Scarcity In The West
John Ink2Quill Editorial
www.ink2quill.com

Many places in the world endure scarcity, extreme scarcity even. You can see scarcity in a poor country’s environmental policies where its citizens are forced to illegally chop down trees for the business that feeds their family. You can see scarcity and financial mismanagement through a country’s health care system or lack thereof. And you see it, obviously enough, on the faces of the people begging for their next meal. Scarcity in the West is portrayed as something that will bring a tear to your eye when you watch it online. People in the West are really taught that scarcity is being stamped out around the world with the spread of democracy. If this were only the case.

But what are the reasons for scarcity anywhere when we live on such a rich and beautiful planet? That is a question whose answer(s) we cannot even agree upon. We have a tendency to blame people, leaders, titans of industry, political systems, culture, geography. But we can add a new reason to this debate. Yes. You guessed it. What we call Artificial Intelligence. A.I. may become the new resource referee and dictate who will bear the burden of scarcity in so many places and industries. Now the naysayers will add that big decisions ultimately fall on people. But I say to you that this is no longer the case today, right now, with so many things. Think of the medical profession in the U.S. Think of how much local governments in the U.S. have already digitized so many decisions. The medical system in Europe is also a good example although they are much more human friendly in their approach to health care.

In this quest for the reason for so much scarcity in the world there is one reason nobody likes to talk about. It’s a reason as uncomfortable as wearing a wet shirt on a cold windy day. For one reason or another some scarcity in the world is artificial. That is to say self inflicted. Done on purpose. That is an unsavory truth with a hopeful solution. So picture a company that wants to raise prices on its goods in the market and it does so by cutting back on production. For luxury items this is no big deal but for essential items like food, water, housing, electricity, health care and internet it can be a disaster. Not everything is a luxury item and not everything always has a cheaper alternative.

How will the people in the West handle scarcity? (In particular people in the U.S.). There are certain truths that we have to face if we want to answer this question honestly. For starters, people in the U.S. do far more wasting than in any other country I’ve visited. You can almost say that wasting is in our culture. Whether it’s driving 2 city blocks to go from one area of a mall to another, instead of walking or buying new expensive items every few years for a new look. People in the U.S., And I have done this too, are gigantic wasters and that’s a shame. We may also get some blowback when it comes time to tighten our financial belts for changing economic times with people saying that all our waste brought on the harder economic times and some of that criticism may be justified. Either way, changing our culture to move away from being wasteful is a good thing.

The question remains. How will we in the West handle scarcity? Will we bear the burden together and make sound changes or will we designate the most vulnerable in our society to do so?

John Ink2Quill

I2Q Blogs / Opinions A.I. / ink2quill / john / quill / West /