The myth of scarcity

Paul D'Amato wrote a great article for Socialist Worker this week that takes on the arguments of scarcity and overpopulation. These arguments are often toted as justifications for why we must continue to live in a world where the wealth and abundance so easily produced in a capitalist economy are unjustifiably distributed to the few and not the many. We have heard it before, I am sure, when our mothers, fathers, or grandparents told us to finish up everything on our plate because there are children starving in Africa. And I feel confident that many probably went in their head, "But how would this food get to the children of Africa if I didn't eat it?"

It may have been more useful if our parents or guardians just told us things like, "I spent a lot of money buying groceries and cooking dinner and I don't want to see you gorge yourself on Cheetos."

And yet these arguments abound all around us, from conservative to liberals, from schools to workplaces. Americans notably are admonished for their gluttonous lifestyles. But even those arguments are ill placed. When we produce enough in the world to provide over 2,500 calories a day, and yet six million children die each year from malnutrition we have to admit recognize that the problem is not scarcity but distribution.

Paul D'Amato's article for Socialist Worker is a great break down of the arguments of scarcity and overpopulation and shows that they are truly problems of imbalanced distribution. D'Amato explains, as the title argues, there is enough to go around.