The Scarcity Formula: Institutional Blockades on the Road to an Economy of Abundance

Contemporary societies operate under a fundamental paradox: exponential advances in renewable energy, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and distributed production make material abundance technically achievable across multiple domains, yet billions of people remain excluded from basic provisions while wealth concentrates at historically unprecedented rates. This research advances a central thesis: scarcity is not primarily a natural condition but an institutional design choice. Drawing on institutional economics (Daoud, 2015; Desai & Lemley, 2022; North, 1990), commons theory (Ostrom, 1990; Benkler, 2006), technological abundance analysis (Rifkin, 2014; Mason, 2015), and political economy (Piketty, 2014; Mazzucato, 2016), this work presents a systematic multi-sector analysis of artificial scarcity across fourteen domains: finance, energy, healthcare, food, housing, education, media, intellectual property, water, digital infrastructure, cloud computing, production, cognition, and governance. Each sector is analysed using a four-layer classification protocol: documented facts, emergent hypotheses, structural impact, and strategic conclusions. A three-criteria operationalisation distinguishes artificial from natural scarcity: (1) demonstrated technical capacity for abundance; (2) actively enforced access restriction via legal, contractual, or regulatory mechanisms; (3) an identifiable actor with a structural interest in maintaining scarcity. Each criterion carries an explicit falsification condition. The analysis is structured around a Seven Stacks model (Energy, Production, Cognition, Health, Value, Governance, Meaning) that maps abundance potential and institutional blockades across convergent technology domains with a 2025-2075 timeline. Empirical anchors include Dutch cooperative energy infrastructure, commons-based production systems, and cross-sectoral patent analysis. The central conclusion: scarcity is a design choice, and abundance is therefore also a design choice. Transitioning to post-scarcity conditions requires not only technological convergence but deliberate institutional transformation of property regimes, governance architectures, and narrative frameworks. The work contributes a falsifiable, multi-sector analytical framework for studying institutional scarcity as a politically constructed phenomenon.