Responses to Actual, Perceived and Imagined Scarcities

Abstract

Making more money is the most dominant response to cope with actual, perceived or imagined scarcities. For the poor, it is a means to survive in extremely adverse conditions and to struggle to cross over the poverty line into the lower middle class; for the affluent middle class, it is a way to catch up with and overtake friends, relatives and neighbours by being able to have more expensive possessions and exciting experiences; and for the super-rich, it is a show of arrogance and a response to the imagined sense of still not having enough for an endless chase of unbridled ambitions. Money is a leading physical resource for building human resources by widening access to good education, adequate health care and sustainable livelihood as well as showing off one’s superiority. It has a curvilinear relationship with social resources where having too much or too little money erodes social sensitivity and bonding. The article makes a number of conjectures to stimulate research in future.