Abundance Is Not a Future, It Is a Forbidden Present
Gatekeeping is what blocks care, not scarcity.
Walk through almost any city, and you can’t help but notice the contradictions: rows of empty apartments while people sleep on the street, extra hospital beds that won’t admit those without the “right” insurance, bins of surplus food locked or thrown out behind supermarkets. We’re told, over and over, that the problem is simply scarcity—too few resources, too little money, too few qualified workers to meet everyone’s needs.
But a closer look tells a different story. We’re not short on the essentials we need to care for each other. What we’re short on is permission—the legal and bureaucratic sign-offs that decide who can use resources, and who cannot.
Below, I highlight two main threads:
How Abundance Is Made Illegal: How gatekeeping structures actively block us from sharing what we already have, leaving us convinced we’re up against a perpetual shortage.
How Direct Care is Criminalized: How laws, ordinances, and cultural narratives punish neighbors who help one another directly—unless they do so through “officially sanctioned” channels.
When we recognize these two forces working together, we see why we don’t need an apocalypse or a billionaire’s donation to fix things. We already possess the surplus we need. What’s holding us back is a system that forbids us from putting it to use.
The Myth of Scarcity vs. The Reality of Withholding Permission
Have you ever wondered how supermarket aisles can overflow with fresh produce, yet people in the same neighborhood go hungry? Or how a half-vacant hospital floor can refuse admission to an uninsured patient? These contradictions don’t arise from genuine lack; they arise because someone—a landlord, a hospital system, a chain of grocery stores—withholds the go-ahead to share these goods.
Take “anti-camping” laws, which forbid people from sleeping outdoors or providing tents to the unhoused. Or “special event” permits, requiring volunteers to jump through legal hoops (and often pay fees) just to hand out meals at a public park. At first glance, these measures sound practical—maybe they’re about “health codes” or “public safety.” But they essentially say, You can’t just help people on your own.
The moment we see that the real bottleneck isn’t a lack of resources, but rather the official denial of permission to use them, the conversation shifts. It’s no longer “How do we find more?” but “Why aren’t we letting people share what’s already here?”
Manufactured Scarcity in Action
Vacant apartments artificially inflate market rents, forcing families onto the street or into shelters.
Pharmaceutical monopolies lock up drug patents, withholding lifesaving medicines from those who can’t afford high prices.
Food waste becomes normalized: supermarkets trash surplus goods rather than risk “liability” by giving them away.
Ask yourself: “Is there truly nothing available, or is it merely kept off-limits by rules, profits, or property rights?”
You’ll quickly see how often the system blames a phantom shortage to rationalize turning people away.
The Criminalization of Direct Care
In many communities, placing a “free fridge” on your sidewalk—where neighbors can give and take food—can trigger fines or forced removal. Building tiny shelters on your property for the unhoused can violate local zoning codes. Handing out free meals in public often requires a pricey permit. Together, these rules send a clear signal: only certain licensed, government-approved, or corporately sponsored avenues can deliver aid.
Where does that mindset come from? Historically, you can trace it to colonial poor laws that distinguished between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor, regulating who should receive help and how. In the 19th century, “vagrancy” laws outright punished many forms of grassroots assistance. The so-called Progressive Era introduced professional charities and bureaucratic welfare systems, overshadowing old-fashioned mutual aid among neighbors.
Fast forward to today, and that legacy remains: distributing leftover groceries or offering makeshift shelters is likely illegal unless you jump through official hoops. It’s not a coincidence; gatekeepers worry that if everyday people realized how easily they could feed or house each other—no massive budgets or philanthropic grants required—then the entire notion of having to pay for the right to live would start to unravel.
Gatekeepers Are Freaked Out By “Uncontrolled Kindness”
From a landlord’s perspective, if a group can move families into vacant buildings and keep them safe, why would tenants pay exorbitant rents? From an insurer’s viewpoint, if a free neighborhood clinic can operate outside profit-driven networks, then who needs private insurance at all? Ensuring that “unauthorized help” is restricted keeps us reliant on paywalls and official channels, thereby sustaining the myth that “we can’t afford to help everyone.”
The Right to Provide Care
The history of healthcare in the United States reveals how marginalized communities have been systematically denied both the right to be cared for and the right to provide care—a basic human function that reflects autonomy, dignity, and solidarity. This denial manifests in various ways, from the suppression of Indigenous healing traditions to the forced sterilization of women of color, from the criminalization of Black midwives to the incarceration and disenfranchisement of immigrant caregivers.
Non-Coercive Enclaves: Building Our Own Permission
If the real problem is that we aren’t allowed to use the surplus around us, then how do we break free? As I discuss in Non-Coercive Systems, there’s a growing movement of “enclaves” that reject meltdown fantasies (waiting for capitalism to collapse) or philanthropic illusions (hoping a billionaire will bail us out). Instead, these enclaves directly form local networks that share resources unconditionally, governed by those who actually use them.
Such efforts might be:
Free clinics or mental health pop-ups that refuse to bill insurance and thus bypass codified gatekeeping.
Community fridges where you can drop off or pick up items as needed—no forms, no proof of “deservingness.”
Tenant cooperatives that buy buildings, removing them from speculative markets and setting rules collectively.
The lesson is clear: we don’t have to wait for permission. If a community organizes itself to distribute resources (food, clothes, beds) outside the usual bureaucracy, real change happens right away.
These enclaves may face pushback—from the city, from corporate-backed nonprofits—but they also demonstrate a simple, radical truth: there’s no genuine shortage of resources, only a shortage of gatekeepers’ willingness to let us share them freely.
Care Doesn’t Need Approval
In this world of illusions—where officialdom claims we have no choice but to comply with pay-to-survive rules—it’s easy to forget that mutual aid is as old as humanity. Historically, across cultures, people cooperated with neighbors to survive. Criminalizing direct care is the anomaly, not the default.
So let’s move beyond the question of “Is there enough?” and focus on “Why aren’t we letting people share what’s already there?” Because once we see that we have plenty of apartments, surplus groceries, and hospital capacity—just locked behind profit or policy—then it’s obvious we do not need a catastrophe or a billionaire’s blessing.
If we’re bold enough to defy the assumption that only sanctioned institutions can help, we can start providing for each other right now.
4 Takeaways:
Scarcity Is Often Manufactured – Shortages exist, but many are exaggerated to justify profit-driven control over resources that could be shared.
Criminalizing Direct Care Enforces Dependency – Laws restricting mutual aid force reliance on corporate and state-approved channels, blocking grassroots solutions.
Resources Exist, But Access Is Blocked – Farmland, hospital beds, and food surpluses are abundant, yet laws and bureaucracy often prevent their free use.
Act Without Asking – Free fridges, volunteer clinics, and tiny-house communities show that direct care works—even when gatekeepers resist.
In solidarity,
Kanav Jain
syadvada.com