Is our Capacity Set?

Too many people hear the word capacity and assume it’s a limitation. They assume their capacity is set—especially if they’re beyond a certain age. People give up on the idea that their capacity or their potential can grow. All they do is try to manage whatever they think they’ve got. A lot of people think this way. Activist Roberto Verzola observed that economists are notorious for this kind of mind-set of limitations. Worse yet, they try to convince others to adopt it too. Verzola says,

The most fundamental assumption in economics is scarcity. This, in effect, assumes away abundance. Thus, most mainstream economists are not prepared to deal with abundance. They have few concepts that explain it. They have no equations that describe it. Confronted with it, they fall back on inadequate theories based on scarcity. 

In other words, they define the world in terms of its limitations. They also define people in terms of their limitations. That’s too confining. Instead, we need to define our world and ourselves in terms of our possibilities.