Scarcity

9 Key excerpts on "Scarcity"

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  Economic Environment NQF4 SB

  TVET FIRST

  • D Bekker, M Richards, FHB Serfontein, A Smith(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  You will then also look at the impact of different economic systems, specifically the market economy, the command economy and the mixed economy. Lastly you will be looking at the role supply factors play in producing goods and services in the economy. 1.1 Concepts in economics Scarcity Economics is often defined as the study of using limited resources to satisfy unlimited needs and wants . This definition implies Scarcity of resources. But what do we mean by Scarcity? A dictionary definition of scarce is “rare or in short supply”. In economics we mean that the inputs or resources used to make products are limited whereas what people need or want is unlimited. Once people have their basic needs or necessities for survival met, for example food, water and shelter, then their needs for security, love and social recognition becomes important. Once these needs are met, people start wanting things because they derive pleasure from them or because they think owning them may give them status. These needs or wants are unlimited. The resources that are used to make goods and services are limited. There is a limit to some natural resources like the raw materials we take out of the ground. One day there will be no more coal, iron-ore or oil. It may still take a number of decades or even centuries before we start running out of these inputs for our production processes, but because these minerals take so long to be formed by nature they will eventually run out. Such resources are known as non-renewable resources . Module 1: Basic economic principles Economics: the study of how limited resources are used to satisfy unlimited needs and wants Needs: the essential goods and services that we have to have in order to survive Wants: those goods and services that we would like to have Scarce: not often found; rare; in short supply Words & Terms Resources: land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship needed to produce the goods and services in an economy.

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  FTCE Social Science 6-12 (037) Book + Online

  • Cynthia Metcalf, Rhonda Atkinson(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Research & Education Association

    (Publisher)

  Most contemporary definitions of economics involve the notions of choice and Scarcity and their relationship to one another. Perhaps the earliest of these is by Lionel Robbins in 1935: “Economics is a science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.” Virtually all textbooks have definitions that are derived from this definition, though the exact wording differs from author to author.

  The standard definition of economics is something like this: “Economics is the social science that examines how people choose to use limited or scarce resources to obtain maximum satisfaction of unlimited wants.”

  Macroeconomics is the study of the economy as a whole and includes topics such as inflation, unemployment, and economic growth. Microeconomics is the study of the individual parts (e.g., households, business firms, and government agencies) that make up the economy. It particularly emphasizes both how these units make decisions and the consequences of these decisions.

  COMPETENCY 2.1

  Analyze how Scarcity and opportunity cost influence choices about how to allocate resources.

  Economists believe that human wants are unlimited while the resources to satisfy those needs are limited. Consequently, society is never able to produce enough goods and services to satisfy everybody, or almost anyone, completely. Alternatively, resources are scarce relative to human needs and desires. When resources are limited, the limitation affects prices (the amount of money needed to buy goods, services, or resources). Scarcity

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  Economic Behaviour As If Others Too Had

  • Chegedua Tangonyire, Kyaligonza Achal, Lawrence(Authors)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Langaa RPCIG

    (Publisher)

  Human Needs vs. Resources In the sphere of economics, human egoism takes the extreme form of pure selfishness. Each individual thinks mainly about his own interests only . This is mainly because most people usually assume that resources are scarce and human needs are endless. There is a constant war between human needs and resources. Economics is usually defined as the science of how a given society of people uses limited resources to satisfy its people’s unlimited needs . 58 This is one of our biggest cataclysms. Economics has become an impossible task, a paradox. How can something finite be matched with something infinite? It is similar to trying to fill a bottomless pot with water. Not even the waters of the Mediterranean Sea can fill such a pot. The conflict between human needs and resources will never end until we critically examine the limitedness of resources and the endlessness of human needs. What do people actually mean when they say that resources are limited? Are human needs really unlimited? Is there no correlation between human selfishness and the claim that human needs are unlimited? Let us attempt to respond to these questions, although not in a systematic way. 58 Hardwick, John Langmead and Bahdur Khan, An Introduction to Modern Economics , 3. 47 The Limitedness of Resources In economics, a resource is said to be scarce when there is not enough of it to meet everybody’s wants assuming it were available free of charge. Selfishness and the desire for luxuries make some resources scarce 59 and exacerbate the Scarcity of others. If a resource is made available to people at zero price and they selfishly grab huge amounts of it until it can no longer suffice for their greed, then that resource becomes scarce. Scarce resources are also known as economic resources while abundant resources are called free resources, for example, oxygen is a free resource, at least in most places.

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  Introductory Microeconomics

  • Michael Veseth(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Academic Press

    (Publisher)

  Parti The Economics of Exchange CHAPTER 1 Scarcity AND CHOICE CHAPTER 2 SPECIALIZATION AND EXCHANGE CHAPTER 3 DEMAND AND SUPPLY: THE MICRO SIDE CHAPTER 4 MARKETS AT WORK 1 This page intentionally left blank 1 Scarcity and Choice This chapter introduces some of the basic problems with which economics deals. Questions that will be answered in this chapter include the following: What are the basic economic problems that face society? How do we deal with these problems? What is the role of economic growth? 3 4 Scarcity AND CHOICE Economics: the social science that studies the production and distribution of goods and ser-vices in a world of scarce resources Scarcity: the situation that prevails when desires exceed resources Choice: the problem of deciding among several alternatives, not all of which can be obtained at the same time Economics is useful stuff, but economists sometimes seem like a pretty dismal group. Normal in most other respects, economists have the uncomfortable habit of finding dark clouds surrounding every otherwise silver lining. The economists' motto There is no free lunch is not a particularly friendly one. This seeming pessimism has something to do with the way that economists view the world. Given Aladdin's lamp (and the three free wishes that the genie provides) most people would dream only of the luxuries now available. To the economist, however, this seeming abundance is really a problem of Scarcity. A world of wants and just three wishes! What dreams to fulfill? What wishes to forego? How to choose? To the economist, even Aladdin's lamp is a problem of Scarcity and choice.

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  The Economics of Property and Planning

  Future Value

  • Graham Squires(Author)
  • 2021(Publication Date)
  • CRC Press

    (Publisher)

  With regard to for ‘whom’ these goods and services are realised and by which method, different social groupings may benefit or lose depending on particular social cleavages such as wealth and class (lower, middle, upper, under), race, religion, gender, age, and sexuality. Particular minorities and majorities will benefit from the choices made in society – including private decisions by for instance commercial property interests and public interests such as politicians seeking the best combination of public returns for their constituents. Different goods (e.g. the production of merit goods such as education) and how they are produced (e.g. public, private, or a combination) will affect who ultimately receives the good or service. As an example, not all schoolchildren will be able to afford private education and would not be able to receive education.

  So more broadly, economics is the study of how society decides what, how, and for whom to produce. It is the decisions made by society that are of importance in determining the three questions of what, how, and for whom to produce – and these decisions can often be influenced by the level of ‘wants’ and ‘resources’ available.

  Resources, wants, and Scarcity

  At either end of the spectrum in which wants and resources are situated is the idea of ‘Infinite Wants’ on one end, and ‘Scarce Resources’ on the other. Infinite wants hold the notion that people are hard-wired to always want to consume more goods, services, and experiences. Scarce resources in the form of factors of production (Land, Labour, Capital, and Entrepreneurship) restrict the ability for all of these infinite wants to be satisfied completely – as Scarcity defines the resources as having limited availability. Due to this mismatch of infinite wants and scarce resources, it is thought in economic terms that a choice will need to be made.

  Using a property and planning example, a situation can be described where residents will want to live in a property that allows an improved quality of life – such as whether that is a better location, better school catchment, areas with low crime, commutable to suitable employment, and near to recreation space. However, these wants are curtailed due to the Scarcity of resources, for instance, there is only finite (or even unique) land available for desirable locations, there are a limited number of available schools, not all locations are crime (or fear of crime) free, the commute time to work will have a limit, and there is only a finite amount of land available for recreation. As a result, this housing example demonstrates that the wants will not be completely satisfied given the scarce resources (and factors of production), and a compromise and choice will have to be made. This idea of choice can be aggregated to a national scale and demonstrate that not all of a nation’s inhabitants will be satisfied.

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  Scarcity and Growth Reconsidered

  • V. Kerry Smith(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • RFF Press

    (Publisher)

  10 Measures of Natural Resource Scarcity

  Anthony C. Fisher I am grateful to Bengt Hansson, Geoffrey Heal, Alvin Klevonck, Harvey Lapan, and Karl-Göran Mäler for helpful discussions and comments on an earlier draft.

  I Introduction: Physical and Economic Scarcity

  The widely publicized predictions of impending Scarcity and even exhaustion of extractive natural resources such as metals and fuels, in the Club of Rome study The Limits to Growth, and the less widely publicized rebuttals (see, for example, Beckerman [1], Nordhaus [2], and Kay and Mirrlees [3]) suggest that a careful analysis of what is meant by resource Scarcity, and of how it is measured or indicated, might be worthwhile. This paper is intended to provide such an analysis. Specifically, in this section I consider the meaning of Scarcity, and in subsequent sections a number of proposed measures, their properties, and their behavior as a resource stock is depleted or augmented over time.

  Perhaps the question, "What is Scarcity?" is too simple for economists, or at any rate, too simple to be made explicit. We ordinarily say a good—or a resource—is scarce if the quantity demanded exceeds the quantity supplied at some benchmark price, such as the prevailing one, so that in a competitive market there is an upward pressure on the price. As a special case, goods are sometimes considered scarce, or "economic," as opposed to "free," if this excess demand is positive at a zero price. But much of the current debate about natural resource Scarcity focuses on physical measures, such as the stock of reserves. To obtain some idea of the economic implications of an estimated reserve base, it is typically compared with another physical quantity, projected consumption, giving rise to conclusions on how many years' worth of coal, or iron, or whatever is left at current or projected rates of consumption.1

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  Resource Constraints and Global Growth

  Evidence from the Financial Sector

  • Efundem Agboraw, Aled Jones(Authors)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Pivot

    (Publisher)

  As a follow up from the above definitions, Stern (1998) decomposed the use Scarcity concept using econometric models to incorporate the private and social perspectives as well as looking at the size of the capital stocks in addition to their average and/or marginal value. According to Ozdemiroglu (1993), there are certain situations where changes in resource Scarcity cannot be identified by any indicator. These include when the resources are extracted with no formal markets (and hence no data), under open access administrations (when there is an unawareness of stock levels), under conditions when the public good is not adequately captured and when there are no future markets. 10 E. Agboraw and A. Jones 2.2 Theories on Economic Growth 2.2.1 Thomas Malthus Economic Growth Theory The debate on Scarcity and growth started with Thomas Malthus’ obser- vations on the ‘fecundity of human nature and the relative stinginess of Mother Nature’ (Malthus 1798 in Krautkraemer 2005). Thomas Malthus established a strict model of a dynamic growth process wherein each country congregated towards a stationary per capita income. He argued that technological change improvement in standard living population growth reduced the average person to the subsistence level again. In the long run, there would be no increase in the standard of liv- ing unless there were some limits on population growth. The concept of Scarcity as it appeared in the ideological struggle about the poor laws was very crude, so Malthus’ simplistic formulation served admirably as a political weapon. Malthus proved to the satisfac- tion of the ruling classes that they had no responsibility for the existing state of affairs (Perelman 1987).

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  A Beautiful Constraint

  How To Transform Your Limitations Into Advantages, and Why It's Everyone's Business

  • Adam Morgan, Mark Barden(Authors)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Wiley

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 9 Scarcity AND ABUNDANCE Why this capability is so important to all of us today

  THIS CHAPTER FOCUSES ON:

  1. Will the future be characterized more by Scarcity or abundance?
  2. Why will constraint-driven problem solving be an inevitable part of the future?
  3. Why is it so important to develop this capability more broadly and not just leave it in the hands of a chosen few?

  These are, to echo Dickens, the best of times and the worst of times.

  On the one hand, Scarcity is, for good reason, at the top of many political and business agendas. The pressures of an increasing population and developing economies on finite or diminishing resources have led some to dub this the Age of Scarcity.1 While the field of economics has long been said to be, at its heart, the science of Scarcity, the very real constraints the world needs to address give this a new emphasis. Indeed, they are largely constraints to which we are already too slow to respond (if they can be solved at all). As such, they threaten to become the definers of individual, national, and global progress—or regression—for the next twenty years.

  Abundance, on the other hand, is a post-Scarcity mindset that some suggest is now within reach. Abundance is about multiplying opportunity and ambition with new capabilities emerging today, such as the immense power of technology, and the global networks increasingly connecting people and ideas. You may have experienced this yourself, in ways big and small—faster transactions enabled by massive computing power, or a wealth of insights from the far-flung corners of your organization, like PHD's Source, for instance. The Age of Abundance insists on grounds for optimism, and the possibility of more for everyone. We are, they say, looking at this the wrong way round.

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  Society and Culture

  Scarcity and Solidarity

  • Bryan S Turner, Chris Rojek(Authors)
  • 2001(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications Ltd

    (Publisher)

  He defined Scarcity in the context of delineating ‘the economic element’ as arising because of the plurality of goals, which forces human beings to choose between alternative causes of action. We nevertheless find the minimalistic discussion of Scarcity in the economic sciences as outlined in the early Parsons somewhat unsatisfactory. There are a number of logical possibilities: First, Scarcity exists because nature is niggardly; it is not strictly speaking a sociological problem, because it exists in nature. But this is not Scarcity 95 convincing: ‘nature’ can only be scarce in relation to human wants. What is ‘natural’ cannot merely be taken for granted; Secondly, Scarcity exists because human desire is infinite, elastic and rapacious. Scarcity exists at the level of the individual in the theory of the hedonistic actor. This fact was recognized first in Parsons’s discussion of Durkheim’s theory of anomie, where he wrote that ‘since individual wants are in principle unlimited, it is an essential condition of both social stability and individual happiness that they should be regulated in terms of norms’ (Parsons, 1937: 382). Now these norms can only achieve this end not if they merely act externally but if ‘they enter directly into the constitution of the actors’ ends themselves’ (ibid.), that is if they become constitutive of the social nature of the actors. Parsons gives some time to the discussion of Marshall’s classification of wants in terms of: biological needs which humans share with animals (food and sleep); there are wants ‘adjusted to activities’ (Marshall), the satis-faction of which ‘affords strength’, that is, increases the efficiency of labour; and there are ‘artificial wants’ in relation to the ‘standard of comfort’. Parsons argued that Marshall did not dwell on the problems of wants because he sought to define economics as a science of activities.

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