“Desire in a consumer society keeps us distracted from the desires of the truly hungry, those who experience hunger as life-threatening deprivation….[The] market story establishes a fundamentally individualistic view of the human person. The idea of scarcity assumes that the normal condition for the communication of goods is through trade: to get something, one must relinquish something else. The idea of scarcity implies that goods are not held in common, that the consumption of goods is essentially a private experience. This does not mean that charitable giving is forbidden, but it is relegated to the private realm of preference, not justice. One can always send a check to help feed the hungry, but one’s charitable preferences will always be in competition with one’s own endless desires. The idea of scarcity establishes the view that no one has enough.”

—William T. Cavanaugh (via azspot)