4 ms·

Is there any situation that you would consider a "shortage"?

• humanrebar 9y ago
  There are certainly short and medium term shortages as prices adjust to supply and demand realities. Salaries don't tend to swing wildly. There are also situations where the supply of employees is kept artificially low (security clearance, taxi medallions, etc.).
• Bartweiss 9y ago
  The above claim that there aren't food shortages seems simply false for any normal definition. Obviously common use just means "an insufficient amount under these circumstances", but if we wanted to be very strict we could say "a situation where not all the players can simultaneously satisfy their demand at any price". A shortage is a situation where supply is inelastic and below demand. Everyone hiring programmers could fill their roster simultaneously if they could pay enough - if not today then certainly soon. In a lot of famines, there are X people sharing food for <X people - price is no longer a reflection of desire, because no one voluntarily leaves the auction. I do think it's important to distinguish insufficient demand from a simple lack of supply, but the latter definitely exists.
• stale2002 9y ago
  Opposite. My post wasn't clear. My definition of shortage is "prices are to high". And I think that it is always a good thing to drive prices down. Obviously bread costing a thousand dollars is bad. That's why I used it as an example. Similarly there is nothing wrong with trying to solve the dev shortage (meaning prices are too high), by importing more devs.