Scarcity
The bandwidth tax
Every shortage takes the same mind
Mullainathan and Shafir, Scarcity (2013); the Indian sugarcane study
People short of money get called short-sighted. This piece asks whether that is a character trait or a description of the situation.
What actually happened?
They tested Indian sugarcane farmers twice: the same men before the harvest, when money was tight, and after it, when the money had arrived. The same person scored differently on the same cognitive tests. They call it the bandwidth tax — scarcity captures the mind, and what it captures is not available for anything else. So being short-sighted may be a consequence of having no money rather than the cause of it. The size of that effect has been contested since. This piece takes the direction and leaves the number alone.
One bandwidth, and both shortages draw on it
This is the model's most useful move: it folds two apparently unrelated troubles into one. Doing the month's arithmetic and racing a deadline draw on the same attention, which is why the two arriving together are so much worse than either alone. Not weak will. Bandwidth pulled from both ends.
Working out how far short this month is while finishing a proposal, and doing both badly. That is not laziness.
The test is whether he does it when things are loose
Swapping a character explanation for a situational one needs something you can check. The sugarcane study is strong precisely because it compares one group of men at two moments, instead of comparing poor people with rich ones.
A mistake that stops happening after the harvest does not belong on that man's personality.
The conclusion is for institutions, not for self-blame
The real use of this model is in design: take away things a stretched person has to remember, forms to fill in, decisions to make. That beats telling him to think more clearly. Turned on yourself it is a reminder, not an amnesty.
Setting the repayment to leave the account automatically beats reminding yourself every month not to forget it.
How do I use it today?
Where you are: money or time is tight, and you keep making decisions that look stupid a week later.
Ask first: would I make these mistakes when things were loose? If not, stop trying to fix your character and start removing things that occupy the bandwidth.
Where it goes wrong: using it as an amnesty for every lapse; or turning it outward to label somebody else. It explains a situation, it does not classify a person.
Lines to keep
Scarcity captures the mind.
Being short of money and short of time draw on one bandwidth.
This model is built for designing systems, not for blaming yourself.
Same situation, other people are asking
This month is on me. I can't think about next year.There's money in the account and I don't know when it runs out.I can't pay it back and I haven't told anyone at home.Money fights are pushing us apart.Not enough money · all 10 questions →If this one named what you are going through,
send it to someone who needs it, or keep it somewhere you will find it again.