Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much

I devoured this book when it came out, and when I wanted to go back to my notes and highlights, I had to read the whole book again because I had highlighted so much of it. I'm now on my third time through, and somehow it keeps getting better. The topic is fascinating (at least to me!), the writing is tight and pulls you along, and the research is solid and engaging. Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir are star academics who use their giant brains and their sweat to make the world a better place--and they are. The investigation of scarcity is more complex than you'd realize, and more interesting. Interesting that they draw compelling parallels between very different types of scarcity--money, time, food--and very different life situations--from poverty in the developing world to wealthy workaholics in the West, to teach you about the psychology of scarcity. It focuses a person's mind on what they haven't got. Which makes them able to do a few things more efficiently, but for the most part is a huge cognitive drain that makes it impossible to function at their best. Everyone in public office, no, really everyone, should read this beautiful book.

Scarcity is a book that looks at how people think when faced with scarce resources (money, time, friends). They describe how the scarce mentality causes people to focus on what they lack while also causing people to "tunnel" and ignore other important aspects of their lives. Throughout the book, the authors look at various examples and studies that describe how people who lack time and money are mentally taxed due to their focus on what they lack. This tax, which the authors describe as a bandwidth tax (bandwidth being a catchall term describing our overall mental capacity) is one of the primary reasons the authors provide as to why an otherwise capable person would look incapable in the face of scarcity. The authors provide a good explanation of scarcity and its associated effects. They focus their explanations on people who lack money (people in poverty) and people who lack time (people who are busy), however, they also attempt to provide glimpses into how this scarcity mindset can be associated with people who lack friends (people who are lonely) and people who lack calories (people who are dieting). This is supposed to support the author's reasoning, but it reads as if the authors are trying to stretch their logic a bit. The authors also provide many anecdotes and studies to support their findings, but it makes the book feel as if it is low on overall content due to the authors continuously describing different experiments. Finally, the authors don't provide clear solutions on how to alter the scarcity mindset in the book (they readily admit that some of the solutions offered are not quite as simple as they seem), leaving the book to feel at least partially incomplete. Despite all of this, I still found the book to be a compelling (if short) read. Its not perfect, but it does provide valuable insight into the scarce mindset and a slight peek into what might be done to fix it.

The book is a summary of studies of how having too little of something effects behavior, whether it's time for the busy, food for the dieting, or money for the poor. It illustrates the previously considered intangible costs of being poor and really digs in. It explains the mentality of the individual and how 'tunneling' can create a measurable decrease in IQ, and how it's an uncontrollable biological response. It also discusses the lack of slack and how it makes any system susceptible to shocks. The insights are so general that it's even easy to apply to your personal life but certainly could be used to make policy more effective. For me, this took a well-known value of scholarship, "peace of mind", and makes it quantifiable. It demonstrates several fascinating tests that can be used to measure this. It would take a lot of work, but I think it would be even reasonable to say that you could test someone when you first meet them and test them again a few months after acceptance and get a metric of effectiveness.

This was the best book I’ve read all year. Very to the point and excellent read. There needs to be a part 2!

The book addresses many important issues and offers an original and new angle: scarcity seen as a common denominator in both poverty, failed dieting and poor time management. In brief, the theory is that being short on something has the counterintuitive effect of reducing the ability to acquire it. Plenty of examples are given, and research quoted. The book is worth reading and gives plenty to think about, but it seems repetetive, sometimes points are overstated, sometimes deeper analyses would be of interest.

I read a lot of these kinds of books, but Scarcity sets itself apart pretty quickly. Mullainathan and Shafir tell a coherent story. They take the time to develop an actual theory. And it's kind of an amazing, unbelievable theory at first. The poor, the busy, the lonely, and people on diets are all dealing with the same problem? It seems preposterous. But then they present new studies and an impressive array of data. And you start to get the sense that they're on to something. They weave in stories and little tangents that make this book compelling and which gradually reveal just how important this idea is. A lot of other books in this genre just take the same old facts and weave them together with a new story about what these facts might mean for our lives. This book offers new thinking, new data, and a new direction on how to think about so many different problems.

This book by behavioral economist Sendhil Mullainathan and psychologist Eldar Shafir explains the cognitive difficulties people encounter when faced with managing a crucial scarce resource (e.g. money, time). The authors argue that scarcity creates a mindset that results in myopia and adversely affects fluid intelligence, resulting in flawed decisions concerning matters related and unrelated to the scarce resource. Scarcity results in temporary cognitive impairment that makes people focus on the immediate pressures of scarcity at the expense of long-range planning. For example, a cash-strapped person might take out a high-interest payday loan to relieve scarcity in the present moment, only to find cash-scarcity is even worse later on. A busy executive under time pressure may "borrow" time from future projects (by delaying them) only to find the time pressure increasing in the long run. Scarcity becomes a causal loop...scarcity breeds scarcity. The authors refer to this self-defeating behavior as the "scarcity trap." The poor stay poor, the busy stay busy. Furthermore, cognitive functioning necessary for all other decisions, where scarcity is not a factor, is compromised. A common criticism of this book is that the authors are frequently making elaborate demonstrations of the obvious. While the observation is fair to some extent, the circular-causation theory of perpetual scarcity presented in the work is intriguing and fills out our understanding self-perpetuating scarcity, espcially with respect to money. I've usually been a little skeptical of the usefulness/relevance of finding of behavioral economics, but I find this work to be an exceptional case; I gladly recommend it.

People often associate less with a lack of. It's not. It's about being intentional with what you have--your time, your stuff, your financial resources. It is not about giving up everything you own and living in a tent. It gives you perspective on holding onto the meaningful and helpful and let going of everything else. Do we need to have everything the neighbors or family has. Is it ok NOT to know all the latest binged series? Live life on your terms.

Unglaublich gutes Buch. Leider gibt’s nicht auf deutsch.

This is a very good book. Andwered many of my questions regarding why the poor make bad decisions, why dieters behave in a certain way and so many other seemingly unrelated questions. I love that the book scrutinizes the concept of scarcity with regards to different aspects of life, different social class, and different cultures, etc across chapters. I really suggest it to everybody. I would have given it 10 stars if i could.

this book was recommended to me by my professor and I am very glad he did. The ideas in the book are novel and they are inspiring me on my decision theory research - modelling the impact of scarcity on the quality of decisions.

The presented concepts of 'slack' and 'bandwidth' was very interesting, for I've never thought of 'cutting some slack' as a way of managing time/effort more efficiently - quite the opposite in fact, I used to think of it as a 'lazy person' mindset. The example of the operating rooms in a busy hospital was a fine analogy for this. The part about mental bandwidth was very enlightening too, for we indeed tend to plan only on terms of how much time and money we'll need for something, but forget about the necessary mental processing (or bandwidth). A good approach if you're interested in seeing some daily things under a new light.

Just an utterly wonderful and thoughtful book. Everyone should read it. It helps in so many different areas - and helps both individuals and the way we think about systems. Absolutely fantastic.