Pandora's jar: scarcity and the standard of living in classical Greek economic theory

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Few ideas are as central both to social scientific analysis and normative political philosophy as the concept of scarcity. For the social analyst, scarcity is at the core of many models, including most prominently what Gary Becker has called the economic approach to human behavior, for example rational choice and game theoretic approaches. Its importance in this sphere stems from the fact that it is one of the key ingredients generating calculation and strategic interaction, cooperative or conflictual. Where, conversely, a superabundance is postulated there is, as Carl Menger observed, no economizing behavior, no competition, nor any need for a property regime. And so too is the idea of scarcity one of the background conditions for the theory of justice in general—‘justice derives its origins’ from human selfishness combined with ‘the scanty provision nature has made for his wants’ —and for the problems of distributive justice in particular. Again, where there is superabundance these matters would not so much as arise. Yet scarcity is at the same time one of those concepts which, like the notion of the standard of living, seems readily accessible, transparent, indeed available almost pre-theoretically. So universal, so ready-to-hand does the notion of scarcity appear that we may be tempted to allow it to enter our theoretical lexicon unexamined.