The driving forces behind abundance in the agriculture and information sectors have been identified. In agriculture, it is the inherent urge in every life form to reproduce its own kind, fuelled by the practically limitless energy from the sun. In the information sector, it is the inherent urge in every human being to communicate with others, share knowledge and information with them, and produce knowledge together, given full expression by the near-zero cost of sharing made possible with digital electronic technology.
Abundance helps to meet human needs and wants and should therefore be welcomed. What is the driving force behind anti-abundance?
The answer should be clear by now. Attacks against abundance have been mostly initiated by business firms or by governments. Where governments undertook these measures, they have done so at the instance of some business firms, which in the final analysis reaped the benefits of the government measures.
Looking more closely at the logic of business firms, it is obvious that the immediate effect of restricting abundance is to reduce supply and increase overall demand. These in turn raise prices or keep their levels high. If the costs of production change little or not at all and prices go up, then profits go up. This is the logic behind corporate efforts to develop technologies and influence State policies that give them closer control over the abundance and scarcity of goods: to create the best conditions for maximizing profits. Indeed, they may maximize profits, but not necessarily be the best way to encourage creativity. Free/open source software and farmer-bred varieties show that creativity can continue to flourish even without the attraction of monopoly earnings.
Shouldn't this selfish end give way to higher societal goals? The economist's answer is that society's higher goals are indeed served when everyone pursues their own self-interest in free competition with others. In fact, economists argue, the competitive pursuit of individual gain accomplishes overall social goals better, even if this “was no part of his intention,” than when individuals consciously try to advance society's higher goals. This idea that individual pursuit of self-interest not only leads to but is actually the best path towards overall social good became the moral basis for capitalist society. This was the programmed into business firms as an “urge” to maximize gain, and they do so by controlling abundance and scarcity in their favor. This is the driving force behind anti-abundance.
Because human beings were a complex bundle of urges, emotions and motivations who often acted irrationally (i.e., regardless of self-interest) from an economist's perpective, corporations became the ideal economic agents, pursuing nothing but maximum gain for themselves based on the economic theory of laissez faire capitalism.28 They are therefore driven to undermine abundance and create artificial scarcity as an unintended but logical consequence of their internal programming, creating a modern class of rentiers who accumulate wealth by charging fees for access to the resources they control.29
