3 ms·
I 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. Becau
by suoduandao3 3y ago
I 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.
- lapama 3y agoBoth comments indirectly highlight a point: we know little about the behavioural economics of scarcity.