heptagrammaton’s Reviews > The Story of Capital: What Everyone Should Know About How Capital Works > Status Update
heptagrammaton
is on page 204 of 400
— Jul 06, 2026 10:28AM
To attribute economic crises to scarcity in nature, as did Malthis, is to confess an inability to adapt technologies, cultures and social and economic forms to metabolic relations more adequate to capital's (or our) requirements. The concept of scarcity is no natural but a product of capital's marketing practices.
4 likes · Like flag
heptagrammaton’s Previous Updates
heptagrammaton
is on page 192 of 400
— Jul 06, 2026 02:11AM
... The question of what kind of city we (and capital) build is not independent of what kind of people we want to become.
heptagrammaton
is on page 163 of 400
— Jul 05, 2026 11:17PM
. . . The more the workers struggle to fashion a reasonable life for themselves, the more capital concludes that this is because capital has been too generous and that a general reduction in wages is in order.
Comments Showing 1-3 of 3 (3 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
putperest
(new)
-
added it
Jul 06, 2026 12:50PM
So scarcity doesn’t exist in nature?
reply
|
flag
putperest wrote: "So scarcity doesn’t exist in nature?"Without having read the book lol, I think the point is rather that the idea of scarcity in nature is used as a talking point to veil and distract from capitalist dynamics that are more detrimental to equal access to resources ("capital's marketing practices"). Think about the global scale of food production: there would be enough food for everyone if logistics were organized better and food wasn't thrown away to protect profit margins, for example ("inability to adapt...").
More importantly, I would argue that economic crises develop in banks and governments, not in oil fields or tree farms. Scarcity in nature is merely a straw man used to legitimize the doctrine of endless growth and corrupt dealings. Would be interesting to see what the book says are the actual mechanisms of economic crisises
@putperest Nuked put it pretty well, I think.I'd add that, as far as I understood the book and Hervey's argument in context, this is also about what scarcity means - it is made to make sense as such only in an accumulation-hungry context. This is not questioning the supply-side of nature, so to speak, as much as it wants to call attention to demand-side value- and concept-making, so to speak. The latter is malleable and contingent and continuously constructed. Obviously, "stuff" in real life is not endless. Resources are limited, but rocks, bodies of water, hyrdrocarbons, etc. can only be regarded as resources when/if they are made available to be grasped and used, and that is going to depend both on what makes sense to make available (technology, yes, but also if it is thought 'worth it' to access - I am being deliberately vague, to cover both the profit motive and environmental/civil considerations) and how use downstream happens.
So, yeast in a barrel of souring wine, does not experience sugar scarcity, per se. Oh, the sugar is running out. But the yeast switches over to metabolizing ethanol.
p.s. also, i misspelled malthus' name when writing down the quote, lmao. sad.
