Scarcity is not the correct starting point. A world of abundance does not depend on human sinlessness. God has provided abundant resources whether we sin or not. After all, the rain falls and the sun shines on the good person and the bad. If we assume scarcity where God has provided abundance, we start with the wrong premise and will draw the wrong conclusion. That we allocate resources in a way that creates scarcity–a few hoarding so that many have not enough–is different from not having enough to begin with. If the world can’t produce enough food to feed everybody, that’s a different problem from a world that can produce enough food to feed everybody and misallocates it so that some go hungry (assuming you consider some going hungry misallocation, as I do). In the first case, our mental energy would go to developing strategies to increase food production and reduce population; in the second, energy would go towards fixing the distribution system so that everybody partakes of the abundance. Now it will be argued that changing the system to make it more equitable will shrink the resources as people, without the starvation incentive, won’t produce as much … but we don’t know that as we have never had a world in which everybody had enough to eat. But the last sentence is beside the point–the point is, if we live in a world of abundance, as we do, we should start with the reality.

Looking forward to this series. My undergrad degree is in economics, then I spent 15 years in business before I went back to school for an M.Div. I noticed during my seminary time that my professors and I did not speak the same language when it came to scarcity. In fact, I put the term in a paper once and was pounced on.
Diane, I don’t think scarcity as an economic term means there’s not enough food to feed everyone. Like you, I think the problem in the world is misallocation (and I appreciated that point). Scarcity means people can’t have whatever they want and can’t do whatever they want. There’s not enough in the world to meet all human desire. As Michael said, we live in a fallen world. That’s the world we have to deal with.

Looking forward to this conversation. I hope you will address the issue of the relationship between technology and resource. Specifically, what role does technology play in making a resource a resource? i.e. are resources simply “givens” or are resources called into being as resources by technology? (e.g. was oil a resource before the invention of lamps or engines or did oil become a resource with the invention of those technologies?)
What is the relationship between God-given human intelligence, the creation of technology and constituting the idea of “resource”? or, to put it another way, can resources be limited if human imagination is not?

Michael,
By “scarce” economists don’t just mean “limited.” What they mean is that societies desires are greater than the resources available to them. There is a huge difference.

Sorry, that should read “What they mean is that what societies desire …”

Instead of Scarcity as a starting point, would stewardship be more appropriate. I agree with Diane, resources aren’t scarce but they are limited, and is not our vocation as image bearers to manage these?

Diane,
Isn’t the idea of abundance a new concept? Local scarcity can hardly be denied and has been with us as far back as recorded history goes.
Famines are real as are other instances of limited resource.
It isn’t misallocation if there is no knowledge and no means of allocation.
Of course we live in a different world today – and knowledge and means of allocation are present. But it seems to me that we still have limited resource – everyone would like a top level life style and there isn’t enough to go around.

Been a long time coming, Michael. Looking forward to this. This will all be a learning experience for me, an economic dummy.
It makes a great deal of sense to me to start with scarcity. We have to make decisions, prioritize.
Maybe this is a dumb question: Does this starting place of scarcity divide between say, capitalists and socialists or communists? I think I remember a comment by Chambers in “Witness” that humanitarians in every generation will be drawn to some form of socialism or communism (don’t remember exactly what he said). Is it more a capitalistic impulse for a society to prioritize need against limited resources or is that just basic economics across the board, with the difference being how the priorities are decided?
I heard a missionary describing a clash in values. He was trying to save money to buy a better truck to give more people rides and haul more resources (the truck was for the good of the society, IOW). But people who knew he had some money would come and ask for help. Their felt need was immediate and it would seem selfish for him hoard money for tomorrow that they needed today. It seems that present need can weigh against future good, sometimes without easy answers. So the staring place of scarcity and deciding between flawed choices seems to me true to life.

Dianne #1
“If we assume scarcity where God has provided abundance, we start with the wrong premise and will draw the wrong conclusion.”
And here is the key issue … the wrong conclusion about what?
I think you are addressing a question of how things ought to be, in light of the Kingdom of God … a reality that will not fully exist until the consummation of Kingdom.
Economics examines how things are. The we things are is that, for whatever reasons, the “need” is greater than the ability to fill it. One possible answer to the problem of scarcity might be for everyone to embrace the idea that they have enough. What is the likelihood that happens this side of the final resurrection?
Furthermore, I think we can all agree that things like playing with our children, taking a hike on mountain trail, reading a good book, taking pleasure in our work, having a party with friends are all good things. But we have a fixed amount of time in our lives and in our days. The hope of the resurrection shapes how we prioritize our time during our lives but it is still a limited resource and therefore there is scarcity. Add to that, a complex mix of legitimate and illegitimate human desires and you have the world economics studies.

MatthewS,
You said: “Is it more a capitalistic impulse for a society to prioritize need against limited resources or is that just basic economics across the board, with the difference being how the priorities are decided?”
It seems to me that the difference between different economic systems (capitalism, socialism, communism) is not so much the starting point of scarcity, but rather how decisions are made – so, I would side with the second option. Capitalism leaves decisions to the market and self-interest. Socialism leaves it to the government. Communism leaves it in the hands of the leaders (who historically line their pockets). None of them are perfect.

Great series!
In the world we inhabit today, scarcity is obviously the situation that obtains. Not only economics, but any political philosophy, at base must deal with how to allocate scarce resources.
I’ve written quite a bit from a “law and economics” perspective in my professional work. One thing I’d like to see you tease out, Michael, is whether the utilitarian assumptions of welfare economics comport with Christian notions of the “good.” Real economists actually won’t use words like “good”; instead, they say things like “pareto optimal,” because they are (or should be) interested only in whether an outcome is “efficient.”
A magnificent current treatment of economic issues from a Christian perspective, BTW, is Pope Benedict’s recent encyclical “Caritas in Veritate,” which is available on the web.

I think Michael is mistaken to take scarcity as the starting point. To do so is to deny that Christ has disarmed the powers, is to deny that the cross did indeed defeat evil, is to look at the world through a cosmological lens that is simply not Christian.
Now, to start with a theology of abundance is not to stick one’s head in the sand and to believe we have limitless resources. Rather, it allows our affections with regards to economics to be gospel-shaped. Generosity is not to not be dependent upon prosperity, but arises out of the love of God for the world and therefore we can give where there is need.
Jesus tells the story of the man whose crop produced abundantly, but nevertheless the man lived the narrative of scarcity by erecting bigger barns so as to horde what he produced. The man would be admired by economists for his discipline in saving, but God calls him a fool.
It is not knowledge of scarcity that interprets abundance but rather abundance that interprets scarcity. U2 says it as true as it can be said in the song “Moment of Surrender”–”at the moment of surrender, a vision over visibility”.

Michael and I have been having an interesting discussion at his blog about scarcity. My claim is that scarcity is the result of the fall, but not our finitude. His claim is that scarcity is the result of both the fall and our finitude.
This is an important point. Too many times in the past, Christians have taken something that was created good, but has fallen (or has cracked, as Scot would put it) and ignored the fact that it was created good. This is why many Christians have had low views of sex, for example.
My worry is that by starting with the view that scarcity is a result of both our finitude and our fallen-ness, we don’t start at the correct place – with the goodness of God’s (finite) creation. This view says that God’s creation isn’t enough, even before the fall. This, it seems to me, is both a low view of God and creation.
Those who begin with “abundance,” are doing so in the context I gave above. They are claiming that the proper starting point in all that we do – and the study of economics in particular – is with the goodness of God’s creation. They are not denying that there is scarcity, they are just saying that the scarcity we see is the result of the fall.

Because of that “scarce” (but doesn’t God “multiply our sleep?”) time resource, I’m out of this discussion for a time while I visit my daughter at her college. But I’ll be back.

Eric,
This is an interesting conversation – but I think it treads mightily on topic about which we can not know. I have no clue how new heaven and new earth will work because presumably there will be no scarcity, but will still be work.
I don’t see how Genesis 1-3 can give a pre-fall world without scarcity of some sort unless the command to “be fruitful and multiply” is not taken seriously. Scarcity need not mean systemic injustice, it can be simply a consequence of finitude.

#7 RJS
One of my big challenges in this series is to avoid saying everything I’m going to say in later posts.
“Isn’t the idea of abundance a new concept?”
At least the presence of widespread material abundance is certainly new. Economic historians document that, until the last global life expectancy at birth was 25-30 years … make it to five and on average you would live into your 40s. Today, global life expectancy at birth is approaching 70.
Economists use “purchasing power parity” dollars … a measure that attempts factor out things like inflation and different methods of exchange … to compare societies over time. Brad DeLong estimates that, in 1990 PPP dollars, global annual per capita GDP (gross domestic product) in ancient history was $90. By Jesus birth it was $109. By 1750 it was $178. In 2000, it was more than $6,600. There have been revolutions in production and in distributive capabilities.

#7 RJS
One of my big challenges in this series is to avoid saying everything I’m going to say in later posts.
“Isn’t the idea of abundance a new concept?”
At least the presence of widespread material abundance is certainly new. Economic historians document that, until the last global life expectancy at birth was 25-30 years … make it to five and on average you would live into your 40s. Today, global life expectancy at birth is approaching 70.
Economists use “purchasing power parity” dollars … a measure that attempts factor out things like inflation and different methods of exchange … to compare societies over time. Brad DeLong estimates that, in 1990 PPP dollars, global annual per capita GDP (gross domestic product) in ancient history was $90. By Jesus birth it was $109. By 1750 it was $178. In 2000, it was more than $6,600. There have been revolutions in production and in distributive capabilities.

RJS,
Scarcity, as economists define it, means that people want more stuff than there are resources. (Mankiw – “society has limited resources and therefore cannot produce all the goods and services people wish to have”, Thomas Sowell – “What does “scarce” mean? It means that what everybody wants adds up to more than there is.”)
We can interpret that 3 ways. First, we could say that people’s desires are what they are and there aren’t enough resources to meet them. Second, we could say there are enough resources, but people have desires that go above and beyond what they should. Third, we could have a combination of the two – even if everybody has the “proper” desires, there still wouldn’t be enough resources to meet them.
I believe the Bible points to the second interpretation. That God’s creation is good, that his command to be fruitful and multiply was a command to go out and use and take care of the abundance he gave us. But ultimately his good creation fell and now desires more than he has given us.

#11 dopderbeck
I going to work at giving high level views across the surface of economics so I doubt I will get specific enough to please some. We will see.

Alan K #12
Let’s look at another field
Biology begins with the idea that we are living organisms that experience disease, pain and eventually death. Human beings live their lives attempting to keep all bodily systems in balance and thriving. Nevertheless, disease, pain and death are universal to the human experience. The biologist begins with assumption that this is normative to the human experience.
Are biologists beginning at the wrong point and denying the Christ has conquered death? After all, God created humanity without disease and pain. That reality is true of the Kingdom of God as well. Shouldn’t we begin any study of biology with the presumption of abundant and perfect health, not with the struggle of the human organism to thrive as it deals with decay and wards off disease?

#18 Eric
Where do you see abundance in the world God created?
In the natural order we have an abundance of resources. Absent human labor … transforming matter, energy, and data from less useful states into more useful states … we have a near absolute scarcity of goods (things that are in a state we can actually use.)
Throughout most of human history the masses have expended all their labor to stay just ahead of death. There was no abundance of goods for distribution. Wouldn?t simply taking ?care of the abundance he gave us? leave us in absolute scarcity?

Michael,
Biologist are not beginning at the wrong point. It’s just that biology and theology are not the same. The question for the church is: which gets to interpret the other? Is ultimate authority vested in biology or theology?
In the same way there is a huge difference between non-theological economics and theological economics. Theological economics takes its starting point as the Word of God. Non-theological economics are going to start at an entirely different place, dependent upon whatever is the prevailing worldview at any particular time. The same could be said for any science.
That said, the Word of God (meaning Jesus Christ) does not sit idly by and say “markets are markets and they have their own power as economists have pointed out”. The Word of God seeks nothing less than the subversion of such powers and for them to operate in subjection to the reign of God as they were intended to operate.

Michael, you’ve misunderstood me. My entire phrase was “use and take care of the abundance he gave us.” It was a poor sentence on my part. By “use” I meant just what you were talking about – transforming creation.

I think the critique of “scarcity” here is missing the point. “Scarcity” in economic terms simply means there is not enough supply of a particular resource or commodity to fulfill market demand. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t enough of the resource or commodity to provide what people need to survive.
Take water as an example. There is not enough fresh water in the world to satisfy demand, but on aggregate, there is more than enough fresh water in the world to satisfy what every person in the world would need to survive. This is because “demand” includes all demand — such as the 25-50 gallons of water most of the commenters here used when taking a shower this morning, the 200 million gallons of water that will be used today to process chickens for supermarkets, the 25,000 gallons of water in my neighbor’s swimming pool, and so on. Demand for fresh water across all possible uses is enormous and exceeds supply.
Only if we understand that water is in this sense a scarce resource can we begin to ask questions about how the resource should be allocated. Should markets (pareto efficiency) dictate allocation, or should other considerations come into play?
BTW, I don’t think “scarcity” in the economic sense is necessarily a result of the fall. Any resource that is “finite” is potentially “scarce.” Given that creation is inherently finite, all of the resources in creation are potentially “scarce,” so in this sense scarcity is an inherent feature of creation. (An exception might be intangible resources, such as intellectual property, which might be genuinely non-rivalrous). The results of the fall probably come more on the demand side of scarcity, as well as on our allocation decisions given scarcity.

#22 Alan K
“In the same way there is a huge difference between non-theological economics and theological economics” … is there such a thing as theological and non-theological biology?

It should be an interesting discussion. I also majored in economics in college (and focused particularly on Friedman’s work and monetary policy) but it’s been a while. A couple of thoughts: First, “scarcity” as a term communicates at the popular level, whether we like it or not, not only limitation of choices and/or resources, but fear in reaction to limited resources. For that reason alone (there are others), Christians have a hard time saying that we should start with scarcity when deciding what to do with our time and other resources. These same people wouldn’t necessarily deny the limitations of space, time and power that are inherent to being human.
But secondly, I don’t think even a Christian that is comfortable with acknowledging inherent human limitations of time and other resources would be comfortable ordering their day’s activities based only on that “given.” Namely because human limitations are only one of the “givens” in our day’s equation. That there is an unlimited deity at work within our creation is also a “given” for the theist who is ordering his or her day. A theistic economist might ask then, “Given scarce (i.e., limited) resources of humans and the unlimited resources of Christ, what should I do today and how will we coordinate billions of projects?” or something similar. Theists, by definition, don’t just look at human limitations when structuring their affiars based on the givens of our world as they perceive them. Ironically, the Acts study that Scot is doing illustrates this perfectly. The first church did not order its activities based only on the limitations inherent to men (scarcity). It did all kinds of things based also on the “given” of an unlimited Christ working among them. We have to take both into account.

The starting point of scarcity doesn’t bother me as much as the enshrinement of competition and efficiency.
There are also eschatological considerations. We are always going to think something is “the best we can do in a fallen world”…until some prophet comes along and shows us another world is possible. Whether you are a Niebuhrian “make the best of it” type or a Yoderian alternative type will make a big difference on how you view economics, the state, etc.

Brian McLaren once wrote something like: if God always caught us every time we chose to jump off cliffs, what kind of people would that make us? How would we grow in maturity in such a circumstance, with no consequence for our actions?
I think something similar can be said here about resources and economics.
I agree with doperback’s comment that finite resources are not necessarily the result of the fall. And, again, as others have pointed out, there is a huge difference between there being enough for survival – even relatively abundance, and there being an infinite amount that could never be exhausted regardless of greed, lust, sloth, etc.

#25 Rick
I suppose there could be. In his Church Dogmatics Volume 3, Karl Barth covers the Doctrine of Creation and therefore a significant portion of what he writes is on anthropology. Now Barth is entirely aware of how the scientific community, biologists and psychologists and others, describe the human being. Barth does not deny any of the science. But nevertheless he sees these sciences as inadequate for getting at the reality of what a human being. Barth believes (and I agree with him) that only a theological anthropology can adequately recognize what a human being is. Thus Barth does not begin under the microscope or in the anatomy books but begins with Jesus Christ in determining what a human being is.
That said, given the nature of the respective disciplines of economics and biology, I’m doubtful about the ability to draw an analogy from one to the other. The book of Exodus and Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians can envisage a “manna economy”, that is, an economic system based upon belief about the provision of God. Why? Because at several levels, economics is about choices, and what one believes about the world will impact those choices. Biology is not about choices.
At the end of the day, for the church, nothing is non-theological. Both biology and economics are part of a created reality.

Frankly, I find it interesting that even though the Federal government is not “theological,” they’ve already hacked out, debated constantly, and acted upon the concepts that [1] taxing people is necessary (because sinful people don’t want to give up what they have), [2] taxing shouldn’t be done uniformly (if you make less than a certain amount per year, you don’t pay into the pool), and [3] taxes should be used for services that theoretically benefit all (like public works and roads or, heaven-forbid, healthcare). So we already HAVE a system in place to handle our “scarcity of resources” and add our “transforming power of human labor”.
What we need is more Christians influencing the already-formed government systems that recognize these principles, not leave it at debate questions among us when we won’t do anything with it later as “non-economists”. You want to affect economy for the poor, the disenfranchised, the world at-large for Christ? Do you want to perform ministry and make sure you have enough to live on? Take your faith into public policy, work among the financial world already in place, and obey your authorities as God-ordained wherever necessary; don’t discuss in order to make a new government or economy among only “the Christian world”. Christ redeemed it all, thank you, and he’s established plenty of arenas for us to be working in already.

I fear that I will find myself in over my head rather quickly in this conversation, but think that it is an interesting one. My concern about rejecting the concept of “scarcity” as a starting point because of a theology of God’s abundance will lead us to a theology (or perhaps springs from? I’m not sure) that suggests that anyone who doesn’t have enough (and I mean, really enough, not just “feels like enough.” People ARE starving in the world, after all) to live on has, themselves, done something wrong. I’m rather uncomfortable with that conclusion, but I’m just not seeing my way around it.

I know nothing about economics either. But I wonder if another way in which the church can contribute towards a genuine sustainability of the abundant resources given to the earth by God is to look at the problem of *fear* of scarcity. That leads to inappropriate use of resources and hoarding. In this country we all already have more than what we need. This is a different trail, I know. But even with great ideas and principles, our own hearts can trip us up. I all of the “people of Shalom” live with just what we need that will make a huge impact as well.

I seriously don’t understand the objections to scarcity. As others have said, scarcity doesn’t mean “there isn’t enough” but “resources are limited so we need to be deliberate about how they are allocated.”
An understanding of scarcity doesn’t need to lead to hoarding. If I understand that resources are scarce, it makes perfect sense that $100 will do a lot more good building a well in the developing world than treating myself to a couple fancy dinners out. (“Diminishing marginal returns” in econspeak — if you have few dollars, those extra dollars make a lot of difference! If you have lots of dollars, it doesn’t matter quite as much.)
I do not think that the reasons for using that $100 to build a well rather than my own luxuries would be as compelling if I did not begin from a starting point of scarcity.

#33 Kristen
I agree. In fact, I was a bit shocked and dismayed to see any objections to scarcity as a basic assumption.
#24 dopderbeck
“Should markets (pareto efficiency) dictate allocation, or should other considerations come into play?”
I honestly don’t see how anything else can be better for dictating allocation than markets until the consummation of the kingdom. Who else would be candidates for dictating allocation? Government? The Church? Frankly, I don’t see how either of those entities would make better decisions in a fallen world than collections of individuals acting according to the dictates of their individual desires or consciences, which is essentially what markets are.

Eric #23
Thanks for that clarification.
Dopederbeck #24
?Only if we understand that water is in this sense a scarce resource can we begin to ask questions about how the resource should be allocated. Should markets (pareto efficiency) dictate allocation, or should other considerations come into play??
An important question.
Your example raises other interesting issues. Is the consumption of relatively plentiful water for my pool here in Missouri (don?t I wish) causing the scarcity of clean water in, say, Sudan? I can?t just turn of the spigot here and turn it on there.
The ongoing problem throughout human history (as Thomas Malthus correctly noted writing at the end of the 18th Century) is that anytime a population began to experience a measure of abundance, population growth accelerated, outstripping the carrying capacity of the natural resources. Famine, drought, plague, and war served as the natural check on population growth. Production capacity could not keep up with demand. There was no infrastructure for the importation of resources. There hasn?t been widespread sustainable abundance until recent history.
As noted above, it took from prehistory until 1750 for annual per capita GDP to rise from $90 to $178. From 1750 to 2000 it rose to more than $6,600 ? a time period during which the world population grew by nearly sevenfold! Exponential increases in productive capabilities and socio-economic structures that facilitate the exchange of goods have been the key. So rather than direct distribution, the answer might lie in the transfer of productive capacity and the development of abundance creating social structures.
#26 T
?First, “scarcity” as a term communicates at the popular level, whether we like it or not, not only limitation of choices and/or resources, but fear in reaction to limited resources. For that reason alone (there are others), Christians have a hard time saying that we should start with scarcity when deciding what to do with our time and other resources. These same people wouldn’t necessarily deny the limitations of space, time and power that are inherent to being human.?
Bingo! Every discipline develops its own language for addressing its subject matter and that sometimes means giving precise meanings to terms that have other connotations in colloquial language. If there is to be honest theological interaction with a discipline, then it is incumbent upon us to make a good faith effort to hear what the practitioners in that profession actually mean, not leap into dismissive caricatures when we can?t immediately hear what we want to hear in our language.
?”Given scarce (i.e., limited) resources of humans and the unlimited resources of Christ, what should I do today and how will we coordinate billions of projects?”
Yes. As Christians we will reframe our responses to resource production and allocation questions based on Kingdom values. But economics studies more than Christians. So economic models must account for how the wheat and tares together function as a community.
#27 Travis
I?m more of a Stackhouse realist than I am a Niebuhrian realist. Making the best of it means resisting both accommodation and Idealism. It is the endless pursuit of greater shalom, always cognizant it is not fully attainable until the consummation of the new creation. It is to hunger and thirst for the Kingdom in the midst of a paradox.

Michael Kruse,
Thank you for this series. I’m going to be a fly on the wall for a while and learn from you and the more informed commenters.
As a theologian/pastor, I have no beef with starting with “scarcity” in the economic sense. It seems both logical and wise. Some commenters lean toward Christian optimism (“abundance” is the starting point) and see “scarcity” as pessimism. I think you mean Christian realism. My 2 cents worth.

My name is Scot Cunningham. I’m an assistant professor in the economics department at Baylor University. Hopefully what I say hasn’t missed a lot, but if so, I’ll back up.
The starting point of economic theory doesn’t directly begin with an assumption of scarcity, even though in our principles of microeconomics/macroeconomics classes we talk that way. It begins with a few axioms about human preferences, rather. Namely, we assume that:
1. people can rank their preferences over all objects and states of the world, and that they do
2. people’s preferences are logically inconsistent (if they prefer an apple to an orange, and an orange to a grape, then they must prefer an apple to a grape)
3. for the purpose of the models, we also assume that if they prefer A to B, then they must prefer A to an infinitesimally small increase in B (this helps with the calculus).
After those three assumptions are made, economists and others in decision sciences have shown that it is possible to construct an index ranking people’s preferences over objects that can be represented with a mathematical function that assigns numerical values that get higher for the more preferred objects. This is a person’s preference function; Jeremy Bentham called it a utility function, though, and that’s the word that sticks around. But it’s not a hedonistic idea about people. Rather, it simply says that people prefer to be higher up their preference ordering, and that those preferences can be represented mathematically as an index of numbers. One person may prefer higher and higher levels of wealth. Another person may prefer to spend their life with the poor in Calcutta. Both are represented by the utility function.
Scarcity enters into this problem because while there exists a curved function that grows as the person experiences higher levels of utility, they cannot achieve anywhere on there, since they have limited time and money, and the things they need to take them to higher preference levels require spending that time and money to acquire. This may be money spent on a car, or time spent in a conversation with a loved one. It’s not about sin, in other words, despite people’s tendency to associate scarcity with sin. It’s a product of our being creatures and thus finite.
Out of the above – preferences, utility and choice – the entire apparatus of economic science is built. The allocation of resources primarily focuses on a decision-maker who is able to best allocate resources such that the marginal benefit to marginal cost ratio is the same for all uses, and then studying which mechanisms have the best chance of getting there.
The starting place for economics, in other words, has more to do with what is commonly called rationality than anything else. Scarcity enters in only as a constraint on the ability to achieve the most that the person prefers.
Last thing and then I’ll stop. Economics is first and foremost a science. A science creates a generalization of a phenomenon that explains the phenomenon as well as predicts what will happen with other variables change, making it testable and falsifiable. It’s important to keep that in mind. Sometimes when people object to the way economics is done, their alternative does not obviously fit the “scientific theory” paradigm.

I’m looking forward to the series. I picked up a minor in Economics at college, and I’ve maintained a (un-)healthy interest in it ever since, though I’ve become jaded by the way it quickly devolves into politics.
On the idea of scarcity as a starting point, I don’t see a problem with acknowledging BOTH scarcity AND abundance. Chris Anderson has a new(-ish) book out called FREE in which he demonstrates the abundance of digital goods and how they call for a re-thinking or re-modeling of economics *in that realm*.
I’d emphasize the last point because I think it’s a strong axiom on which we can discuss the intersection of our theology and economy – i.e., God creates some resources in abundance, while others are finite. Circumstantially, resources can change (by God, nature, human progress, or any combination) from being scarce to abundant and vice versa.
To say we must root ourselves to EITHER scarcity OR abundance is plugging one of our ears before we even start the conversation.

#33
I’ll take your point a little further.
I suspect our sense of call to whatever work we do comes from an identification of an unmet demand for something in the world that we are suited to provide and desirous of doing so.
If God has simply provided for everything in abundance then there really is no need of stewardship. What is stewardship but weighing productive options against the resources available? The steward does not just avoid bad options but most also discern between competing good options and choose as she see’s best. Her resources are scarce relative to all the good she may wish to do.

“Finding the presence of people behaving sinfully within any economic system is insufficient as an indictment of that system. An economic system must be weighed against other systems that will also have sinful humanity in the mix.”
Shaloam is the work of everyone in a given system.
In systems theory, there is over-functioning behavior and under-functioning behavior. Balance is when that polarity is reduced. I think economic systems need balance and when the system is out of balance, it is beneficial to restore a healthy balance.
An out of balance economic system becomes unjust when barriers to well-being or responsibility are in existance.
We can lift political or oppressive barriers and invite or encourage growth and development of people in ways that will bring about shaloam.

#37 Scott,
I totally get your points, and it’s exactly what I read in my ECON books at college.
But, I’ve personally come to resent the idea of economics as a science. I’m sure it has to do with my limited training and experience in the subject, but when I see those premises on which the “science” is built, I can’t help but chuckle a little bit.
1. I can’t even decide what I want for lunch on most given days, so there’s no way I rate my preferences of all objects and states of the world. I don’t think I’m alone in this.
2. I’m sure you meant to say peoples’ preferences are logically *consistent*; but your typo is probably just as accurate. My preferences change as often as my mood does. Again, I don’t think I’m alone in this.
So I approach the idea of economics as a science with skepticism; not because I don’t think it can be, but because I think some of these very particular assumptions aren’t reliable. I mean, economics assumes certain models of human sociology and psychology. A science like biology assumes chemical models which assume physical models which assume mathematical models. Of the assumptions, the reliability seems to be more on the side of the natural sciences.
Now, I hasten to add that economics is a very noble and high pursuit of its own right. I have taken to describing it as a “scientific art” and comparing it to medicine – both are an exploration and treatment of life as based on bodies of scientific knowledge. But they both also incorporate the human variable, which, IMO starts to destabilize the predictability and rationality of the subjects under observation.

Michael (35),
Yes. My reason for writing the first point was to encourage folks not to confuse the term of art you were introducing (“scarcity”) with the more general connotation which carries fear with it. The concept, I have found, sits perfectly well with Christians when translated into “inherent human limitations of space, time, power and other resources.” In other words, we’re not omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, etc.; there’s only so much we can do in a day or even a lifetime. This is fundamental not just to economics but to Christian worldviews.
And I like, btw, that you added the economist’s tendency of comparing one system of allocation within our fallen world to a different system within the same fallen world. The question is not, when evaluating a given system of allocation, “Is this system perfect?” The better question is “Would a different system be an improvement within the same group?” Of course, it’s more than a little difficult to answer either question without some shared idea of what would constitute “good” or “better” but that hiccup probably a few posts away!

#37 Scott
Thanks for the insights by someone who actually does this stuff. I’m hoping we will be joined by a few other professionals who will keep me honest.
As to your last paragraph about economics and science, this would be a good time delineate between positive and normative economics. Form Wikipedia:
Positive economics
“Positive economics is the branch of economics that concerns the description and explanation of economic phenomena. … It focuses on facts and cause-and-effect relationships and includes the development and testing of economics theories. … Positive economics as such avoids economic value judgements. For example, a positive economic theory might describe how money supply growth affects inflation, but it does not provide any instruction on what policy ought to be followed.
Normative economics
Normative economics is the branch of economics that incorporates value judgments (that is, normative judgements) about what the economy ought to be like or what particular policy actions ought to be recommended to achieve a desirable goal. Normative economics looks at the desirability of certain aspects of the economy. It underlies expressions of support for particular economic policies. It is common to distinguish normative economics (“what ought to be” in economic matters) from positive economics (“what is”). …”
I think most economists, in academia at least, are doing positive economics. Those doing theology are clearly doing normative economics. I’m convinced that many times Christian thinkers hear what the positivist economist intends to be descriptive (ex. scarcity exists) as prescriptive, and then the animosity begins.
I will say that I echo some of Luke’s concerns in #41 but, like him, I think positive economics offers critical insight for our normative economic reflection.

Michael (#35) — Malthus was wrong, because he didn’t appreciate the importance of technology. Technological advances consistently have outpaced the burdens imposed by population growth.
Scott (#37) — fascinating to have an economist chime in. I agree with you that “scarcity” is just a function of being finite. However, I think the claim that economics is “first and foremost a science” is tendentious at best. I understand most economists make this claim. But even as a law and economics scholar, I question the presumption of objectivity that goes into calling economics (or any other “social science”) a “science.” But — that obviously is a long and probably irreconcilable debate between social scientists and many other branches of the academy.

Michael,
I was a history major in college among other things and certainly had the idea drilled into my head that poverty was inevitable because until the Industrial Revolution there simply weren’t enough resources to avoid that. Therefore, the vast bulk of the population had no choice but to subsist. It was reasonable for the rich few to skim off some of the few resources to build civilization and the arts, because if the resources had been equally distributed, everyone would have been miserably poor and we would have had none of the glories for which the world is celebrated.
When I became a Christian, I noted that Jesus–whom, as you point out, lived at a time when the per capita income was a fraction of what it is now– argued something very different. He said there was enough. He said put first the Kingdom and the material things of life will follow. He illustrated that we live in a world of abundance by feeding the 5,000 and then gathering up bags of leftovers. He did that during a time when it would have been more reasonable than now to preach scarcity.
As Christians, do we filter miracle and abundance into our thinking? Doesn’t the very fact that we’ve been able to increase wealth so dramatically say something about how God’s universe operates?
I second the person who asked: Do we filter Christianity through economics or economics through Christianity? Which is first? Where is our trust? If Christ said things about resources that differ from current economic theory, which do we believe? Jesus promised us a world, where if we act in love and generosity, there will be enough. But our society seems to operate from an opposite tendency, which leads to hoarding and suffering.
I do agree with those who define abundance, not as limitlessness, but as enough. Of course, everyone can’t have everything random desire fulfilled, all the time. Yes, everyone likes to argue “who can determine enough? Who can determine want versus need?” but, of course, if we’re honest, it’s not all that hard. Yes, it will vary from person to person but we know now fairly accurately when surfeit begins: we can pinpoint obesity with some accuracy, we can calculate at what square footage a house becomes unmanageable without “help,” we have some idea of which cars consume vastly more resources than others …. Well, “enough” for now.

Luke – yes, thanks for catching that typo. And you’re right about the instances where we can’t rank objects. I was mainly pointing out, though, that preference ordering is the starting point, not scarcity. The purpose of economics is to model human behavior, and that of course involves making some assumptions – some of which are not always realistic or maybe only realistic some of the time. It’s too much to try and explain all of the foundations of economics in a comment; I just wanted to point out that no one begins with scarcity. They begin with axioms of rationality. And economists aren’t unusual in that sense. We see that same adoption more and more in sociology, political science, even biology.
As for whether you think the theory of neoclassical economics is best or not – I will just say one thing. Take it with a grain of salt. One of the predictions that comes out of the neoclassical framework is that when prices rise, quantity demanded falls. Except for in certain rare instances, and that’s when the good is an inferior good (meaning they want less of it when their income rises) and when the income effect from the price increase (making the person poorer) dominants the ability to substitute to other goods. That theoretically would lead to people buying more of a good when the price rises.
It’s a fairly bold prediction, and kind of bizarre. Heterodox economic schools of thought oftentimes do not even make the prediction at all. But it’s in the algebra of consumer theory and is well-known. Studies have attempted to replicate it in laboratories using all sorts of ingenious methods, and many have been able to do so, but a recent paper by Robert Jensen had a more elaborate field study that has been very convincing for me. You can read about it here.
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/mgmtstrategy/deptinfo/seminars/Miller021308.pdf
Just as Einstein’s theory of relativity made certain specific predictions about the relationship between light and gravity, neoclassical economics makes many predictions. The paradox above is an example of that. The bolder the prediction, the better the confirmation of the theory. And like when astronomers tested the predictions of Einstein’s theory during a lunar eclipse, and found evidence of the event he predicted, economists have found evidence for the existence of the above paradox when they go looking for it. To me, that’s been one of the most convincing moments in being a student, and now a professor, of economics.
You can never prove a theory right. You can falsify it, but you can only confirm it – testing the predictions in as close to controlled experimental settings as possible, and if you find evidence for the predictions, know that the theory was confirmed. Now there may be other theories that predict the above paradox in consumer theory of an upward sloping demand curve, and maybe we don’t know them. But I would probably argue with you that whatever replacement theory you come up with for neoclassical economics will need to be as precise and as bold in the kinds of hypotheses it generates. Otherwise, we’re back to arguing ideologically, which gets us nowhere.

#44 dopderbeck
My point was the Malthus was correct in historical analysis. But yes, he was incorrect in his assessment of what could be done about it.

dopderbeck (#44) – I meant that it’s a science in the sense that it is in the business of creating testable explanations. See this Popper article for what I am talking about.
http://philosophyfaculty.ucsd.edu/faculty/rarneson/Courses/popperphil1.pdf
I don’t mean “science” as a haughty or lofty concept. I’m simply noting that theories that explain the world are the business of economists (and other social scientists). The criticisms of economics do not seem to actually interact with the paradigm of science as much as theological assumptions about what constitutes a proper “starting point.” How do we select between the various starting points? Neoclassical economics is falsifable, makes strong predictions, and has been rigorously tested empirically for decades. Even some of its stranger predictions were found to exist (like the Giffen good, see my previous post). That seems to me to fit the definition of science.

Scott (#48) — well — it’s in the business of creating testable explanations except when it isn’t. Maybe it’s because I have a crabbed view of the literature, but much of what I read consists of modeling with so many simplifying assumptions that the models really don’t predict anything useful. And, I’m not so sure Popper is the gold standard for scientific methodology anymore.
But, setting that aside, where I’d really push back hard is when you say “Otherwise, we’re back to arguing ideologically, which gets us nowhere.” Hmmm. First, I wouldn’t agree that ideological — read, “normative” — argument gets us nowhere. Rather, I’d argue that the utilitarian assumptions of neoclassical economics ultimately get us nowhere, because they can’t tell us why we ought to assume that welfare maximization is “good.” Second, I wouldn’t agree that ideological / normative arguments must remain entirely indeterminate. We can make arguments from experience, history, reason, and even theology for why some normative judgments are better than others, I think.
I don’t want to be read here to be dissing economics as a discipline, because as I’ve mentioned I frequently use neoclassical economics and game theory in my legal scholarship. But I see this as an analytical tool, not as a basis in itself for making normative judgments.

When I approach teaching middle schoolers economics, we focus mainly on the guiding principle of products being driven by demand and the contribution of these products to the Gross Domestic Product of nations. This coupled with yet another guiding principle known as Human Environmental Interation (basically a general analysis of how human behaviors are all interelated and we have to look at both or impact on the earth and others in our action), and I have a toppling of my conservative only view point that was based on abundance, not scarcity. Simply put, I once was a baptist youth minister with only a republican framework. Now I have a much more broadened view point due to more education and understanding, and I have a more or less moderate view of things. All of this is based on the principle of scarcity, and our need to use wisdom to constructively help one another instead of just simple rhetoric based only on rudimentary understanding of scripture.
This doesn’t mean that I have thrown away more previous theological understandings; it does mean that I now have the viewpoint necessary to see things in a way that God must see them. I think he sees the depth of sin’s impact on our planet. I think he sees that we often quote him out of our own need for religious understanding and emotion, instead of a rational analysis of the best way to help people with wisdom.
Economics, from the standpoint of scarcity, helps us to be more knowledgeable believers that impact the society by standing up for wise approaches to help contribute to other countries well being (Gross Domestic Product) as well as our own because we are not scared to death of globalization, but able to approach it from the standpoint that the truely Christian thing to do is to help other countries with more than just a scattering of Christian literature. We must realize that this is a economy that means that if we don’t change our behaviors in consumption, we are truely eating away other people’s food and our choices impact others.
It is imperative for believers to gain a greater understanding of this interdependence, so that we can change our behaviors, and I think this begins and ends with the study of Economics.

#49 – The purpose of the neoclassical maximization program is not to necessarily tell us immediately what we should or should not do, but rather to tell us what to expect people to do when faced with various incentives and constraints. Whatever our normative criteria for the good life is, if we don’t know how to predict how people will respond to changing policies, then we may end up making things worse than we intend. So, positive economics is essential to doing normative work.
All theories have simplifying assumptions. To make things more realistic in our theories is ultimately to make them impossible to analyze. We simplify so that we can understand. Maps, for instance, are simplifications – completely unrealistic. But if tried to create a map that was identical to the real world in every respect, we would lose the usefulness of the thing. We judge the models by their predictive power, not by the realism of the assumptions.

In economics scarcity indicates that a person cannot have everything he or she wants. I cannot at the same time work at my job and play catch with my grandson. Choices have to be made. The cost of a choice is the alternative not chosen. Abundance would imply that all choices have no costs.
Scarcity is a typical starting point in an economics class. But scarcity applies to Robinson Crusoe or Tom Hanks in “Castaway.” There is not necessarily a social dimension. Economics is a social science, so I have focused more on Adam Smith’s starting point–specialization of labor is productive. There is a social dimension now–we need the help of others to have any of the goods we consume. (I apologize, Michael, if I have jumped the gun and specialization is key in your next post.)

Scott,
Thanks for chiming in; and thanks for being gracious with my amateurish inquisition. Recalling the positive and normative modes of economics helps restore, in my mind, credibility to the idea of economics as a science. Like I said, I see the application of normative economic policies to life (based on positive economics) as a treatment or practice similar to the application of medicine to life (based on biology, chemistry, etc.)
My skepticism is fueled in most part by the ideas in a book called “The Origin of Wealth” by Eric Beinhocker. I read it after college, so I didn’t really have an official instruction; but it was the first time I had heard of the “school” of ‘Complexity Economics’ and I found it fascinating. Around the same time I read a (somewhat) related article in Wired:
http://www.wired.com/wired/issue/16-07
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the ideas. They seem to run contrary to (strict?) neoclassical theory.

John #52
You indeed anticipate where I’m headed but I don’t know how we can have the conversations without jumping back and forth.

Luke #53
Though I thought Beinhocker’s book was about twice as long as it needed to be, I too found his analysis fascinating.

In a small nut shell, what is “neoclassical economics”?

“Scarcity enters into this problem because while there exists a curved function that grows as the person experiences higher levels of utility, they cannot achieve anywhere on there, since they have limited time and money, and the things they need to take them to higher preference levels require spending that time and money to acquire. This may be money spent on a car, or time spent in a conversation with a loved one. It’s not about sin, in other words, despite people’s tendency to associate scarcity with sin. It’s a product of our being creatures and thus finite.”
You’re saying people’s resources (time, money, etc.) are finite but the set of preferences they have are greater than can be met by the finite resources. This is basically the definition of scarcity I gave in the first few comments. However, you say that scarcity is a product of our being finite – essentially focusing on the fact that the resources we have are too low (relative to our set of preferences). I see no reason why this is necessarily the case – it could be that our set of preferences is too large. If this is the case, then scarcity wouldn’t about our finiteness, it would be about our wants and desires. And our wants and desires are definitely affected by the fall.
Now, this might not be the case. I’m open to that possibility. But I hope that I’ve at least shown that the idea that scarcity is part of what it means to be finite isn’t the “brute fact” that many here seem to be suggesting.

Here is an interesting article (pdf) by an anthropologist on hunter-gatherer economies.

Eric #58
I reject the notion that sustaining human biological existence qualifies as “affluence” as this article suggests. This is the ultimate in materialism … to see humanity as purely an animal in an ecology.
Furthermore, note this from Jared Diamond’s “Guns, Germs and Steel.”"
?3. Use of monopoly force to promote happiness, by maintaining public order and curbing violence. This is potentially a big and underappreciated advantage of centralized societies over noncentralized ones. Anthropologists formerly idealized band and tribal societies as gentle and nonviolent, because visiting anthropologists observed no murder in a band of 25 people in the course of a three-year study. Of course they didn?t; it?s easy to calculate that a band of a dozen adults and a dozen children, subject to inevitable deaths occurring anyway for the usual reasons other than murder, could not perpetuate itself if in addition one of its dozen adults murdered another adult every three years. Much more extensive long-term information about band and tribal societies reveals that murder is a leading cause of death. For example, I happened to be visiting New Guinea?s Iyau people at a time when a woman anthropologist was interviewing Iyau women about their life histories. Woman after woman, when asked to name her husband, named several sequential husbands who had died violent deaths. A typical answer went like this: ?My first husband was killed by Elopi raiders. My second husband was killed by a man who wanted me, and who became my third husband. That husband was killed by the brother of my second husband, seeking to avenge his murder.? Such biographies prove common for so-called gentle tribespeople and contributed to the acceptance of centralized authority as tribal societies grew larger.? (277)
Jealousy, greed, envy, hate, and covetousness were every bit as present in these societies as they are today but there were no civilized mechanisms for controlling them. There was a decided scarcity of safety and most anything else that makes us distinctly human.
If we are willing to demote humanity to a mere animal that experiences affluence when it has enough to eat to sustain it over many years, then we might be able to say there was abundance. My reading of Scripture does not allow for such a characterization of human beings. The biblical narrative begins in a garden and ends in a city. Despite our continual corruption of it, civilization is a gift from God and God invites us to be his partners in shaping it.

That you read the article as saying that humans are mere animals in an ecology or that affluence consists of little more than having enough to eat over many years suggests you didn’t read carefully enough. The author clearly claimed they were affluent in the sense that their own material wants were satisfied. These “wants” included not merely food, but leisure time for non-sustenance related activities (such as religious rituals).
I appreciate the Jared Diamond quote but that just strengthens what I’ve been saying. Of course these societies have jealousy, greed, envy, hate and covetousness! Where did you get the idea that they don’t? Certainly not from the author of the article or from myself. As long as we live in a fallen world, every society on earth will unfortunately have to live with those things. (I will also point out that a scarcity of safety is a result of our falleness, not our finiteness.) My point in linking to the article was not to hold these groups up as perfect, but rather to highlight the point I’ve been making – that it is not unheard of for a society to have its wants and desires are satisfied.

I’m a colleague of Scott’s in the economics department at Baylor, and I’ve been a semi-regular reader of Michael’s blog for a couple of years.
Regarding scarcity and Eric’s comments (#57 and #60): reducing your own personal wants doesn’t eliminate or solve the problem of scarcity. Let’s assume that a person has managed to tame her own desires such that she earns far more than she desires to spend on her own sustenance. Still, that leaves the question of what to do with all of the rest. She can’t hoard it, or she becomes the fool in Jesus’s parable. Perhaps she wants to help others? But alas, unless her income is infinite (and even Bill Gates’s income is not infinite), she cannot help all of the others that she might desire to help. So, scarcity constrains her choices in how to do charity, even though scarcity does not constrain her personal consumption decisions.
And even were she to have infinite income, she still faces a scarcity of time. Whatever we produce (be it noble or mundane) requires not only money or things but also time to produce it. To have my dinner, I must not only have food to make it with, but I also must expend time to prepare and eat it. If I wish to fund a well in an African village, it takes time for me to locate someone who is willing and able to build it and to arrange for the well to be built. And all of the money in the world will not buy you a 25th hour in the day, so scarce time will constrain you even if money/other resources do not.
One final note for Diane in #45:
Economic methods could handle a question about how someone would react were a miracle to occur. It could be incorporated as a random positive shock in a model, and predictions about the resulting behavior could be made. I don’t know how useful this would be, though. The feeding of the 5,000 tells of a particular miracle that somehow managed to turn a few loaves and fish into enough to feed all of those people until they were full. What would an economic model be able to tell us about this situation? That if you were to eliminate the constraint imposed by scarcity so that the food did not run out, then people would keep eating it until they weren’t hungry. The feeding of the 5,000 is a wonderful story that helps us understand more about God and His Kingdom, but it is not an interesting economic question *because* it does not involve a scarce resource.

@ Mark #31
RE:… suggests that anyone who doesn’t have enough (and I mean, really enough, not just “feels like enough.” People ARE starving in the world, after all) to live on has, themselves, done something wrong.
Don’t get stuck in all or nothing thinking. Just because not 100% of those who don’t have enough to live on are not “at fault”, does not mean that there are not many people who indeed have done “something wrong”, causing their own suffering. Denying absolute responsibility for one’s fate should not entail denying any responsibility.

Luke #53
I will definitely check this article out. Thanks for sending it my way. Apologies if my posts were on the somewhat arcane side. I’m in the middle of teaching graduate microeconomics, and so am thinking about this stuff in a way that is probably different than normal. I do think, btw, that the prediction of the Giffen good, and our having found evidence of it recently, is a strong vindication of consumer theory. Just don’t want that overall point to get lost in the thread. But I’ll check out this article asap.
Good to see Chuck (#61) on here. Chuck’s also written a book about faith and economics for those interested. Hopefully he won’t mind me pointing to it. It’s a good book for those further interested about an economic perspective on a variety of issues that are typically concerning to religious people.
http://www.amazon.com/Good-Intentions-Hot-Button-Issues-Through/dp/0802434622/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252658870&sr=8-1

Eric #57
You’re probably right. If your definition of scarcity is “want a lot but cannot have it all” then we’re probably talking about the same thing. I think I was mainly responding to the notion originally made that the starting point for coming up with some way to analyze some social phenomenon was by starting with scarcity as an overarching concept, and technically, economists don’t start there. They start by defining a decision-maker’s preferences over various objects, and then they introduce some constraint.
The reason I emphasize that is because preferences are value-neutral, whereas the concept of scarcity seems to have some loaded theological meaning. Oftentimes people respond negatively to the concept of scarcity because their religious tradition teaches God has created a world that is abundant. Therefore the problem cannot be scarcity, because another twist is that we have so much, not too little. And I simply wanted to reorient the conversation back to the real driving force, and that’s preferences, and the desire to be higher up one’s preference ordering.
Even that probably sounds like selfish consumerism, though, but it shouldn’t – not necessarily, anyway. As I indicated, altruism, charity, love – these are layered within a person’s preferences. So a woman who feels called to a life of service is implicitly saying that working with people who are poor and in need is preferred to a job making a lot of money or even marriage. But even then, the problem of limited budgets (understood in a very broad, flexible sense) comes in. This woman devoting her life to the poor will perhaps daily see more individuals than she herself can help. She may therefore try to bring more people in to help. But still they must decide how to allocate what they have. She may have preferences over how the money is spent to help people – she may prefer it go to mothers with children versus grown men who aren’t in as much need.
Even if she had an endless supply of bounty constantly at her disposal that she could give to anyone who came to her, there would still be the practical question of her time. What’s the best use of her time, she might wonder. Even Bill Gates, for instance, has only 24 hours in a day to work with. The issue of time is what seems to make the economic problem what it is, particularly in today’s growing economies. Time is valuable, particularly for the more productive persons. Even minutes are precious, since their use has an opportunity cost. I suspect, even in heaven, since we’ll still remain creatures presumably, there may still be something like scarce time since each day we’ll be forced to make choices about how best to spend our time among people. (But that’s just speculative…)
The problem could be, though, that our preferences are monotonic as you imply. I’m reading Thomas Keating’s book “The Invitation to Love” and I think there’s maybe something to that. We are oftentimes programmed emotionally for happiness that makes us constantly search for more of *something*. But, if that is true, does that discredit the practical program of economic theory? I don’t think so. For one, even if you’re right, the fact remains that the world as we know it still is best described by assuming people have preferences that go into outer space, whether that’s good or bad. But two, I’m not even sure that that too is the case. Once we pry loose our beliefs that economic models of people are assuming that more consumption of consumer products or wealth is all that people care about, then we can still fruitfully use economics to study a range of behavior observed. I teach my classes by emphasizing that *anything* can be in a person’s preference ordering. I eschew, at least early on, the word “utility” since it’s almost synonymous with “consumerism” to some people.
But, maybe there are people who have non-monotonic preferences. They reach some level of sustenance, and then have no desire whatsoever for anything else afterwards – no desire for children, for a career, for a life of the mind, for creativity, for enterprise, for a spouse, for communion with friends in faith, etc. Their preferences are such that they peak very early on. But I’m actually not so sure that such people would be, by any objective measure, healthy people. They sound sick to me – malnourished in some way.

John Frye #56
No one chimed in on your question yet, so I’ll just point you to my personal preference of an explanation of what neoclassical economics is: Gary Becker’s Nobel Prize acceptance speech, “The Economic Way of Looking at Life.”
http://home.uchicago.edu/~gbecker/Nobel/nobellecture.pdf
That speech was one of a few things that made me want to be an economist. I think his description early on of what his method is actually describes the neoclassical approach: identical and stable preferences across and within people, some optimization problem, and an equilibrium. And even active areas of research that challenge some of these things – like behavioral economics, based in large part on psychology, which investigates what happens when the consumer under consideration doesn’t satisfy some of the axioms of rationality – is probably still broadly within this paradigm.
Neoclassical economics is also individualistic. We model behavior of decision-makers first, and work out from there. It’s individualistic, not normatively, but methodologically – we model decision-makers as individuals with their own set of goals and desires, facing some general constraints, and try to understand their decisions from a theoretical perspective.
It’s also subjectivist – economists typically take the stance of “De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum,” to take the title from an old Gary Becker and George Stickler article. That is to say, we don’t really get into the habit of judging whether one person’s preferences are better than someone else’s. So, it does have for lack of a better word an implicit respect for people’s preferences if for no other reason than that economic science doesn’t have a comparative advantage in trying to judge whether your preferences are good or bad by some objective sense (though they likely are).

For those of you struggling with the concept of “scarcity”, may I suggest another parallel concept that may shed some light?
Many people would look at the “clash” between science and scripture in Genesis 1, and resolve it by recognizing that, though utterly true, God did not give us scripture to serve as a science textbook. The Creator who gave us both Special Revelation and General Revelation is the same, so, properly understood, the scientist’s account and the theologian’s account must agree. And the theologian may discover that his wonder at God’s handiwork is enhanced by the scientist’s insights. But both the scientist and the theologian must take care to understand the different meanings that certain words have in the respective disciplines.
Similarly, God did not give us scripture to serve as an economics textbook. Similarly, economists and theologians have certain words that sound the same but that mean different things in their respective disciplines. And similarly, theologians may discover that the insights of the economist will enhance their wonder of God’s creation.
So, when the theologian is listening to the economist, and the economist speaks of “scarcity”, the proper response is, “What do you mean by that? How does that square with God’s abundance in creation?”
If God did not give us scripture as an economic text, then perhaps He meant something other than mere economics when His writers chose the word ‘abundance.’