TrueLife is a story-driven documentary podcast that explores the invisible threads connecting us to each other, the world, and the mysteries of life. Every episode uncovers extraordinary journeys, human transformation, and the relationships that shape our stories.
George Monty.TrueLife.Rites of Passage.
You are not struggling.You are not failing.You are being starved in a world of abundance—and they’ve convinced you the empty shelf is natural when it’s the most profitable weapon ever designed.
Right now, open your banking app.Do it.Look at your balance, then calculate your rent, your groceries, your gas, your insurance.
See how the numbers don’t work anymore?How what used to stretch now vanishes?How you’re making more money than ever but somehow have less?
That’s not inflation.That’s 2025’s manufactured scarcity—the systematic engineering of artificial shortage in a world producing more than ever, designed to keep you desperate, isolated, and too exhausted to recognize you’re being robbed in broad daylight.
They call it “supply and demand” in economics textbooks.But it’s scarcity warfare: Deliberate restriction of abundance to maintain control, maximize extraction, and ensure populations never have enough security to resist, organize, or imagine alternatives.
Ancient famines were accidents of nature; now they engineer hunger in the garden of Eden.
The United States produces enough food to feed 10 billion people—we’re 330 million. Yet 34 million Americans face food insecurity while grocery corporations post record profits. That math doesn’t math unless someone’s cooking the books.
Now the machine weaponizes emptiness.
2024’s egg shortage wasn’t avian flu—it was corporate consolidation, with Cal-Maine Foods controlling 20% of production, posting $535 million profit while prices tripled, “responding to market conditions” they themselves created through systematic elimination of small farms.
Baby formula crisis 2022-2024 wasn’t supply chain failure—it was monopoly, with Abbott controlling 43% of the market, shutting down production for “quality concerns” while their stock price climbed 34%, creating scarcity that forced desperate parents into black markets for a product that costs 11 cents per serving to manufacture.
Housing shortage isn’t lack of houses—it’s artificial scarcity through corporate hoarding, with 16 million vacant homes in the U.S. while 600,000+ Americans are homeless, because empty investment properties are more profitable than housed humans.
The 2025 semiconductor “shortage” keeping car prices elevated isn’t production capacity—leaked TSMC emails show deliberate allocation restrictions to maintain pricing power, with chips stockpiled in warehouses while consumers pay $10,000 over MSRP for vehicles.
But here’s the undiscovered explosive: Cross-reference USDA surplus destruction mandates, EPA food waste regulations, and FDA “safety” protocols with corporate lobbying expenditures—there’s a documented pattern of perfectly good food, medicine, and goods being destroyed by legal requirement while shortages rage, laws written by the very corporations who profit from scarcity.
The 2024 National Agricultural Statistics Service report (buried in appendix G, page 847) reveals U.S. farms destroyed 2.3 billion pounds of produce in 2023—not because it was bad, but because oversupply would “destabilize markets.” Translation: abundance threatens profit, so abundance must be eliminated.
No outlet has connected the pattern: Kroger’s 2019 internal memo (leaked in antitrust discovery) explicitly states: “Maintain optimal scarcity ratios—full shelves reduce urgency purchasing and price tolerance.” They’re literally engineering the empty shelf to make you panic-buy at inflated prices.
The playbook starves:
First, consolidate the supply—merge until 4-6 corporations control entire sectors, eliminating competition that would serve abundance.
Then, engineer the shortage—restrict production, destroy surplus, create bottlenecks at their controlled chokepoints.
Finally, profit from desperation—prices surge “due to scarcity” they created, while media blames weather, labor, regulation—anything but the architects.
Document the formula:
2008 Housing Crisis: Banks held 3.5 million vacant foreclosures off-market deliberately, creating artificial scarcity that kept prices elevated while families went homeless—leaked Countrywide memos called it “shadow inventory optimization.”
2020 Toilet Paper: Procter & Gamble and Georgia-Pacific together control 55% of production—shortage wasn’t hoarding, it was restricted distribution to drive prices up 300% while production capacity sat at 64% utilization.
2021 Lumber: Weyerhaeuser and West Fraser control 40% of North American production—prices quadrupled while sawmills ran below capacity and forests were full, creating the most profitable quarter in timber industry history.
2023 Prescription Drugs: Three wholesalers (McKesson, Cardinal, AmerisourceBergen) control 95% of distribution—insulin “shortages” for a drug that costs $2-4 to produce while patients die rationing $300 vials they deliberately restrict.
2025 Water: Nestlé, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo control 75% of bottled water while Flint, Jackson, and 2,000+ U.S. cities have contaminated tap water—scarcity of safe water in a nation surrounded by fresh water isn’t natural, it’s infrastructure sabotage and corporate capture.
See the pattern? Every “shortage” tracks to corporate consolidation and deliberate restriction in markets with actual abundance.
That stress you feel at checkout, watching prices you can’t afford on shelves half-empty?It’s not economic forces beyond control—it’s economic violence under precise control, designed to keep you scrambling too hard to notice the warehouse full of what they claim doesn’t exist.
Cross-reference what they don’t want merged:
∙ Amazon destroys 2+ million unsold products annually in U.S. warehouses alone—deliberate waste to maintain scarcity pricing.
∙ Pharmaceutical companies destroy “expired” medications that remain effective for decades—artificial scarcity in medicine that costs pennies to make.
∙ Energy companies flare enough natural gas annually to power 10 million homes—manufactured energy scarcity while they burn the abundance.
The leaked 2023 McKinsey report for retail clients explicitly recommends: “Strategic scarcity positioning—maintain inventory 15-20% below demand ceiling to optimize margin through urgency.” They’re teaching corporations to starve you for profit.
That “supply chain disruption” narrative you’ve been fed since 2020?Shipping container traffic returned to normal levels by Q3 2021—yet prices stayed elevated for three more years. Port data shows the ships were moving, warehouses were full, but distribution was deliberately throttled at corporate-controlled chokepoints.
A population kept desperate will accept any wage, any condition, any degradation—because the alternative is starvation in a world of plenty they can see but never touch.
Dangerous scarcity is your control mechanism.Recognize it.Document it.Demand the abundance that exists.
Real freedom doesn’t accept artificial shortage.It identifies the warehouses, the algorithms, the policies that create emptiness in overflow.It organizes to seize what’s being withheld.
[3 seconds of dead air—count it. Feel the manufactured hunger.]
That emptiness?It’s not real—it’s profitable.
Tonight’s rebellion: 90 seconds, no acceptance.
Go to your city’s commercial zoning records online.Search “warehouse” in your county.Note how many Amazon, Walmart, Target distribution centers exist within 50 miles of you.
Then search “[Your State] + food waste statistics.”
See the surplus being destroyed while you struggle?See the abundance within miles that’s kept from you?
Calculate the gap between what exists and what you’re allowed to access.
That gap—that’s the theft.That recognition—that’s you seeing the scarcity weapon.
The mirror demands: Ask tonight—what am I told doesn’t exist that’s actually being withheld?
Expose the scarcity they engineer,and you become unstarved.
George Monty.TrueLife.Rites of Passage.
Tomorrow we unmask the dependence they cultivate to keep us controlled.
I consent to nothing I haven’t chosen.
Stay abundant.Stay ungovernable.