What is more, large surpluses are often spent on jewellery, celebrations or grandiose buildings. In a traditional Mexican village, for example, the private accumulation of wealth results in social ostracism - prestige is gained precisely by spending even small profits on good deeds for the community. Along with community ties, land, forest and water are the most important prerequisites for subsistence without money. As soon as they are taken away or destroyed, destitution lurks. Again and again, peasants, nomads and tribals have fallen into misery after being driven from their land, savannahs and forests.
Scarcity derives from modernized poverty.
It affects mostly urban groups caught up in the money economy as workers and consumers whose spending power is so low that they fall by the wayside. Not only does their predicament make them vulnerable to the whims of the market, but they also live in a situation where money assumes an ever-increasing importance. Commodity-based poverty, still described as the social question in the nineteenth century, led to the welfare state and its income and employment policy after the world economic crisis of 1929. Precisely this view of poverty, influenced by Keynes and the New Deal, shaped the development ideas of the post-war era. More frugality, less destitution Up until the present day, development politicians have viewed poverty as the problem and growth as the solution.