Economic scarcity as defined by
Samuelson in
Economics, a "canonical textbook" of mainstream economic thought "refers to the basic fact of life that there exists only a finite amount of human and nonhuman resources which the best technical knowledge is capable of using to produce only limited maximum amounts of each economic good ... (outlined in the
production possibility curve (PPC))." There are two types of scarcity, relative and absolute scarcity. on global hunger and famines for almost two centuries."
Malthusianism is the idea that
population growth is potentially exponential while the growth of the food supply or other
resources is
linear, which eventually reduces living standards to the point of triggering a
population die off. It derives from the political and economic thought of Malthus, as laid out in his 1798 writings,
An Essay on the Principle of Population. Malthus believed there were two types of ever-present "checks" that are continuously at work, limiting population growth based on food supply at any given time: •
preventive checks, such as moral restraints or legislative action — for example the choice by a private citizen to engage in
abstinence and delay marriage until their finances become balanced, or restriction of
legal marriage or parenting rights for persons deemed "deficient" or "unfit" by the government. •
positive checks, such as disease, starvation, and war, which lead to high rates of premature death — resulting in what is termed a
Malthusian catastrophe. The adjacent diagram depicts the abstract point at which such an event would occur, in terms of the existing population and food supply: when the population reaches or exceeds the capacity of the shared supply, positive checks are forced to occur, restoring balance. (In reality, the situation would be significantly more nuanced due to complex regional and individual disparities around access to food, water, and other resources.) • The decision-maker wants both more income and more income-earning assets. • The decision-maker does not have the means to choose both. In this case, the means are not identified. • The decision-maker can "augment" (Robbins) both their income and income-earning assets. In this case, implicitly, this is a limited ability, or the project stakeholder would not be subject to scarcity. • The decision maker's desire for various constituent elements of income and income-earning assets are different. These are relative in nature and define economic concepts of scarcity, abundance, and sufficiency as follows:
Samuelson and relative scarcity Samuelson tied the notion of relative scarcity to that of
economic goods when he observed that if the conditions of scarcity did not exist and an "infinite amount of every good could be produced or human wants fully satisfied ... there would be no economic goods, i.e. goods that are relatively scarce..." The notion of scarcity is that there is never enough (of something) to satisfy all conceivable human wants, even at advanced states of
human technology. Scarcity involves making a sacrifice—
giving something up, or making a
trade-off—in order to obtain more of the scarce resource that is wanted. The condition of scarcity in the real world necessitates
competition for scarce resources, and competition occurs "when people strive to meet the criteria that are being used to determine who gets what". In cases of
monopoly or
monopsony an
artificial scarcity can be created. Scarcity can also occur through stockpiling, either as an attempt to
corner the market or for other reasons. Temporary scarcity can be caused by (and cause)
panic buying. ==Scarce goods==