Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

If we're low on resources (money, time) we ‘tunnel', we focus on the crisis at hand and blind out all other distractions. This can be positive, as it helps us get stuff done. But at the same time it makes us bad at long-term planning. We borrow time and money from the future, to fight the fires of the present. Only to have to fight a new fire next week. And that's how people short on money and time tend to be stuck in a perpetual loop of catching up.

It's an interesting problem of behavioral economics. But there's a lot of repetition in this book, as if the authors were desperately trying to hit a word goal. Also, It felt a bit forced how the authors attempted to expand the concept of scarcity into the domains of diets and loneliness.

The book could have profited by featuring more studies around poverty. Because nothing seems harder than escaping poverty. And governmental support systems seem to burden those in need even more with badly designed processes demanding bandwidth of those who have none to share.