PhronesisCompulsive frugality is often coded as virtue: the conscientious avoidance of waste, the disciplined management of finite resources. This paper argues otherwise. We model compulsive frugality as a wrong attractor in the dynamical landscape of resource relationship—a stable equilibrium state that masquerades as prudence while systematically foreclosing abundance perception and reinforcing the very scarcity it purports to guard against.
We introduce the ground state S^0 (calibrated resource stewardship) as the target configuration: a disposition that responds to actual resource conditions rather than to a chronic, self-reinforcing anticipation of depletion. The displacement field D() measures deviation from S^0, and the integrated deprivation potential = D()\,dt tracks the cumulative cost of sustained displacement.
Nine formal propositions characterize the attractor geometry, the basin structure of what we call the abundance-foreclosure basin, and the exit dynamics required for return to S^0. We situate compulsive frugality within the broader literature on scarcity psychology, depression-era trauma transmission, hoarding-adjacent behavior, and financial anxiety, and argue that the path out is not profligacy but recalibration: the restoration of accurate perceptual contact with actual resource conditions.
Calibrated resource stewardship is not the opposite of frugality—it is the ground from which any genuine relationship to resource can begin.