Scarcity is interesting. It's the root problem that government is trying to manage. With perfect knowledge, a central authority could have goods or services br

Scarcity is interesting. It's the root problem that government is trying to manage. With perfect knowledge, a central authority could have goods or services brought to those most in need. This is very alluring to politicians as they naturally make themselves the central authority, and people have a natural bias to believe they are right and will make the right decisions. Eventually you confront the problem of more people being in need than there are resources to satisfy. You can solve this by lottery or some qualification system or money. But someone somewhere will be left in the cold. This may be the poor or some schmuck who's birthday was in February. Sadly most economies don't take the "most in need" concept a a founding principle. It's about trade, where each participant feels they are in a better situation than before the trade. Money is used as an abstraction representing utility/usefulness of an object or work done. This is fine until you discover the person who has no money and apparently does not provide enough utility to get money (or enough money to live). This is where charity can take action. Basically a trade happens where one's position is worse after the trade and the other's is improved. Some believe this charity should be a private affair, some believe it should be compulsory.