Scarcity

Discussion

Scarcity under a price system

The reason why there is inherent scarcity is not because of physical restraints in the territorial base, according to the economist, but has more to do with the consumer demand. The assumption is that all demands are equal, that for example the needs of a single mother in a favela in Saõ Paolo in Brazil, is equal to Jay Leno's wants of a 611th Chrysler with gold plates from year 1958.

In this model, all demands are absolutes and all other infringements upon the demands except poverty are seen as unacceptable as they lead to "inefficiencies". According to this model, as earlier stated in my article about Energy Accounting, all human needs and wants are equivalent to each-other, and all needs and wants are without any borders, i.e, human beings always want to possess more and more.

Thus, scarcity is actually relative in this model, as a knight with a silver plate armour would envy the knight with a golden plate armour, and it is inherently based on subjective judgements about value, rather than physical scarcity in itself.

Thus, when economists and technocrats are talking about scarcity, the economist is talking about something which is going on inside a person's head, while the technocrat is talking about the physical constraints of a particular geographical zone. How much fresh water there is, how many minerals, how much capacity to grow food. For the economist, the important thing is rather "how much are people willing to work to get hold on these resources,

Thus, relative scarcity according to the economist will always be absolute." (http://en.technocracynet.eu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=155&Itemid=137)

Oppressive Scarcities

Book Source: Wolfgang Hoeschele. The Economics of Abundance: A Political Economy of Freedom, Equity, and Sustainability. pp. 19-20

Wolfgang Hoeschele:

"The discussion in Chapter 1 claims that needs and wants can be consciously generated in order to create profitable scarcities. However, it is important to go beyond such general claims and systematically examine the various methods of scarcity generation. Scarcity, we must remember, is the condition when available goods do not meet current demands. There are basically three ways in which scarcity can be generated. First, the total amount of a good or service can be reduced. For example, the expansion of market activities may reduce the amount of goods provided by nature (such as clean air) or by nonmarket mechanisms (for example, self-provisioning of food, free exchange of knowledge), or those that result from the absence of commercial activities (such as silence and open space). Second, barriers can be placed between people and a good. Of potentially many ways to obtain that good, only one or a few may be left available, leading to the creation of a bottleneck. People can be made to pay in various ways for taking goods through the bottleneck. An example of this mechanism is the elimination of diverse forms of movement to the point that “mobility” is reduced to the use of a privately owned car. Monopolies also fit into this category of scarcity generation—a particular good is available, but must be purchased from a single seller. Third, new wants or needs can be created, or existing ones modified, so that demand for a commodity exceeds supply—for example, by means of advertising, ideological indoctrination, or legal standards. All three basic mechanisms not only increase scarcity, but also curtail freedom by forcing increased expenditures on people and reducing available options of how to satisfy their needs.

Throughout history, we can conceive of social power as having been based in part on the construction of scarcity, but the methods of producing scarcity have continuously changed as a result of changing social circumstances, new technologies, and differing natural environments. Every historical period is characterized not only by varying combinations of methods to create scarcity, but also by specific ways of institutionalizing these methods—that is, its own scarcity-generating institutions. In this chapter, I begin the discussion with several such institutions which are normally considered neither economic nor modern, but which continue to persist and interact with modern economic institutions. Any attempt to avoid the scarcities invented in modern times should also avoid the scarcities created by these older institutions—romanticizing the past will not lead us forward. What these institutions have in common is that they explicitly prohibit people from engaging in certain types of behavior or expressing deviant thoughts, often based on the “station in life” into which they were born. In a word, they oppress."

More Information

General:

1. Abundance vs. Scarcity ; Artificial Scarcity;
2. Pre-Scarcity: a prior phase of human history before the Scarcity paradigm became dominant.
3. Post-Scarcity ; Post-Scarcity Age ; Post-Scarcity Fiction

Specialized:

1. Monetary Scarcity: the current monetary system is based on artificially creating scarcity.(Bernard Lietaer) on the artificial scarcity of the present money system
2. Monetary Sufficiency - Non-scarcity based monetary systems
3. Ludocapitalism and the scarcity in gaming worlds
4. Abundance vs. Scarcity Mentality: the subjectvive aspects of abundance and scarcity.
5. Against the artificial scarcity induced by IP law
6. Post-Scarcity Anarchism