gladly sacrifice the future to maintain current privilige.
- dalbasal 3y agoThe author seems to be using "Malthusian" to mean "pessimistic economics," even if the specific flavour of pessimism is the opposite of Malthus'. I think the biggest thing we can learn from Malthusean economics is that have a fun last name increases your quotability by 10,000%.
- 3y ago
- treeman79 3y agoRead Basic economics by Thomas Sowell. It’s gives a fantastic understanding of supply and demand, what wealth is, how it’s created, etc. Why some places prospers, and some don’t.
- everdrive 3y agoThere’s a sense in which women specifically are more inclined to abundance. There’s an accurate stereotype of a single man’s apartment: there may be a single chair, a TV, a mattress on the floor, and not much else. I’ve always gotten the impression that this sort of scenario is uncomfortable to women on a very fundamental and intuitive level. Anecdotally, I actually just had a fight with a female friend. Her roommate recently moved out, and I kept commenting how much I liked her bare and open apartment. I hadn’t realized it, but she felt the opposite: that her bare apartment was embarrassing to the point where she was uncomfortable even having people over.
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y agoIn rural areas one can tell which houses don't have a woman
- bambax 3y agoThis article recites the habitual capitalist doctrine and world vision that one can find everywhere. Unfortunately, it's full of holes. "The Dawn of Everything" by Graeber is a great counterpoint to this.
- dredmorbius 3y agoFor those unfamiliar with Discourse Magazine, it is a new-ish (~2020 launch) publication of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, both of which are strongly Libertarian, highly ideological, free-market fundamentalist, strongly aligned with the Koch family and Koch Industries, who provide major financial support and whose head, Charles Koch, serves on the board. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercatus_Center https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercatus_Center> <https://www.discoursemagazine.com/about/ https://www.discoursemagazine.com/about/> I'd advise heavy dosings of salt in reading this or the other 25 parts of this book-length "Abundance" series, though as an insight into present trends in Libertarian cornucopian theology, it may be useful.
- slyrus 3y agoWas it the repeated use of “Malthusian” that gave it away?
- dredmorbius 3y agoThat, general tone, some familiar names amongst authors of a few of the pieces. Then I decided to check the masthead / about sections. When I first saw this turn up in the HN "new" queue (the story hit the 2nd chance queue after failing to gain traction the first time 'round), I thought it might be some new-age woo group. Took a bit of chewing to realise who was behind the curtain.
- brightlancer 3y agoFor those unfamiliar with <insert group>, it is a <noun> of <bad people>, who are highly ideological and strongly aligned with <other bad people>, who provide major financial support and whose head, <absolute monster>, serves on the board. Coming this August, ideological madlibs.
- dredmorbius 3y agoInteresting that when a criticism which is specific as to associations and reasons is posed, the defence is a belittling ad hom. Mercatus & GMU an outgrowth of the Mont Pelerin Society of "free-market' economists and propagandists. <https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mont_Pelerin_Society https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Mont_Pelerin_Soc...> Excellent investigations of these groups include - Jane Mayer, Dark Money: on political influence by the Kochs and others. <https://archive.org/details/darkmoneyhiddenh0000maye_k2o0 https://archive.org/details/darkmoneyhiddenh0000maye_k2o0> - Naomi Oreskes and Eric Conway, Merchants of Doubt: on climate disinformation by the Kochs and others.<https://archive.org/details/merchantsofdoubt00ores https://archive.org/details/merchantsofdoubt00ores> - Oreskes and Conway, The Big Myth: on how "free markets" were sold as an ideological fable, by the Kochs and others. <https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-9781635573572/ https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/big-myth-9781635573572/> - Philip Mirowski, The Road From Mont Pelerin" on the emergence and development of neoliberal philosophy and economics <https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674088344 https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674088344> The Kochs, GMU, Mercatus, the Atlas Network, and many affiliated organisations and individuals are at the heart of disinformation about global warming and challenges on both the resource and environmental impacts fronts, and have been for many decades. Koch Industries itself is a massive oil and gas concern which obviously benefits from rebutting and confounding arguments against usage of fossil fuels, both through scientific investigation and governmental regulation, its two principle bogeymen. The madness lies on their side, and generally lacks libs.
- exabrial 3y agoWhere did our belief in scarcity come from?
- nemo44x 3y agoWhat I like about this article is it subverts Marx's ideas of capital and markets and how the proletariat are being exploited/alienated/dehumanized to enrich a capitalist and if they'd only wake up to this fact they'd do a people's revolution. But, Marx assumes people are stupid. They aren't. They realize that free markets, as noted by Locke in the article, create abundance for everyone. An acre of land becomes 100 acres when an ambitious person owns it and works it. We all do better when we allow the exceptional people in society to do their thing which betters themselves and then everyone else. That envy at their success expressed through confiscation and redistribution is counter productive. History is created by the heroic and it is why we build monuments to them.
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoWe'll see just how little abundance there is if global supply chains break down, and we aren't able to grow enough food.
- cassepipe 3y agoIt comes from fossil fuels
- suoduandao3 3y agoI have a funny and illustrative story about abundance and scarcity mindsets. I used to work in an office that had just a few too few forks in the kitchen. Because of this, people hoarded forks, often forgetting they had one at their desk and taking a second one back. Even though there were only a few fewer forks than people, there was almost never a fork available in the kitchen. One lunch hour I walked to the thrift store down the road, bought a bag of forks for three bucks, and put them in the kitchen. Once there were enough forks, people stopped hoarding and we had more forks than we could ever need. It's about as clear an illustration of scarcity vs abundance mindset I've ever seen.
- reducesuffering 3y agoNow do houses
- suoduandao3 3y agoI would, but the thrift store doesn't sell bags of a dozen houses for three bucks.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoIt's also an excellent illustration of exponential effects, how just a few things over a threshold of thousands can make a disproportionately huge difference. Those forks in the extra bag were probably worth hundreds of dollars each to the office in terms of time and productivity savings from all the effort saved from fork hoarding.
- m463 3y agofunny. Somehow, this reminds me of David Coperfield: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery" There's a line you cross - maybe call it "enough" - that has an enormous psychological effect on our well-being. I think there's a similar sort of effect with the economy. If the economy is good, people (top to bottom) make positive plans for the future, spend with certainty, relax and sleep well.
- dang 3y agoPlease don't cross into smearing one group in order to defend another. That's no way out of hell, and we'd rather not be in hell here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: I've detached this post from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36874695 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36874695 because I misread the comment - see below.
- hnbad 3y agoWhich group am I smearing by saying that there are tons of people who suck at their trade in every trade, in response to someone claiming that all people in one set of trades suck?
- dang 3y agoI'm sorry! I misread your comment. I've unflagged it now and detached the moderation reply. Moderation is guesswork. We're working in haste and sometimes guess wrong. I know it sucks to be on the receiving end of that, so I really apologize.
- adolph 3y agoAbundance is possible because our needs are finite but our capacity is infinite. The Republic of Letters was a remarkable spontaneously organized institution, consisting of intellectuals who corresponded on philosophy, politics and science. OG Network State