Artificial Scarcity

[Jason]

How does "artificial scarcity" relate to Communism and opposing philosophies?

[Questionable]

What do you mean exactly?

Communism states that capitalism creates artificial scarcity by its very nature because of exchange-value. Without a transaction between money and the commodity, there is no trade. Thus food rots on grocery store shelves while people in the streets starve because they don't have any money.

Artificial scarcity isn't a new concept. The contradiction between exchange-value and use-value was discussed in Marx's works, although I'm not aware that he called it "artificial scarcity" unless I forgot.

I'm not sure what other political philosophies have to say about it. Most Libertarians I talk to seem to believe that the government causes the problem by allowing monopolies to form who can jack up prices as high as they want. Free competition is supposed to solve this problem by all the competitors lowering their prices to undercut each other (Although this tells us nothing about what happens once someone wins this competition). This doesn't answer the question as to why the problem occurs in the first place, really.

[PigmerikanMao]

The capitalist argument is that artificial scarcity creates an incentive to work. So, if you're hungry, then you'll get a job to buy some food. This is a pretty elementary approach to economics, however, and fails to take into considerations like fluctuations in demand and the availability of jobs which may dry up because of the purported artificial scarcity designed to make people work. It's a little ironic actually.

I'm reminded of, "If you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day- if you teach a man to fish, then you've ruined a wonderful business opportunity." For some reason.

[Baseball]

the capitalist argument is that there is nothing artificial about scarcity. it will always exist because there is not an inexhaustible supply of labor, materials, and yes, time. This is true, and the communist society will have to wrestle with such problems as well.

[Jason]

the capitalist argument is that there is nothing artificial about scarcity. it will always exist because there is not an inexhaustible supply of labor, materials, and yes, time. This is true, and the communist society will have to wrestle with such problems as well.

Interesting. Any answers?

[Questionable]

Interesting. Any answers?

Baseball doesn't seem to understand the concept of artificialscarcity, which is different from natural scarcity he's referring to and is very real.

Pro-capitalists like to say that a market mechanism is the most efficient way of handling natural scarcity, but it's actually a very ineffective system. Just look at the situation in Africa where fields of fertile land are held onto by their international owners so that they can be sold when prices are higher, despite the surrounding regions being wracked by famine.

Yes, communism will have to find a way to counter natural scarcity, but as for artificial scarcity, the mechanisms that make it possible will simply become nonexistent.