Just quickly, on moderation

Moderation is the key to Aristotelian ethical philosophy, Confucian thought, the teachings of Jesus, the teachings of Buddha, and on. It's just a common sense approach to life, and almost all of these just mentioned people have suggested or stated explicitly that immoderation is either inwardly unhealthy or outwardly frowned upon from upstairs. The middle way, the camel's eye, and whatnot.

This notion of scarcity seems to be implying that the reverse is true and that we should strive to fulfill all of our material desires regardless of the implications for the wider world, which was really what point B was about in that last post but was poorly articulated. This all came into my head in relation to an article on Goldman Sachs that really illustrates the ludicrousness of encouraging excess. And I do feel like this philosophical idea of scarcity (separate from actual occurrences of specific scarcities) does seem to encourage the idea that the kind of decadent materiality described in the article is to be lauded, emulated, and envied.

There are relations here to Marxism, religion, social psychology, and whatnot that I'll hope to revisit, but it's just too nice a day to be indoors typing on a computer.