A number of thinkers explicitly or implicitly make exactly that move: they argue that what psychologists call a scarcity mindset is not just an individual cognitive response to limited resources, but the product of a broader scarcity ideology.

That is, people feel they never have enough time, money, or attention because social institutions and cultural beliefs are organized around engineered scarcity.

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Scarcity Mindset vs. Scarcity Ideology

Scarcity Mindset (Psychological Framing)

In the work of Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, scarcity creates a cognitive tunnel:

• Immediate needs dominate attention.
• Long-term planning becomes harder.
• Decision quality deteriorates under pressure.

This framework is descriptive and largely agnostic about why scarcity exists.

Scarcity Ideology Critique (Political and Cultural Framing)

The ideological framing asks:

Why are so many people chronically short of time, money, and attention in societies with enormous productive capacity?

Its answer is that institutions and norms reproduce scarcity because scarcity disciplines behavior and sustains existing power structures.

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Thinkers and Traditions That Use This Idea

Herbert Marcuse

Marcuse distinguished between:

• Natural scarcity (real material limits)
• Artificial scarcity imposed by social organization

He argued advanced societies often preserve scarcity to maintain hierarchy and social control.

Ivan Illich

Illich argued institutions designed to solve problems often create dependence and new forms of deprivation, producing chronic time pressure and reduced autonomy.

David Graeber

In works such as Bullshit Jobs, Graeber argued that large numbers of people are trapped in socially unnecessary work, generating time scarcity despite technological abundance.

Jonathan Crary

In 24/7, he describes a culture that erodes sleep and attention by treating every waking moment as potentially monetizable.

Byung-Chul Han

In The Burnout Society, Han argues that modern subjects internalize constant pressure to optimize themselves, creating self-imposed scarcity of time and mental bandwidth.

Kate Raworth

In Doughnut Economics, Raworth critiques economic assumptions that normalize endless competition over scarce resources.

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Core Claims of Scarcity Ideology Critique

1. Material abundance is technologically possible.
2. Institutions distribute insecurity unevenly.
3. Competition is treated as morally necessary.
4. Time pressure becomes normalized.
5. Attention is commodified.
6. People internalize these conditions as personal inadequacy.

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Three Forms of Manufactured Scarcity

Money Scarcity

Even in rich economies, many people live paycheck to paycheck because of wage structures, debt, and weak social protections.

Time Scarcity

Long work hours, commuting, and administrative burdens create chronic time poverty.

Attention Scarcity

Digital platforms compete for user focus, turning attention into an economic resource.

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Ideological Messages People Absorb

Scarcity ideology often teaches:

• “There isn’t enough to go around.”
• “You must constantly compete.”
• “Rest is laziness.”
• “Your struggles are personal failures.”
• “Security must be earned continuously.”

These beliefs encourage people to accept insecurity as normal.

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Relation to the Abundance Agenda

The abundance agenda focuses on procedural barriers that prevent production.

Scarcity ideology critiques the broader worldview that:

• Treats shortages as inevitable,
• Rewards competition for limited resources,
• And normalizes perpetual insecurity.

So the two perspectives are compatible:

• Abundance agenda: Why don’t we build enough?
• Scarcity ideology: Why do we organize society around perceived lack?

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A Concrete Example: Housing

Scarcity Mindset

A renter facing high costs becomes preoccupied with making rent.

Scarcity Ideology

Policy and cultural assumptions prioritize property values and treat housing as an investment asset rather than a universal need.

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Related Terms

Different traditions use similar concepts:

• Manufactured scarcity
• Artificial scarcity
• Neoliberal subjectivity
• Time poverty
• Attention economy
• Structural precarity

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Bottom Line

Yes—many thinkers argue that the scarcity of time, money, and attention is not merely a psychological state but the result of a scarcity ideology: a set of institutions and beliefs that reproduces insecurity even in materially wealthy societies. In this view, the “scarcity mindset” is often a symptom of a deeper political and cultural system.

People call the abundance agenda “rebranded neoliberalism” because they believe its core message—remove barriers, streamline regulations, and let more building happen—sounds very similar to older market-oriented arguments that emphasized deregulation and growth.

Whether that criticism is fair depends on how you define neoliberalism and how you interpret abundance.

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What Critics Mean by “Neoliberalism”

In contemporary political debate, “neoliberalism” usually refers to a worldview associated with leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, and later centrist figures such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

Common features include:

• Faith in markets
• Deregulation
• Privatization
• Free trade
• Skepticism of labor power and industrial policy
• Acceptance of inequality as a byproduct of efficiency

Critics worry that abundance rhetoric revives some of these themes in more progressive language.

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Why the Abundance Agenda Triggers This Reaction

1. It Often Emphasizes Deregulation

Abundance advocates argue that:

• Zoning rules block housing
• Environmental review can delay projects
• Permitting processes slow infrastructure

To critics, this can sound like a familiar claim:

Regulations are the main problem; remove them and prosperity will follow.

That resembles a core neoliberal move.

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2. It Focuses More on Supply Than Redistribution

Abundance arguments often stress:

• Build more housing
• Generate more energy
• Expand production capacity

Critics on the left argue that this can underplay:

• Wealth concentration
• Union power
• Public ownership
• Social welfare

Their concern is that increasing supply alone does not ensure broadly shared gains.

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3. It Can Sound Friendly to Business Interests

Developers, technology firms, and some investors may benefit from looser constraints on construction and innovation.

Critics ask:

• Who captures the profits?
• Which safeguards are weakened?
• Who bears the risks?

This fuels suspicion that “abundance” could become a pro-corporate agenda.

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4. It Sometimes Treats Politics as a Technical Problem

The abundance agenda often emphasizes state capacity and better institutional design.

Critics argue that this can understate how entrenched interests intentionally preserve scarcity.

From this perspective, shortages are not just due to bad procedures; they are sustained by power.

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5. Many Prominent Supporters Were Previously Associated with Market Liberalism

Writers such as Matt Yglesias and some policy organizations linked to “supply-side liberalism” have roots in traditions that overlap with center-left market liberalism.

That intellectual continuity makes some critics skeptical of the rebranding.

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Why Supporters Say It Is Not Neoliberalism

Advocates of abundance argue that it differs from neoliberalism in important ways.

1. It Supports an Active State

Abundance generally favors:

• Large public investment
• Industrial policy
• Public R&D
• Strong state capacity

That is very different from the small-government instincts of classic neoliberalism.

2. It Focuses on Delivery, Not Retrenchment

The message is not “government should do less,” but:

Government should be able to build and deliver effectively.

3. It Is Compatible with Social Democracy

Countries such as Denmark or Sweden combine robust welfare states with policies that ensure ample housing and infrastructure.

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The Core Disagreement

The debate often comes down to which problem is seen as primary.

Abundance View

The central challenge is underproduction.

Left Critique

The central challenge is unequal power and ownership.

Both can be true:

• Society may not build enough.
• Powerful groups may capture the gains.

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Housing as an Example

If a city legalizes more apartments:

Abundance Supporters Say

More supply should lower rents over time.

Critics Say

Without tenant protections and social housing, benefits may be uneven and developers may profit disproportionately.

This illustrates why some see abundance as incomplete rather than wrong.

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The Strongest Critique

The most persuasive version of the critique is:

Abundance is valuable, but if it prioritizes deregulation and growth without addressing ownership, labor power, and distribution, it risks reproducing neoliberal outcomes under a new label.

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The Strongest Defense

The strongest defense is:

Building more housing, energy, and infrastructure is essential regardless of ideology, and progressive goals are impossible if institutions cannot deliver material results.

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Bottom Line

Some people describe the abundance agenda as rebranded neoliberalism because it emphasizes deregulation, growth, and supply expansion—ideas associated with earlier market-oriented politics. Supporters counter that abundance is fundamentally about state capacity and effective public delivery, not laissez-faire economics.

The real divide is whether scarcity is seen primarily as a failure to build or as a consequence of concentrated power. Many observers believe a durable program needs both: stronger productive capacity and stronger protections to ensure the benefits are widely shared.

A Red Delicious does not gaze wistfully at a Honeycrisp and mutter, “One day, I too shall be admired by suburban shoppers in upscale supermarkets.” Apples lack both self-awareness and a subscription to fruit industry newsletters.

Celebrity is a social phenomenon that requires:

1. Recognition by others.
2. Awareness (or at least potential awareness) of that recognition.
3. A lot of unnecessary attention.

Humans satisfy all three and then spend centuries developing anxiety about it.

Apples only satisfy the first, and only from our perspective. To the apple, if it has a perspective at all—which seems unlikely, though I admit I have not interviewed one—there is no distinction between being the most beloved apple in the Northern Hemisphere and being squirrel food behind a shed.

Honeycrisp is “famous” only in the same way that Moby-Dick is important to people who have read it. Fame exists in the minds of the observers, not in the observed.

The apple itself remains gloriously indifferent, free from vanity, scandal, and the burden of maintaining a personal brand. It does not care whether humans adore it or turn it into applesauce. In this respect, the apple is wiser than most of us. Which is a bit humbling.

Humans have celebrities, but apples? Total meritocracy. Or perhaps total anonymity. Hard to say. The apple PR machine is suspiciously quiet. Among humans, fame is mostly a bizarre side effect of storytelling. One person sings well, dunks a basketball, or dramatically exits a restaurant in sunglasses, and suddenly millions know their name.

GPT

The best available estimates suggest that the average billionaire’s annual carbon footprint is on the order of 6,000–8,000 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (tCO₂e) from lifestyle and consumption alone, and can be vastly higher when investment emissions are included.

A practical estimate

According to research cited by Oxfam International and the Stockholm Environment Institute, a study of 20 billionaires found they emitted an average of 8,194 tCO₂e per year, roughly 5,959 tonnes of CO₂ after conversion.

If investment emissions are included

This is where the numbers become staggering.

Oxfam estimated that the investments of 125 billionaires were responsible for 393 million tonnes CO₂e annually, averaging over 3 million tonnes per billionaire per year.

That is equivalent to the annual emissions of:

• Hundreds of thousands of cars, or
• A small country

These emissions are “attributed” to them because they own large shares in fossil fuel, mining, aviation, and other high-emitting industries.

Bottom line

A reasonable estimate for the average billionaire’s direct ecological/carbon footprint is:

~6,000–8,000 tonnes CO₂e per year

Including emissions linked to investments:

Hundreds of thousands to several million tonnes CO₂e per year

Relative to an average person:

1,000 to 1,500+ times larger, and sometimes much more.

So if by “ecological footprint” you mean overall environmental impact, the average billionaire’s footprint is not just larger—it is often comparable to that of a small town or even a small country.

A person experiencing homelessness typically has an extremely small ecological footprint compared with the average resident of a high-income country.

Estimated annual carbon footprint

There is no widely cited study that calculates a single “average homeless person” footprint, but a reasonable estimate for someone with very low consumption in a country like the UK or US is:

0.5 to 2 tonnes CO₂e per year

Comparing to billionaires

Using the estimates above:

• Homeless person: ~0.5–2 tCO₂e/year
• Billionaire (lifestyle only): ~6,000–8,000 tCO₂e/year

That means a billionaire may emit roughly:

3,000 to 16,000 times more carbon per year

If investment-related emissions are included, the disparity can reach into the millions-fold.

Bottom line

A reasonable estimate for the average homeless person’s ecological footprint is:

Around 0.5 to 2 tonnes CO₂e per year, likely among the lowest footprints in wealthy countries.

Their environmental impact is tiny compared with both average citizens and especially the ultra-wealthy.

Why do we reward the most ecocidal sets of individuals and punish individuals who are not contributing to ecocide?

Because modern societies often reward ownership and capital accumulation, not necessarily social or ecological contribution.

In most market economies, the people who gain the most wealth are those who control assets—companies, land, intellectual property, financial instruments—not those whose lifestyles are environmentally modest or whose work provides the greatest public benefit.

Why high-impact individuals are rewarded

1. Economic systems reward profit, not sustainability

If an activity generates large profits, it tends to attract investment and social status even if it imposes environmental costs.

Examples include:

• Fossil fuel extraction
• Luxury aviation
• Mining
• Industrial agriculture
• High-consumption consumer goods

Many environmental harms are treated as externalities—costs borne by society rather than by the people who profit.

2. Wealth compounds

Money generates more money through:

• Dividends
• Capital gains
• Interest
• Ownership stakes

Once someone reaches billionaire status, returns on capital can far exceed any personal labor contribution.

3. Political influence

Very wealthy individuals and corporations often have disproportionate influence through:

• Lobbying
• Campaign financing
• Media ownership
• Think tanks

This can slow policies that would internalize environmental costs.

4. Social prestige is linked to wealth

Many cultures equate wealth with success, intelligence, and merit, regardless of ecological consequences.

Why low-impact individuals are often punished

People with low ecological footprints may consume little because they have limited resources, not because society rewards restraint.

Examples include:

• People experiencing homelessness
• Low-income households
• Subsistence communities

Despite their small environmental impact, they may face:

• Social stigma
• Economic insecurity
• Limited political power

Structural mismatch

The core issue is that incentives are misaligned:

What benefits society/ecology	What markets often reward
Low resource use	High consumption
Long-term stewardship	Short-term returns
Shared prosperity	Concentrated ownership
Pollution reduction	Externalized costs

Why this persists

• Existing institutions were built around growth and industrial expansion.
• Environmental costs are diffuse and delayed.
• Beneficiaries of the current system have strong incentives to preserve it.
• Those harmed often have less power.

Historical perspective

Many societies have rewarded those who control scarce resources rather than those who minimize harm. Today’s ecological crisis reflects that longstanding pattern operating at planetary scale.

Is this changing?

There is growing pressure for:

• Carbon pricing
• Wealth taxes
• Stronger environmental regulation
• ESG and stewardship standards
• Alternative economic models such as doughnut economics and degrowth

Progress exists, but current incentives still largely favor accumulation.

Bottom line

Society often rewards people whose activities cause the greatest environmental harm because economic systems prioritize profit, ownership, and influence rather than ecological stewardship.

Those with the smallest footprints are frequently economically marginalized because markets do not compensate people for consuming less.

So the paradox is:

The individuals who place the greatest burden on the planet are often rewarded most, while those who impose the least burden are often punished most severely.

 Living lightly on the Earth is a public good. Public goods should be rewarded with the greatest security, dignity, and respect.

 Neuroscience has updated the "learned helplessness" theory, showing that passivity is not learned, but rather a hardwired, default biological response to inescapable adversity. Modern research reveals the brain naturally defaults to a "freeze" state, and it is actually control that is learned. 

Evil controls resources and so if you want to survive then you have to do evils bidding, you are rewarded for merging with evil. In that sense, "evil" doesn't just control the resources; it becomes you. To thrive, one must align with whoever holds the keys to the pantry. Systems of meaning, power, achievement, nation, religion, ideology, wealth, status, etc. help people deny mortality and feel valuable. But because these symbolic systems are fragile, humans become willing to commit cruelty, domination, sacrifice, and violence to defend them.

In Ernest Becker’s view, evil is not just individual sadism, it becomes embedded in social systems and everyday life. People merge themselves psychologically with power structures because those structures provide security, identity, and symbolic immortality. Survival and reward become tied to participation in “evil.” Societies often reward the very traits that help maintain collective illusions: obedience, ambition, aggression, conformity to dominant systems, willingness to sacrifice others for the “hero system.” And because people derive identity from those systems, they stop seeing the violence clearly. In that sense, the system “becomes you,” not only externally but internally — shaping desires, morality, and selfhood. Civilizations are built on repression and sacrifice.

• Control of resources — If access to money, safety, status, food, jobs, or social belonging is concentrated, people adapt themselves to whatever maintains access.
• Moral adaptation — Humans are highly adaptive. Repeated compromise can gradually stop feeling like compromise.
• Identity fusion — Over time, systems don’t just coerce behavior; they shape desires, language, ambitions, and self-image. That’s the “evil becomes you” part.

A lot of thinkers have explored this from different angles:

• Hannah Arendt argued that harmful systems are often sustained not by cartoon villains, but by ordinary people adapting to bureaucratic incentives.
• Karl Marx described how economic structures can shape consciousness itself.
• Friedrich Nietzsche warned that struggling with monsters can transform the struggler.
• Many religious traditions frame worldly power as spiritually corrupting when survival becomes tied to domination, greed, or fear.

GPT

 Humans evolved in small, socially embedded groups for most of our history. Shared meals, rhythmic routines, face-to-face interaction, storytelling, cooperative work, and time spent outdoors likely provided repeated signals of safety and belonging to the nervous system. Sitting around a fire together is a good symbolic example because it combines several calming inputs at once:

• warmth
• predictable social contact
• synchronized activity (eating, talking, resting)
• darkness/light rhythms aligned with nature
• reduced cognitive overload
• low social scale (you knew everyone present)

These kinds of conditions are associated with activation of the parasympathetic nervous system — what people casually call “rest and digest.”

Modern environments often push in the opposite direction:

• chronic time pressure
• fragmented attention
• social comparison at massive scale
• artificial light and disrupted sleep
• economic precarity
• reduced community cohesion
• constant evaluation and surveillance
• emotionally performative workplaces and online spaces

The “wearing masks” idea also maps onto established psychological concepts. In sociology, Sociology and psychology, researchers talk about:

• emotional labor
• impression management
• self-monitoring
• alienation
• role strain

For example, Erving Goffman described social life as somewhat theatrical — people managing presentations of self depending on context. That doesn’t mean all social behavior is fake, but modern institutions can intensify this performance pressure.

There’s also research suggesting that humans regulate stress through co-regulation with others. Being physically near trusted people, sharing meals, touch, eye contact, laughter, and synchronized behavior can measurably affect stress physiology. Isolation and atomization can remove those buffers.

At the same time, it’s important not to romanticize premodern life too much. 

So the strongest version of the argument is probably not:

“Ancient life was mentally healthy and modern life is pathological.”

but rather:

Human nervous systems evolved for conditions that differ significantly from many features of contemporary industrial and digital life.

That mismatch hypothesis is taken seriously across areas like:

• Evolutionary Psychology
• Psychiatry
• Neuroscience
• Anthropology

Many psychologists, philosophers, and sociologists would agree there can be strain not only from performing a role yourself, but from existing in environments where you constantly encounter people who seem guarded, strategic, curated, or emotionally inauthentic.

Humans appear highly attuned to authenticity cues. We are continuously — often unconsciously — evaluating:

• whether someone means what they say
• whether emotional expressions are genuine
• whether there is hidden status competition
• whether interaction is safe or manipulative
• whether a person’s outer presentation matches inner state

When there’s a persistent mismatch, interactions can become cognitively and emotionally taxing. You may feel:

• vigilance
• distrust
• emotional exhaustion
• alienation
• derealization or social unreality
• loneliness even while surrounded by people

This idea overlaps with several concepts:

• Social Psychology research on self-presentation and impression management
• Existentialism discussions of authenticity and bad faith
• Phenomenology analyses of interpersonal presence
• Attachment Theory and emotional attunement
• Organizational Psychology work on emotional labor and burnout

The nervous system dimension is important too. Social interaction is not merely “information exchange”; it is also biological regulation. Humans often relax around people who feel congruent, predictable, and emotionally coherent. Conversely, ambiguous or performative social environments can keep people in low-grade threat monitoring.

For example:

• highly corporate speech
• excessive branding of the self
• status signaling
• transactional networking
• forced positivity
• algorithmically curated identities online

can produce a feeling that one is interacting with surfaces rather than persons.

 Often people are adapting to incentive structures:

• workplaces reward strategic self-presentation
• social media rewards curation
• precarious economies reward reputation management
• large societies require interacting with strangers rather than deeply known community members

So “masking” can be adaptive while still being psychologically costly — both for the wearer and for those around them.

Some thinkers have argued that modernity creates conditions of chronic social abstraction: people become functions, brands, résumés, avatars, or professional identities rather than fully embodied persons embedded in stable communal life.

That said, complete unfiltered authenticity is not always desirable either. Civilization depends partly on tact, restraint, and role behavior. Some “masks” are prosocial:

• politeness
• professionalism
• emotional self-regulation
• respecting boundaries

The difficulty arises when the performative layer becomes so dominant that genuine spontaneity, vulnerability, and mutual recognition become rare. Many people seem to experience that as emotionally depleting, even if they cannot fully articulate why.