I don&#x27;t quite follow this.<p>I&#x27;m inclined to believe we are experiencing scarcity. Sure, I can buy just about anything I desire and can afford. Any food item, cheap clothing, cheap travel. But I think that&#x27;s an illusion.<p>Let&#x27;s say I&#x27;m prepared to pay £50-£100 for an item of clothing. Shoes, jacket, whatever. It&#x27;s likely to be made by impoverished people on the other side of the world who are paid peanuts.<p>I could even pay £5 for a pair of jeans if I wanted. God knows how that&#x27;s even possible.<p>But it&#x27;s a sliding tile puzzle. If I experience cheap apparently-plentiful goods, it&#x27;s only because someone else is suffering.<p>I&#x27;m not prepared to pay £300 for a long-lasting item of clothing. The thought barely crosses my mind because I never see that stuff in the windows of high-street shops. Instead, I typically buy &quot;cheap&quot;, &quot;plentiful&quot; goods that fall apart after a year or two -- or go out of fashion -- then replace them.<p>Ethically I dislike this, and try to shop &quot;ethically&quot; and donate old clothing to charity. This requires high levels of vigilance, and is not convenient.<p>All the above apply to food. I can buy apparently any item I want. Or can I? In actuality, I can buy whatever trendy item the supermarkets can buy in bulk for best profit. Great, I&#x27;ll have some kale and coconut water and acai berries. Is that &quot;plenty&quot;? What about locally produced fruit and veg? Why do I have to invest in a comparatively-expensive box delivery scheme if I want apples that were grown in my country?<p>If I want to eat locally reared meat I have to pay a premium, because provenance has become a valuable attribute. Instead I could buy mechanically recovered pressed meat, which is unbelievably cheap and widely available. Even if I believe it&#x27;s healthy to eat that stuff, and even though both products are undeniably &quot;meat&quot;, they&#x27;re not the same.<p>Perhaps meat being expensive is actually normal. That&#x27;s certainly been the case for most of history. In which case, the cheapness of the lower quality meat products is the illusory factor.<p>So I think &quot;plenty&quot; is an illusion, and scarcity is far, far closer than we conspire to believe.<p>Edit: I forgot the most obvious and familiar example. Ad-funded content&#x2F;services vs paid-for content&#x2F;services.