2016: On the Poverty of Scarcity
They tell us consumerism is destroying the planet, then urge us to buy more. They cry scarcity, then manufacture desire. It is a confidence trick so old it has become invisible. Poverty of money is not simply a lack of coin—it is the permanent condition of being kept on the outside of wealth while being promised you are nearly inside.
Wealth is always a crime varnished by time. If not stolen by your own hand, then by your father’s, or by your nation’s, or by the world’s systems of extraction. Crime is the root; inheritance, consultancy fees, or dividends are merely laundering. Even the “self-made” fortunes are made on the backs of others’ labour—unpaid, underpaid, unseen.
What has changed in my lifetime is not the fact of wealth but the fantasy of access to it. The pitch is everywhere: anyone can be rich if they click the right link, follow the right guru, manifest the right dream. It is the poverty of imagination disguised as hope. And so the poor grow poorer, not only in purse but in mind, for they are trained not to think, only to want.
And what of contribution? To create, to work, to teach, to serve—these are redefined as foolish choices, the pastimes of those too timid to cheat. We are told wealth trickles down. What trickles down is contempt.
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