I’ve been reading The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer (Scribner, 2024). The book is wonderful, filled with examples and stories that cause me to reflect and think deeper about life and how I am living in it.
Last week, I explored how systems built on relationships and things take us down different paths in life and at work. Here, I’ll look at the mental models we have about scarcity and abundance and examine how these two different starting points shape our lives in such different ways.
In The Serviceberry, Kimmerer refers to the American Economic Association framework on economics. The AEA frames economics as “the study of scarcity, the study of how people use resources and respond to incentives.” This statement struck me. I am so steeped in seeing reciprocity, mutuality, and interdependence in nature that it’s become a primary lens through which I see organizations, communities, and human dynamics. For that reason, I rarely think in terms of scarcity.
It wasn’t until I read the AEA definition that I was reminded of a hard fact. Our whole economic system is built on scarcity, not abundance.
Economics, a system built on scarcity
Supply and demand is a fundamental principle of an economic system. Underneath this principle is the assumption that money, goods, and market dynamics are all based on a zero-sum game. Zero-sum games mean that the system is finite. When a finite system is divided up, some have more, and others have less. The only way to get more is to take it from someone else—that means you must fight to keep what you have. As a result, self-interest motives and actions become integrated into our thinking on economics. They shape the values that influence how we live our lives.
In an economic system built on scarcity, we don’t share—we hoard. When we accumulate things, we assume the resource we want may not be available when we need it. It’s based on the idea that if we don’t provide for ourselves, no one else will help us if we need it. Underneath all of this rests fear. That’s why we value people who spend their lives making money. We rank order the richest in the world, and aspire to be more like them.
These are just a few ways a scarcity economy—or system built on scarcity— affects and shapes our lives.
Gift economies, built on a system of abundance
Juxtapose this framework with the one that is found in nature. In The Serviceberry, the author Robin offers difference examples of a gift economic.
- The author harvests the berries and shares them with friends. A friend who bakes a pie with some of the berries and shares it with a neighbor.
- A nursing log in the forest nurtures a new seedling by providing the nutrients it needs to grow through its decomposing compost.
A gift economy invites “enoughness” into your life.
Over twenty years ago, I read a book by Laurence G. Boldt, The Tao of Abundance. One concept from the book has stuck with me for two decades. The author states that the universe is abundant, but you must be open to receiving its abundance to access it. I wonder if we can’t see or receive the universe’s—nature’s—abundance because we’re taught from the beginning to see the world as a system built on scarcity.
Gift economies operate from a core of generosity. They are based on the assumption that the universe is a place of abundance. Within abundance lies the belief that what you need will be available when you need it. In this system, there isn’t a need to hoard or overharvest.
Viewing life through the lens of a gift economy means believing in abundance not just for ourselves but for others, including other species. It begs important questions:
What do you really need now? What do you have that can nourish others? What is your abundance that you can share to help others?
