In a world of scarcity, can we try over-valuing?
How deep does the logic of the economy pervade us? How do its values—debt and credit, minimums (never maximums), increasing productivity, ceaseless growth—seep into our relationships and identities? If we can’t escape valuation, can we overdo it? These questions arise amid our uneasiness with the ethic of scarcity we’ve been asked to internalize. Artists and writers propose ways to resist scarcity on ethical and political terms, working within and against economic logic. Some try to forget about money: they foreground care, friendship, land, or environment as relations that can’t be reduced to assets. Others engage the economy on its own terms: by assigning monetary value to that which has been excluded from it; counting that which gets uncounted; following the money; wasting time; taking too much time; or paying too much.