Does Scarcity of Market Share Lead Billionaires, Entrepreneurs, and Crony Politicians into Tunnel Vision for More Market Share?

Only after the second chapter of Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir present an argument that scarcity creates an involuntary tunnel vision effect with attention. This book so far bolsters a hypothesis that I'm coming up with: that billionaires, successful entrepreneurs, and crony politicians in capitalist cultures forge paths of growth and accumulating more rather than sharing and supporting society by fighting against material scarcity because the billionaires, successful entrepreneurs, and crony politicians are stuck in a mindset of scarcity.

But a scarcity of what? It's not material wealth. Maybe it's time, but they could easily hand off things. Maybe privacy, authenticity of people around them, genuine relationships with people, etc. etc. No, accumulating more and more material things wouldn't help address those scarcities except for maybe paying more for security to guard against sycophants.

Maybe the billionaire, the successful entrepreneur, the crony politician feel a scarcity of attention market share. Even those with the biggest market share now have to fear competitors and innovators that threaten to make the billionaire/successful entrepreneur/crony politician obsolete. Because lose that market share, especially with a lavish lifestyle, the billionaire/successful entrepreneur/crony politician risks losing their lifestyle and possibly losing all their material wealth. They would fall into material scarcity, which they may never have experienced before or have a memory of material scarcity being a horrible experience.

And today's capitalist, competitive business, finance, and political culture further exacerbates this sense of scarcity for the billionaires, successful entrepreneurs, and crony politicians. This hypothesis doesn't look to garner sympathy for these billionaires and successful entrepreneurs (and politicians that have gained power through the lobbyists that advocate for these businesses, billionaires, and successful entrepreneurs) because this path hurts society more than it helps.

Heck, as an aside, just look at how much middle and high school culture in the United States supports the importance of popularity and market share of attention instead of being a good person.

Rather, I seek to indict society and developed Western culture for building up this ideology and inflicting people with this state of mind. Any thoughts on this hypothesis? Any thoughts on fighting this phenomenon? Any objections?

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