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Not original poster, but Economics is about making decisions when your decisions have trade-offs because you have limited resources. Everything has a price, bu

Not original poster, but Economics is about making decisions when your decisions have trade-offs because you have limited resources. Everything has a price, but the prices aren't always measured in a nice money-based price tag for your convenience, they're ultimately measured by the next-best alternatives. Decisions and policies don't just have consequences, they have second-order effects and third-order effects and you need to chase those down too, because excluding anything makes you understand the costs wrong (e.g. add highway lanes to relieve congestion -> now there is more traffic, because of "induced demand", not sure that was a good idea -> but why was there even induced demand? where are those trips coming from and what was the cost of the previous configuration? is this a housing-policy thing now??). You also learn to worry a lot about how decisions are actually made by self-interested decision-makers, rather than by abstractions-seeking-the-greater-good, and you examine what the decision-makers' incentives are.... Whereas a work like Das Kapital tells you very little about how to think this way. It's not intended to; it's more about the relative influence of various actors within a political-economic system, while raising tough questions about the meaning of private property.

imtringued 4y ago
>Economics is about making decisions when your decisions have trade-offs because you have limited resources. But land isn't limited in the sense that there isn't enough of it for everyone, there is a fixed quantity of land on this planet but more than enough for everyone. Somehow some people got this absurd theory in their head that once there is abundance there is no need for economic allocation mechanisms. This completely ignores that even if there is enough land for everyone, a single person may have more land fenced off than he needs for himself, meaning that someone else ends up with less land than he needs for himself. Despite abundance of land you still need to allocate it properly and you still need economics to do that but economists shrug and do nothing. Artificial scarcity is the new normal. Since all producable goods tend toward market saturation you will have this problem in more and more sectors in the economy as your country gets wealthier. In fact the problem isn't poverty, the wealthier we gets the worse things get. Why is that the case? Why does the economy fail to allow abundance to happen? Why did economists put on a brain cage that tells them that scarcity is absolute and that if something isn't scarce it should be made scarce? Reality is quite boring. Assume that there is a floor on capital yields meaning the income share in labor can never reach 100%. Since economic activity gets siphoned off into the pockets of the owners of capital aka the rich get richer and they don't spend their wealth back into the economy, the rest of the economy must shrink. A game of musical chairs starts. There must be a loser and people will do absolutely everything to not end up as the loser. To prevent the non rich economy from shrinking and shriveling into nothing, we must keep up this farce of endless economic growth so that living standards don't get worse.
- ClumsyPilot 4y ago
  we create scarsity of purpose with NFTs
- XorNot 4y ago
  > But land isn't limited in the sense that there isn't enough of it for everyone, there is a fixed quantity of land on this planet but You have assigned an economic value system and denied doing it - that someone can have "enough" land and someone else does not have "enough". By who's pricing model and oops - guess we're back to plain old economics.
- unmole 4y ago
  > But land isn't limited in the sense that there isn't enough of it for everyone, 1. How much land is enough for someone? 2. Is land fungible? > economists shrug and do nothing What exactly do you want economists to do here? Redistribute land? > if something isn't scarce it should be made scarce? Which economist is advocating for this?

imtringued 4y ago

>Economics is about making decisions when your decisions have trade-offs because you have limited resources. But land isn't limited in the sense that there isn't enough of it for everyone, there is a fixed quantity of land on this planet but more than enough for everyone. Somehow some people got this absurd theory in their head that once there is abundance there is no need for economic allocation mechanisms. This completely ignores that even if there is enough land for everyone, a single person may have more land fenced off than he needs for himself, meaning that someone else ends up with less land than he needs for himself. Despite abundance of land you still need to allocate it properly and you still need economics to do that but economists shrug and do nothing. Artificial scarcity is the new normal. Since all producable goods tend toward market saturation you will have this problem in more and more sectors in the economy as your country gets wealthier. In fact the problem isn't poverty, the wealthier we gets the worse things get. Why is that the case? Why does the economy fail to allow abundance to happen? Why did economists put on a brain cage that tells them that scarcity is absolute and that if something isn't scarce it should be made scarce? Reality is quite boring. Assume that there is a floor on capital yields meaning the income share in labor can never reach 100%. Since economic activity gets siphoned off into the pockets of the owners of capital aka the rich get richer and they don't spend their wealth back into the economy, the rest of the economy must shrink. A game of musical chairs starts. There must be a loser and people will do absolutely everything to not end up as the loser. To prevent the non rich economy from shrinking and shriveling into nothing, we must keep up this farce of endless economic growth so that living standards don't get worse.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
we create scarsity of purpose with NFTs
XorNot 4y ago
> But land isn't limited in the sense that there isn't enough of it for everyone, there is a fixed quantity of land on this planet but You have assigned an economic value system and denied doing it - that someone can have "enough" land and someone else does not have "enough". By who's pricing model and oops - guess we're back to plain old economics.
unmole 4y ago
> But land isn't limited in the sense that there isn't enough of it for everyone, 1. How much land is enough for someone? 2. Is land fungible? > economists shrug and do nothing What exactly do you want economists to do here? Redistribute land? > if something isn't scarce it should be made scarce? Which economist is advocating for this?