I love scarcity.
You know why? Scarcity encourages people to create solutions.
Case in point: This morning, Aee and Jee wanted to print pictures from their favorite website. I said, "No, ink is expensive and those are full color pictures. No."
They balked a bit, tried to convince me it was worth it.
I stuck to "No" since they didn't have any convincing reasons why they needed to press that Print button.
I asked Aee, "Why do you need it? What will you do with it once its printed?"
She thought for a minute, then ran to the kitchen, grabbed a stack of paper from the paper stacker and ran back to the desk, --writing-- each of the words from the screen that she wanted to capture.
By creating a sense of scarcity, the kids were forced to find solutions. Problem solving, continuity in the face of diversity, creating new methods for getting to your end result -- it's all good!
In many ways, scarcity can be a valuable concept.
