The first of these books is fascinating and worth a read (I enjoyed the second one too, but it is a little more scholarly in its language). The first primarily deals with hunter/gatherer peoples and early city-based civilisations. The second is focused on Zomia - an area covering large parts of China and India that was non-hierarchal and contained a large and diverse population.

As for scarcity: It seems to me from my research that it is most often the leaders and factions that create artificial scarcity in order to enforce their power, rather than there being a lack of resources in the first place.