Imagine two villages. In the first village, everybody has equal income and equal wealth.
In the second village, one person makes 80% of the income and owns 80% of the wealth. The rest of the people make the 20% of the income and own the 20% of the wealth.
In which village would you like to live?
What if in the first village, the equal income barely covers the necessities of the people and their wealth is equal to zero?
What if in the second village, even the poorest person has a higher income and wealth than the people in the first village? Now, where would you like to live?
Have you thought about the possibility that you could be the person who makes the 80% of the income and owns 80% of the wealth in the second village, and accomplish that in a legal, moral, ethical way?
What happens when someone gets rich, for example, a pop singer breaks through and makes a few million dollars? Does that mean that the rest of the society got a few million dollars poorer?
The Scarcity Mindset Is Our Default Programming
Let’s admit it. Our default programming doesn’t like “inequality” and “other people getting rich.” That’s scarcity mindset and keeps us from achieving financial success.
The scarcity mindset doesn’t match the reality either. When somebody breaks through and makes a huge sum of money, the rest of the people don’t get poorer.
Whenever someone gets rich, the banking system creates an equal or greater amount of money and pumps it into the system. As a result, the society gets richer.
Whenever someone goes bankrupt, the banking system has to eliminate a portion of their former wealth from the system to prevent inflation. As a result, the society gets poorer.
That’s why we see the rich get richer and the quality of life of the rest of us improving parallel to that.
Is It That Simple?
I know that I’m simplifying things here and the reality is more complicated than that. I know that things like automation hurt some people. I know that the system isn’t 100% fair. Some people don’t pay their fair share of taxes. And so on.
I just want to show the difference between the abundance mindset and scarcity mindset. I also want to show that the abundance mindset is closer to the reality that we are living in.
Which mindset do you choose?
Burak BilginSoftware developer with a Ph.D. and 15 years of experience. I write daily on personal development and life lessons. Sign up to my email newsletter to receive a weekly overview of my latest content on personal development and life lessons.