Scarcity is Absurd

Is scarcity a myth?

Let's take a look at the following quote:

"The definition of economics in terms of scarcity suggests that resources are in
finite supply while wants and needs are infinite. "

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics under "Criticisms of welfare and scarcity definitions of economics")

Are wants and needs infinite? Also, should wants be considered? Let's brake down some definitions:

• needs: resources required to our survival
• wants: resources not required to our survival, but preferred

When I look at the above, what comes to my mind is the relationship between scarcity and distribution. If we re-classify scarcity into two kinds of scarcity ("need scarcity" and "want scarcity"), then we can properly analize the relationship between scarcity and distribution in a social-economic context.

Now, let's analize the relationship between scarcity and distribution. Let's say there are $100,000 dollars worth of resources available to two people. Let's say that $30,000 is required to satisfy "need scarcity" for both.

Scenario 1: $50,000 for each
In this scenario, there is abundance. Both people have their needs satisfied and have an extra $20,000.

Scenario 2: One person has $80,000 and the other has $20,000
Now, the person with $80,000 has a lot of abundance and have their needs satisfied. However, the person with $20,000 does not have enough resources to satisfy their needs and, therefore, experience "need scarcity".

From this little experiment, I conclude that scarcity is relative to distribution.

If you factor in "want scarcity" at $50,000 each, then here's what you have:

Scenario 1: $50,000 for each
Nobody has enough. Scarcity for everyone!

Scenario 2: One person has $80,000 and the other has $20,000
One has just enough, but the other is in REALLY bad shape! Scarcity once again.

As you can see, if you consider both kinds of scarcity together, you will notice that scarcity is a lot more present when "wants" are considered. The importance of wants, therefore, must be taken into account and must be properly valued. What is our priority? Satisfying everyone's needs or satisfying some people's wants?

In conclusion, one must consider the distribution of resources before determining whether there is truly a scarcity of resources or not. While wants may be infinite, needs are not. This is one of the factors that must be considered when analizing economic problems. Also, while wants may be infinite, there's a limit to what people can actually use, so an excess of resources can result in stagnant resources that are not actually being used by those who own them. Given the fact that 3% of the world population owns over 80% of the world's resources, it turns out that the fundamental economic problem is not a problem of scarcity, but a problem of distribution. Even if you factor in "Want scarcity" you will notice that the richest have a whole lot more then they are actually ABLE to use and end up leaving large sums of resources stagnant in bank accounts while over 50% of the world population suffers. Is this what we call scarcity? Completely absurd.

Privatization is Absurd

One of the most absurd concepts of capitalism is privatization. Essentially, privatization is the center of capitalism, the premise that resources must be owned by someone and that you must pay in order to own it. Whoever owns a resource, controls it. Everything in capitalism is considered a "resource". Trees are not living beings. They are "resources". Cows are not living beings. They are "resources". Humans are not living beings. They are "resources". That's why companies have departments called "Human Resources", a department specialized in controlling humans. Another department that specializes in controlling humans is the "Marketing" department. The tools that the marketing department use to control humans are called "advertisement". When a company lays off workers, that is called "downsizing". It doesn't matter that they are human beings and that they may suffer from the consequences of downsizing, because, after all, they are just resources.

One of the most bizarre kinds of privatization is the privatization of the commons. The "commons" are, basically, natural resources that are essential for our survival. Those include land and animals, but specially, water and air. While land and animals have been privatized for a long time, historically, water and air are very modern. The problem with privatizing water and air is that those resources are absolutely essential. Imagine if you had to pay every time you have to take a sip, or every time you have to breathe. What happens when you don't have money? You can't drink or breathe? Food has already been a huge issue in the history of mankind. Privatizing water and air would, quite obviously, have a tremendous negative effect on the poor. Reminds me of a movie. "Total Recall", starring the governor of California. Talk about absurd.....!

From all the horror stories about privatization, one stands out in my mind as the most absurd one- the privatization of rainfall in Bolivia. Yes, you heard it right. In the year 2000, the government of Bolivia auctioned the water supply of the country. The Bechtel Corporation bought it, with several agreements, condoned by the World Bank and the IMF. One of such agreements was the increase of the rates to $20 a month, or 25% of the minimum wage in the country. Another one was the criminalization of rain water collection. The result was obvious. Nobody could buy water, so instead of dying of thirst, everyone protested. In the end, everyone fought, a few died, and the citizens conquered.

Sadly, no matter how absurd privatization is, it is rampant in our planet. This is a very important time in our history. We must talk about those issues. If we let corporations control the planet, what will happen to us and our children? Will our children have to pay for all water like the people from Bolivia? Will our children have to pay to breathe, like the people in the movie "Total Recall"? Don't settle for such absurdity. Talk about it. The more people talk about it, the more aware people will be and the greater will be our chances of actually not destroying our own species.

Read more:
Corporations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Corporation
Privatization in Bolivia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_protests_of_2000
Tragedy of the Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
Total Recall: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Total_Recall

The Magical Moment

Let's face it. Life is absurd. People are too. There's nothing wrong with that. Absurdity is not a negative quality. Many of you probably see me as an old fart who has lost hope in the world. That is not quite true. Absurdity is not a negative quality, contrary to what a lot of people believe. Life is beautiful. If life wasn't absurd, life wouldn't be beautiful. Here's why....

Isn't it absurd the fact that we exist? What is the probability that I, or you, exist the exact same way we are today, considering 13 billion years of history. Imagine the number of events that must have occur ed, one after the other, in order to simply allow our existence? You must also include the probability that you were the chosen spermatozoid. What is the actual probability of our existence, considering every single event in the history of the universe? 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001?

Possibly..... Still, we exist. Not only that, but we have met! Considering all the different turns our lives could have taken, considering all the people in the planet (over 7 billion), our lives have met. We were born in different days. We were born in different places. We were born in different families. We lived completely different lives, all while having absolutely no idea of the other's existence. And, suddenly, after all that, something magical happens. We meet. And suddenly, as if we pure magic..... we exist. That's the magical moment. Is the moment at which two completely different people with two completely different lives meet. From there, anything can happen. We could just look at each other and walk away. We may say hello and walk away. One of us may ask for direction. We may talk. We may become friends. We may marry and have kids. Who knows? Consider all the possibilities. That's the magic. All that time before we met, we did not exist to each other. And the probability that we would ever meet, or that we would even exist was extremely slim! And yet we meet. And yet life take us somewhere from here and once again, there are infinite possibilities. Life is magical.


The probability for life is so slim that it makes it so much more precious. In fact, there's probably no greater absurdity in the universe then the present moment, because if you consider all the possibilities from the time the universe was born till today, the probability that we would exist today and be communicating with me at this moment is ridiculously small. It's absurd that you are reading this right now. That's not bad at all, because, after all, this is the magical moment.

Consumerism is Absurd

The wealth of the three most well-to-do individuals now exceeds the combined GDP of the 48 least developed countries. About 20 percent of the world's people live in the highest-income countries and account for 86 percent of total private consumption expenditures while the poorest 20 percent account for only 1.3 percent. That's quite absurd, isn't? What makes us so “rich” anyways? Oddly enough, for most of us, the answer is debt.

You are probably saying to yourself I'm a madman. Well, not quite. Think about it. How did you get your house? Did you buy it with cash? How many credit cards do you have? Do you actually have that “money” you spend? The truth is that the consumer debt in the US alone by the end of last year had already reached 9 trillion dollars! That's 12 zeros behind that 9! And that doesn't count the completely preposterous war on terror!

Consumerism is absurd. Over 50% of the world lives in poor misery, about 15% are not struggling to survive and the wealth of the 3 richest individuals now exceeds the combined GDP of the 48 least developed countries. To concentrate wealth to such an extent is absurd and completely counterproductive! Those richest people will never use their wealth completely, and when they do use some of it, they will buy ridiculously priced unnecessary crap for themselves! The UNDP calculates that an annual 4 percent levy on the world's 225 richest people would suffice to provide the following essentials for everyone in developing countries: adequate food, safe water and sanitation, basic education, basic health care and reproductive health care. Instead, the world keep starving and the rich keep wasting- and they produce quite a bit of waste for that matter. What's the point of all that? Why do 50% starve when there's more then enough food to feed everyone on the planet? Because CD players, TVs, LCD screens, Plasma TVs, Grande Venti Soy Verde Latte with extra whip cream and a shot of caramel, Blackberries and Laptops are more important then the well being of mankind? Absurd. Absolutely preposterous.

Having said all that, here are all the reasons why consumerism is ridiculous and will end up destroying our species, if we are not careful enough:
- too many people have too little and too few people have too much
- the people who don't have too much nor too little get into too much debt in order to get a bit of - what the people who have too much has (which puts the whole world's economy at risk)
- people often care more about their belongings then caring about other people some people even kill to consume
- consuming so much is destroying the environment
- consuming so much is creating too much waste - consuming so much has unhealthy psychological implications

Justice is Absurd

Let's think about "justice" for a second. A person kills another human being. Then that person is "prosecuted" for doing that. Ok, it's nice that we seek revenge. Errrr.... yeah. But when you think of it, what is the point? Prosecuting people won't bring back the person who died, will it? And while we can potentially remove those people from society, even permanently, we often just let them go on "parole", at which point they simply go back to society and kill more people. Makes sense, doesn't it? No.

Regardless of murders and other crazy senseless crimes, there are crimes that are never "solved" or prosecuted, for completely absurd reasons. For instance, a guy named OJ Simpson, who killed his pregnant wife. He simply moved to a different place, and he is still free. Or people like Paris Hilton, who drove drunk several times and repeatedly ignored orders to stop driving under the influence, and almost got away with 2 days in prison while any poor person on her situation would have had much worse.

Justice is a commodity. Sadly enough. If you have enough money you can buy justice. You can hire several lawyers to help you steer the case on your behalf. You can even hire lobbyists to change the law so that you can get away with your crimes.

Sadly, and absurdly enough, that rule is not limited to corporeal persons. Under the law, corporations, which are essentially incorporeal business organizations, are considered "persons" and have all of the rights of all "persons". However, corporations don't have all the obligations that we, humans, have. They cannot be incarcerated. So they keep committing crimes and getting away with it because they have money- and money IS POWER.

Despite the fact that corporations are the most criminal entities on the planet, they are strictly protected by the government and by the law in several ways. They rule the world THEIR way.

There's no "justice". Justice is a concept. A concept that can be sold by governments for the profit of their leaders. A concept that can be used to control entire populations, so that the elite can stay in power and rule over the "democracy". A concept that can be used to fear monger people, so that they can keep quiet and never question the ways of the elite. And, unfortunately, justice is only ONE of the concepts the elite use to control the population.

"Justice" is an absurd concept. Unless, of course, it doesn't involve oil. Right? No.


The following is a list of the top 10 corporate lawsuits:

1) F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd.
Type of Crime: AntitrustCriminal
Fine: $500 million

2) Daiwa Bank Ltd.
Type of Crime: Financial
Criminal Fine: $340

3) BASF Aktiengesellschaft
Type of Crime: Antitrust
Criminal Fine: $225 million

4) SGL Carbon Aktiengesellschaft (SGL AG)
Type of Crime: Antitrust
Criminal Fine: $135 million

5) Exxon Corporation and Exxon Shipping
Type of Crime: Environmental
Criminal Fine: $125 million

6) UCAR International, Inc.
Type of Crime: Antitrust
Criminal Fine: $110 million

7) Archer Daniels Midland
Type of Crime: Antitrust
Criminal Fine: $100 million

8)(tie) Banker's Trust
Type of Crime: Financial
Criminal Fine: $60 million

8)(tie) Sears Bankruptcy Recovery Management Services
Type of Crime: Fraud
Criminal Fine: $60 million

10) Haarman & Reimer Corp.
Type of Crime: Antitrust
Criminal fine: $50 million

Source: http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/top100.html

War is Absurd

When Teddy Bears Destroy One Another....

It all started in a nice warm morning, in the valley of happiness, where cute little fluffy things lived in harmony, sharing the earth in a sustainable way. Mr Fluffly was going about minding his own business when out of nowhere Mr Mothball came and blew him up in pieces. Why? Because Mr Mothball was not satisfied with the amount of toys he possessed, so he decided to de-fluff Mr Fluffly to get all his toys. So all teddy bears started doing the same thing- killing all teddy bears.

However, they quickly noticed that this wasn't accomplishing much. So they decided to organize themselves in groups based on their similarities. Some of them organized themselves based on their cute little colours. Others, organized themselves based on their belief of the Almighty Fluffo vs the Almighty Fiffy. And the most dangerous ones formed absurd incorporeal entities which they called “corporations” and pretended that they did something good for their fellow fluffy beings.

Humans, are pretty much the same. They “need” something (or rather “WANT”) so they kill each other to get that something and justify it by the means of appearance, beliefs and, weirdly enough, business. Hence the human condition - a whole bunch of people fighting over resources and pretending that they are actually fighting over other stuff. Why are they not assertive about their needs (or rather, more often then not “WANTS”)? It's preposterous! It's useless to create excuses. They simply don't solve any problems.

So here we are, in 2007, still fighting over the colour of our skins, our beliefs in deities and our urge to possess useless garbage while half of the world doesn't even have something to eat. Not only that, but we destroy our planet in the process, because our toys are produced in utterly unsustainable ways with complete disregard to the well being of planet earth, our HOME, just for the sake of convenience!

War is useless. It produces nothing but destruction and garbage. Why can't our species learn to live in harmony, like those fluffy teddy bears were before Mr Mothball started the rampaging killings? Why can't we simply understand and care about one another, how hard is that? The war continues in the land beyond the rainbow, where fluff is flying everywhere, and so does here, where blood is being shed for the sake of appearance, religion and oil.........

Absolutely preposterous.

PS: The following site is a great illustration of how absurd war is:
http://www.endofworld.net/

The Universe is Absurd

The universe is completely and utterly absurd. It all supposedly started with a single point, called a “singularity”. This point contained the whole universe. This point is a logical impossibility. Literally, everything fails to compute. Now, hold on. Here's where I get REALLY uncomfortable. I'm an accountant, so when it fails to compute I just go nutso! AAHH!! Whatever happened to my calculator!? Well, I guess a black hole suck it right in!

Regardless, the singularity is basically “nothing”, but it is also something, because everything came out of this nothing. Needless to say, for some absurd completely unreasonable incomprehensible reason, this shit decided to explode and create (oh, pardon me skeptics... “produce”) most of the present universe within seconds! Holy Macaroni (I'm part Italian)! That's a lot of shit coming out of a hole in a second!! As my wife usually says, in the beginning there was a big “fluff”. But I usually call it “fart” (yeah, I'm a man, she's a women, everything is delicate for women, “fluff” is certainly more delicate then “fart”, regardless, I'm starting to ramble... I'm writing this as she speaks on the background, by the way...)

Ok. So after all the mess the singularity made, we are now in a weird universe where everything is attracted and repelled by weird forces and those forces create stuff, right? But whatever happened to the “nothing” surrounding the singularity (which was basically “nothing” as well)? The question is... is there something outside of the universe? Maybe “nothing”, but not “nothing” as we know it? The universe is expanding towards “nothingness”? So how big does that make the universe, giagaenourmous, and then more gigaenourmous when it expands (by the way, who know maybe the universe is not expanding)?

As if all that crazy absurd preposterous incomprehensible stuff wasn't enough, the universe happened to evolve and create (oh, pardon me skeptics... “produce”) more and more complex substances until it produce a sentient “living being” with a superior telencephalon (which, by the way, is often used to destroy others of the same species, don't ask me why it is a long story, completely absurd) which is constantly questioning the validity of its own questioning. Oh, and by the way, this sentient “living being” with a superior telencephalon is what we call a “human” and the human condition is by far the most fascinating and absurd thing in the whole freaking universe (oh! I'm so arrogant! It's like there are no others like us or better then us in the whole freaking GIGAENOURMOUS universe!).

Well, that was my first rant. Come back for more later!

This is Yonescoh, the One and Only, God of the Absurd, reporting from planet Earth, somewhere in the vast oceans of truthfullness...