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Is this pedantic or pragmatic? A commodity, needed/wanted by all people, used to be available at a price point X, is now unaffordable for a large percentage of
by vaidhy 3y ago
Is this pedantic or pragmatic? A commodity, needed/wanted by all people, used to be available at a price point X, is now unaffordable for a large percentage of its erstwhile consumers is a shortage.
If that commodity satisfies a basic need, its unavilability is just even more fucked up.
- rhelz 3y agoSurely, there are many different senses for the word "shortage", so, even if you are pragmatic, its a good idea to be pedantic as to which one you are using. When I claim a free market has no shortages, I'm using "shortage" in the sense that demand does not exceed supply. "Demand" and "Supply" are also very carefully defined by economists. It's a theorem that under these definitions, in the condition of a free market, there are no shortages. The market for programmers is certainly not a completely free market, but its close enough that if somebody says they can't find any programmers, it means they are not willing or able to pay market wages for programmers.