Scarcity-versus-Abundance Culture Model
Predict behavior by identifying what an ecosystem treats as scarce
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 93%
Begin by identifying an ecosystem's true currency: the scarce outcome that confers status, security, or advancement. If participants compete for a fixed supply—such as a single position of power, one front-page story, or victory in a short election cycle—the culture tends toward hierarchy, information trading, and zero-sum behavior. If the valued outcome can expand—such as new companies, equity value, products, jobs, or markets—participants can benefit when others succeed, making cooperation and experimentation rational. Time horizon reinforces the mechanism: short cycles favor immediate contests, while longer horizons reward investment and creation. Use the model to predict behavior, then redesign incentives so people gain from generating additional value rather than defending a fixed share. The framework distinguishes nominal resource abundance from psychological and institutional scarcity.
Origin
Extracted from The Shawn Ryan Show
Core principles
- 01Culture follows the resource participants are rewarded for acquiring
- 02Fixed-status rewards encourage hierarchy and zero-sum competition
- 03Expandable rewards encourage experimentation and positive-sum cooperation
- 04Long time horizons make investment and creation easier
- 05Experiencing both scarcity and abundance sharpens cultural diagnosis
How to run it
- 1
Name the real currency
Identify what participants actually seek, such as power, attention, budget, equity, status, or successful creation. Observe promotions and celebrated wins rather than relying on stated values.
Pro tip Ask what outcome people protect when trade-offs become painful.
Watch out A growing budget does not prove abundance if the desired reward is still fixed power or attention.
- 2
Test its supply
Determine whether more of the valued outcome can be created or whether participants must take it from one another. Classify the environment as predominantly expandable or fixed-supply.
Pro tip Separate financial resources from positional rewards such as rank or control.
Watch out Most ecosystems contain both dynamics, so avoid an absolute label without specifying the dominant incentive.
- 3
Trace incentive-driven behavior
Map how the currency affects information sharing, risk-taking, hiring, cooperation, and responses to outsiders. Identify which behaviors are rational under the current reward system.
Pro tip Look for repeated behavior across institutions rather than isolated personalities.
Watch out Do not treat structural behavior as a collection of individual moral failings.
- 4
Assess the time horizon
Examine how frequently authority, status, or survival is reset. Short cycles intensify defensive behavior, while longer horizons make experimentation and compounding more attractive.
Pro tip Compare formal cycles with the shorter attention cycles people actually respond to.
Watch out Long horizons can also protect complacent incumbents if accountability is absent.
- 5
Redesign for expandable wins
Create rewards for new value, shared success, experimentation, and helping others succeed. Make positive-sum behavior materially useful rather than merely aspirational.
Pro tip Use ownership, shared milestones, or portfolio-style rewards to let multiple contributors win.
Watch out Messaging about abundance will fail if promotions and resources still reward zero-sum competition.
In the wild
Government budgets and staffing can grow while the ecosystem still feels scarce because its central currency is power. Elections regularly replace one group with another, only one person can hold a particular office, and daily news attention is limited. Those constraints reward hierarchy, information trading, and short-term competition.
→ The model explains why nominally expanding institutions can retain a deeply zero-sum culture.
A venture investor can own a portfolio of successful companies, founders can help other founders, and new markets can create additional equity rather than redistribute a fixed prize. When another participant succeeds, the ecosystem may become more valuable for everyone involved.
→ Expandable rewards make collaboration, experimentation, and positive-sum behavior economically rational.
Common mistakes
Measuring abundance by budget alone
An institution may control increasing money and headcount while participants still compete for fixed power, attention, or status. Diagnose the reward people want, not merely the resources surrounding them.
Demanding cooperation without changing rewards
People will continue behaving defensively when advancement depends on defeating peers. Cultural slogans cannot overpower the incentive structure.
Romanticizing abundance
Expandable markets can still produce exclusion, monopolies, and status competition. Use the model as a dominant-tendency diagnosis rather than a claim that every interaction is positive-sum.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for leaders, investors, and organizational designers diagnosing why a culture behaves competitively or collaboratively.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal for situations where behavior is primarily constrained by law, physical resources, or immediate survival rather than social incentives.
From the transcript
“Power is scarce and it is extremely hierarchical. There can't be multiple winners.”
“There is a culture of abundance. It changes the incentive structures and it changes how people think about solving problems.”
“I don't think people understand the difference between a culture of scarcity and a culture of abundance unless they've experienced both.”
From the episode
American Dynamism (with Katherine Boyle)
Katherine Boyle