Scarcity by Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir | Book Club

Full Title: Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much by Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir

Pages to read: 234
ISBN: 9780805092646 (Originally listed edition, and Edition I am using)

While reading the book, consider the below questions:
•What is the raison d’etre of the book? For what purpose did the author write the book?
•What is scarcity?
•How does scarcity change how people think?
•What are the benefits of scarcity?
•What are the costs of scarcity?
•What is the mental bandwidth?
•What happens to errors under scarcity?
•What is slack? How does slack impact decisions?
•What is tunneling?
•Why do people borrow?
•What is the problem with poverty?
•How were the experiments set up?
•What is fault tolerance?
•What expectations of the individual do training programs have?

Your questions are important and will take priority. If you have questions about the book's content or related ideas, either let me know what your questions are or raise them during the discussion.

My Review of the Book:
https://www.inquiryreviews.com/2022/02/review-of-scarcity-why-having-too.html

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Summary from Goodreads:
A surprising and intriguing examination of how scarcity—and our flawed responses to it—shapes our lives, our society, and our culture

Why do successful people get things done at the last minute? Why does poverty persist? Why do organizations get stuck firefighting? Why do the lonely find it hard to make friends? These questions seem unconnected, yet Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir show that they are all are examples of a mind-set produced by scarcity.

Drawing on cutting-edge research from behavioral science and economics, Mullainathan and Shafir show that scarcity creates a similar psychology for everyone struggling to manage with less than they need. Busy people fail to manage their time efficiently for the same reasons the poor and those maxed out on credit cards fail to manage their money. The dynamics of scarcity reveal why dieters find it hard to resist temptation, why students and busy executives mismanage their time, and why sugarcane farmers are smarter after harvest than before. Once we start thinking in terms of scarcity and the strategies it imposes, the problems of modern life come into sharper focus.

Mullainathan and Shafir discuss how scarcity affects our daily lives, recounting anecdotes of their own foibles and making surprising connections that bring this research alive. Their book provides a new way of understanding why the poor stay poor and the busy stay busy, and it reveals not only how scarcity leads us astray but also how individuals and organizations can better manage scarcity for greater satisfaction and success.