Roberto Verzola’s Typology of Abundance
Discussion
Compiled by Rok Kranj:
Definition of abundance
“when a person can afford enough quantity of a good or bundle of goods to reach his/her satisficed level, then the person enjoys a state of abundance for that good/bundle of goods [...] This definition also allows a good's state of abundance with respect to one person to be quantified: it is the ratio of that person's affordable quantity (economists call this demand, which varies according to price) to his/her satisficing level, which is the point where any further reduction in price does not anymore increase that person's demanded quantity.”
Main arguments:
>Information goods are a unique commodity - nonrival, non-material goods with diminishing/near-zero marginal cost (what Verzola calls “multiplicative abundance”)
>Several abundance archetypes may be defined
- Multiplicative abundance of information goods: abundance that is created when the cost of reproducing the (non-material) resource approaches zero
- Reproductive abundance of living organisms: as long as the right conditions exist for the reproductive processes to occur, ecological systems of interacting biological webs of organisms will provide us a timeless source of abundance
Two additional archetypes below are based on the massive bulk of certain elements and compounds found on Earth and elsewhere (e.g. air, water, sand, wind, minerals, solar energy).
- Abundance based on persistent mass: matter is never really destroyed - persistent matter (e.g. metals) undergoes very little chemical transformation - their persistence allows them to be reused or recycled over and over again, with little additional processing; the principle management approach for this archetype is a better system of recovering and recycling the resource, to enhance the persistence of these abundant goods for their human users
- Abundance of massive-dissipative resources - while we may start with an abundance by virtue of their bulk, the use of the resource transforms and depletes it; the principle management approach for this archetype should be conservation, to leave as much of the resource to future generations, who may discover much better ways of putting these non-renewable resources to good use
Careful though, for … Pseudo abundance - bads posing as goods (e.g. not accounting for externalities)"
(http://www.i-r-i-e.net/inhalt/011/011-full.pdf )
Source: Verzola, Roberto. 2009. “21st-Century Political Economies: Beyond Information Abundance”. The International Review of Information Ethics 11 (October).