Where did our belief in abundance come from?
Abundance and scarcity are both evidenced in deep time by feast and famine qualities in the archaeological record.<p>We believe in abundance because it happens often enough. Extreme lack of abundance causes survival bias: dead men tell no tales.<p>The existence of tools which demand time to make and primitive stone tool factories suggest abundance: division of labour is necessary to invest time in tool making for future benefit. There has to be a relative surplus, more food than not, less time for survival only, to make tools work.<p>We believe in abundance because of millennia of life experience  incorrectly or not.<p>In modern times, most scarcity problems are supply chain not actual exhaustion, diamond mines and gold not withstanding. Rare earths aren't rare. Uranium isn't rare. We aren't running out of lithium. Erlich/Simons explores the reality of abundance in the earths crust.<p>Things may get expensive or hard to find from time to time but our brains are mostly tuned for optimism.<p>Extreme pessimism in a species is neither pleasant nor useful. Why live a life of fear, reality not withstanding? Stoicism, that's beneficial. Some hesitancy to optimism? Useful. Unremitting black depression and Calvinistic preordained hell on earth? That's jonestown by another path (Jones sold salvation in the afterlife but you know what I mean)