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Mainstream economics is based on a principle of scarcity. This follows from the assumption that people's wants are unlimited but the means to satisfy them are limited. The practice of modern economics has been conditioned by the need of modern economies to create wants.
Mainstream economics is able to create the illusion of progress by fallaciously defining the part as the whole. It analyzes only the good results of economic growth, and ignores the negative "side-effects." For example, increased production of material goods is accompanied by a decline of moral values. Economists believe that what motivates people is a fundamental greed, and that this is good because it stimulates economic growth. But it also causes environment degradation and disease, stress, loneliness, distrust, crime, drug use, violence, and community disintegration. It causes the disruption of extended families and life-long personal relationships when people move to where the jobs are, and this increases the need for police, prisons, and counseling. The assumption of perfect competition assumes a labor force that is perfectly mobile, yet these negative effects of mobility are completely ignored. Some of the most basic human needs, e.g., for love, caring and belonging, are completely denied.
Economics defines wealth or progress as an increase in material consumption. Obviously, there are at least two types of wealth. One is a wealth where one is surrounded by material goods but no personal relations. The other is when one is surrounded by a wealth of people for whom one cares and who care for one. Life in genuine communities alone can create this kind of wealth. This wealth depends on a concept of abundance, or Fullness. It provides a different and in some sense a better quality of living than the standards of wealth propagated by economists. It is threatened by economic assumptions like "more is better" and labor force mobility. Gandhian economists have developed an economics that replaces the assumption of perfect mobility of labor with the assumption that community and family stability should have priority. Gandhian economics replaces the axiom of nonsatiation (more is always better) with a principle of limits, the recognition that there is such a thing as "enough" material wealth. Gandhian economists recognize that consuming more than "enough" creates more problems and than it solves, and causes consumer satisfaction or "utility" to decline rather than increase.
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