Lessons on Scarcity and Abundance

(Source: Unsplash/Ganapathy Kumar.)

Arizona is a desert. I live in Minnesota, but everything I know about desert conditions leads me to believe that water should be an ongoing concern for the typical Arizona resident. For policymakers, managing limited water supplies seems like it should be an obsession.

Yet, I’ve visited the deserts of Arizona many times and, to my astonishment, I’ve not experienced any discomfort over water. Minnesota is the Land of 10,000 Lakes—water is abundant here—yet Minnesotans flock to Arizona every winter. I’ve never heard even one complaint from a Minnesotan over impositions they were forced to deal with in Arizona due to the scarcity of water.

My family and I were fortunate enough to visit Greece recently. We spent time in Athens and then on to the islands of Santorini and Crete. While my wife and daughters were there for the beaches and Instagram moments, I just can’t turn off the Strong Towns in my brain.

We had plenty of opportunity to interact with the abundant water at each of these locations—all of it clear, beautiful, and salty—but we also experienced the imposition of water shortages. All three places we visited were hot and dry. Santorini, for example, might experience 16 inches of rain each year (compared to 7.5 inches in Phoenix and 24 inches here in Minnesota), but it’s basically a volcano surrounded by water; there’s no natural place to capture and store any rainfall before it runs off the rock into the sea. It didn’t rain when we were there, but it doesn’t take an engineer to figure out what happens to water when it lands on a rock (even if that rock is beautiful).

That’s why it wasn’t surprising to find out that all the water in the house we rented was salty. The sinks, toilets, and the showers all used saltwater. I tried to figure out where it was coming from and eventually discovered that it was delivered by truck, pumped into cisterns at the top of the hill, where it flowed by gravity to the trickle that came out of our various faucets. I talked to the truck driver and, while it was mostly Greek to me, I believe it comes almost straight out of the sea.

A water truck transporting saltwater from the sea up to the top of the hill. (Source: Chuck Marohn.)

In addition to salty water, we were directed to not put anything into the toilets beyond what our bodies would naturally expel. That included toilet paper. My wife, teenage daughters, and I were asked—in this vacation paradise—to wipe our bottoms with paper and then place it in a garbage can next to the toilet. 

(Source: Chuck Marohn.)

Of course, some of the toilet restrictions could have been because the sewer systems were poor (I made less headway figuring out how that worked), but it’s clear that the shortage of water made certain compromises to the Western lifestyle necessary.

That is the scarcity story, but there is also an abundance story, this one around marble. My mind was blown at the ways that marble was used throughout Greece, but particularly in Athens. 

In my hometown, I can recall only two buildings with marble. One is the 1930s courthouse, which is the most astounding building in the city. Many of the floors and staircases are marble and it’s stunning. The other is the Carnegie Library, the former public library. It is now privately owned and I haven’t been there for years, but I recall there being some marble on the floors. Marble is very expensive and, thus, quite rarely used here.

In Greece, marble was everywhere. And I don’t just mean statues and columns. Here’s a marble curb, which was more common than concrete where we were in Athens.

(Source: Chuck Marohn.)

In Minnesota, marble is expensive and so it is used only in the most magnificent settings. In Athens, marble is apparently so abundant that they line their gutters with it. 

I typically read fiction when I am on vacation. This time I read Dune, the sci-fi novel by Frank Herbet. For those of you not familiar with the book or the movies, much of the action takes place on the desert plant of Arrakis. Water is so scarce there that the inhabitants wear skin suits designed to recycle their own moisture, which they slurp directly from a straw. 

The marble curbs in Athens to me were like a swimming pool to a citizen of Arrakis. They have such an abundance of riches that they can use them this way! Of course, Greece is not a rich country, and Athens shows many signs of financial struggle. Yet, here’s a random sidewalk plaza next to a stroad in downtown Athens coated in marble. Wow!

(Source: Chuck Marohn.)

Since the end of World War II, America’s Suburban Experiment—the financial Ponzi scheme that kept us out of a second Great Depression but has bankrupted every local government in North America, along with a growing percentage of its citizens—distorted many realities that are beginning to reassert themselves.

Water should be cheap in Minnesota but expensive in the desert or on a volcano. Marble should be expensive in Central Minnesota, but cheap in Athens. If we had an active federal policy to make marble artificially cheap here, then my city would need to readjust when our ability or desire to prop up that system waned.

Here’s the thing: Although it would be delightful to have in greater abundance, here we can live without marble. The same can’t be said for water in the desert. The people of Greece seem to have figured that out. When will we?

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