[ox-en] Re: Scarcity and limitedness - again
- From: Stefan Merten <smerten oekonux.de>
- Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2010 11:43:30 +0200
Hi Patrick and all!
4 days ago Patrick Anderson wrote:
Stefan Merten wrote:
Scarcity describes a situation where despite
better knowledge there *won't* be more apples
- for instance to keep the prices high.
This is commonly referred to as "artificial scarcity"
because it is constructed by those seeking profit.
I agree with this wording insofar as "artificial" points to the fact
that it has to do with the societal system and is not given by law of
nature.
However, this wording implies that there is a non-artificial scarcity
which is not the case in a societal system based on abstract exchange
(aka a societal system containing people seeking profit).
The only antidote in capitalism is competition. Can you show me any
capitalist (aka producing for abstract exchange) who would not be glad
if all competitors would simply go away? Well, at least history is
full of attempts to close markets and shut off competitors...
So to summarize: For the current system "artificial scarcity" may be
fine but "scarcity" without further qualifications is misleading and
thus should not be used. For a peer production based society there is
no "artificial scarcity" because with no more profit to seek there is
no more basis for this. Here "scarcity" could be used for
"limitedness". However, I guess in common conversation these fine
differences in meanings and applicability are hard to convey, so I
tend to stay with the current wording. And BTW: I find it very
constructive to have this difficulty :-) .
Grüße
Stefan