Book Review: Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter

From the author of The Comfort Crisis

I was looking forward to reading Scarcity Brain: Fix Your Craving Mindset and Rewire Your Habits to Thrive with Enough after reading The Comfort Crisis. Easter investigates what happens to create our bad habits and how to (hopefully) remove some of them.

Book Notes (Not in Order)

• Easter posits that much of bad behaviour like overeating, drinking, doom scrolling, excessive shopping, drinking, etc. is driven by a “scarcity cue” that gets triggered in our brain. These can be both direct and indirect:

  • Direct - coverage of the pandemic on the news.

  • Indirect - our neighbour driving around in a new car. 

• Some interesting notes on slot machines:

  • We are drawn to the randomness of the winnings.

  • The last column will spin slower to draw in our attention.

  • They have become more elaborate over the years with additional ways to “win”.

  • We disguise our losses as wins. For example pay $1 and “win” $0.50.

  • Near misses keep us playing longer. 

• Most people who gamble don’t have a problem, they do it as a hobby.

• Predictable rewards are boring - see slot machines above. 

• He introduces the concept of Scarcity Loops

  • Typical behaviour - have an itch-> scratch -> move on.

    • Has a clear start and finish without you having to think about it. 

  • Scarcity loop - see opportunity -> receive reward (sometimes larger reward than other times) -> repeat.

    • No specific end. Usually involves you having to end it with your will. Is immediately repeatable. 

  • Examples of scarcity loops in our world

    • Social Media - unpredictable timing and amount of rewards for our posts. Scrolling is also unpredictable, you never knew who posted what or what the algorithm feeds you. 

    • Email - will the next one be a good or bad email or junk? The notifications are spontaneous.

    • Shopping - the example provided was how sites like Temu make shopping feel like a casino with “almost out of stock” warnings.

    • Personal Finance - Robinhood encourages frequent engagement and celebrates you for doing so.

    • Mobile gaming - in game items and challenges. Freemium features get you hooked. 

    • Television - auto play reduces our input and need for involvement. It’s also somewhat unpredictable. 

    • Health - getting a recovery score that seems like it’s fairly random sometimes. 

    • Dating apps - keep swiping to see who is next. 

    • Video games - candy crush for example will have lots of near misses like a slot machine.

    • Gig work - Uber does things like “You’re just $21 away from making $250.” to keep you working. 

    • News - around the clock coverage of anything. Politicians behave more like cartoon characters today than ever before. 

• It isn’t getting the reward that gets our brain to release dopamine, it’s the anticipating and/or pursuit of the reward. 

• Our scarcity brain signals

  • Less = bad, worse, unproductive.

  • More = good, better, productive

  • You see more everywhere. This point reminded me of the book Subtract. 

    • Restaurant portions are up 4x since 1950.

    • We have 2.3x more clothes than 1930.

    • Home sizes in some cities are up 3x since 1970.

    • Federal Regulations are up 17x since 1950.

• For our work and salary we prefer to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond rather than a medium fish in a large pond even if being the medium fish in the large pond is a better life. 

• Lab-grown illegal drugs are 20x more profitable than field grown drugs.

• The book gives two examples of pride:

  • Authentic - when we are proud of something we worked hard for. It boosts long term creativity and mental and physical health. 

  • Hubristic - undeserved pride. We project something without actually accomplishing anything. We seek the validation of others. 

• The book goes into some examples of how our modern food system has many benefits that we don’t discuss. 

  • We used to die from things like goitre, scurvy and pellagra due to lack of specific nutrients. 

  • Food is cheaper. We used to spend 40% of our income on basic food and now it’s less than 10%.

Some Psychological Biases that were mentioned

• Fundamental attribution error - we attribute others’ actions as representative of their character but not our own. Someone else being late for work means they are lazy. Being late for work means we got stuck in traffic. 

• Overconfidence Effect - we have excessive confidence in our beliefs. 

• Naive cynicism - we think everyone but us is selfish. 

Some health related data

• 6 of 10 Americans live with some sort of disease. 

• 4 out of 10 have two or more diseases.

• We are 19x more likely to worry about cancer than heart disease yet are more likely to die from the former. 

Something interesting about media and its effects on us

• After the Boston marathon bombings researchers surveyed two groups of people. The first group was people who were not at the bombing but watched at least 6 hours or more of media coverage of the event. And group 2 was people who were actually at the event. The first group was more likely to develop PTSD. 

Addiction

• The extreme end of the scarcity brain is addiction.

• There were typical 2 models of thinking around addiction.

  • 1 - The addict has total agency and is a “bad” or “weak” person. The addiction is a selfish and personal choice. 

  • 2 - The addiction hijacks the person's brain and they have no choice or control of their actions. They are powerless. 

• The author spoke to several experts and came to the conclusion that reality is somewhere in between. Addiction is a disease but the addicted are not hopeless passengers with a hijacked brain. 

• Addiction can be seen as a life sentence as 40-60% of people with the label relapse. Although this was disputed due to what’s called ‘the clinician’s illusion’. It’s where researchers and doctors only study the most challenging cases. Many people report having an addiction and kick it without landing on anyone’s radar.

  • There are many reasons why someone would voluntarily kick an addiction:  like missing your kids’ soccer game, getting fired, getting a DUI, getting dumped, etc. 

  • The book referenced the soldiers who fought in the Vietnam war that became addicted to heroin and the concern that President Nixon had with them returning home. Only 5% relapsed once they got home. The author argus that the incentive of leaving the war played a large role. 

  • The book goes into examples of how addicts were still capable of responding to incentives in a study by Columbia University. 

My Favourite Points/Quotes

• In the end our life is a collection of what we pay attention to. 

• Something that resonated with me was slowing down and asking myself “Do I want to be right or happy?” when discussing things with people I care about. 

• Research shows that the worldly possessions (like money, power, prestige, stuff, status, etc.) that we seek don’t make us happier. We are wealthier by pretty much every measure since 1975 and not any happier. 

Closing Thoughts

I enjoyed the book. I think it’s worth your time to read. If I was going to recommend a book by Michael Easter I would recommend The Comfort Crisis. This would be a close second. 

Have you read anything by Easter? I would love to hear about it. 

Thanks for reading.

Dean