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Managing Scarce Resources, Mistakes Committed in History

In: Business and Management

Submitted By Gerplex
Words 1186
Pages 5
Abstract
In this essay I will discuss the role of scarcity in our economy and how it affects the market, also the economic and political systems created to solve the problem of scarcity. I will also discuss the role of scarcity on the choices made on an economy and how it affects the choice of the different types of economic systems. I will discuss the difference of capitalism and corporatism, the perfect competition against imperfect competition and how those economic systems are related to scarcity. I will also examine the role of scarcity on the rationing of products and food and how it influences people decisions on what they do with their money. To conclude I will examine the best solutions possible for the problem of scarcity and the mistakes made by governments when handling the problem of scarcity and their use of economic theories by know economics. Overall I am going to prove scarcity’s hole in every action we take related, or not, to economics.

Scarcity is the fundamental economic problem of having seemingly unlimited human wants and needs in a world of limited resources. It states that society has insufficient productive resources to fulfill all human wants and needs. Alternatively, scarcity implies that not all of society's goals can be pursued at the same time; trade-offs are made of one good against others. It is a problem because the more one men wants the less the others can have because of the limited resources on the world.
Scarcity relates to the amount of goods and services available for the human race and how much the population wants of a certain product. Economic goods are the products that exist in a limited amount on the world, that are scarce, free goods are the ones that exist in abundance such as seawater and air.
Scarcity is not a new thing. Scarcity has always been with us and will be with us as long as we cannot get everything we want for free. Scarcity arises from the fact that resources (like land, labor and capital) are finite. Resources are the inputs used in the production of those things that we desire. Scarce resources are used to produce economic goods. Goods produced from scarce resources are also scarce. Thus, we constantly face decisions about how best to use them. Every economy has to decide: What will be produced?, How will it be produced? and For whom will it be produced?
Scarcity is also a main influence on the choices made by the people involved on economy, it determines how to sell certain products and the maximum quantity of that product you can sell, thus it limits the options that people have to sell a product that is scarce on nature.
Scarcity also influences the choice of a economic model, many were developed to try to solve this problem that as was proved, has no solution. An economic system is the way a society sets about allocating, deciding, which goods to produce and in which quantities. Different countries have different methods of tackling the economic problem. Scarcity is a main influence on the choice of the economic model that a country is going to use because it is the main focus that the economic model must try to solve: how to allocate scarce resources so that everybody has enough of it. There are three main types of economy: Market Economies: A market or capitalist economy is where resources are allocated by prices without government intervention. The USA and Hong Kong are new examples of market economies where firms decide the type and quantity of goods to be made in response to consumers. Command Economies: In a command-planned or socialist economy the government owns most resources and decides on the type and quantity of a good to be made. The USSR and North Korea are examples of command economies. Mixed Economies: In a mixed economy privately owned firms generally produce goods while the government organizes the manufacture of essential goods and services such as education and health care. The United Kingdom is an example of a mixed economy. The political model is also very influenced by scarcity. In this essay we will mainly analyze the difference of capitalism and corporatism, and how scarcity influences on the competition that exists inside them. Capitalism is the economic model that defends private property the most, it states that people should have the right to have their own business and properties, and that the government should have minimum influence on the economy, however the government should create social projects and intervene when the economy is failing, it supports self-interest. Corporatism was formulated as a system that emphasized the positive role of the state in guaranteeing social justice and suppressing the moral and social chaos of the population pursuing their own individual self-interests. And above all else, as a political economic philosophy corporatism was flexible. It could tolerate private enterprise within limits and justify major projects of the state, corporatism was many times confused as a mixture of socialism and capitalism, however, it is a separated political and economic model. We could define corporatism as a system of legal privilege that protects the structure of a corporation against capitalists. For example in the USA shareholders have little power over the major industries other than as someone a dividend must be paid to. The executives in the corporate hierarchy control the corporation, the capital-owners control nothing. This is how it has come to be that executives pay themselves immense salaries, bonuses and other income out of money the rightfully belongs to capitalists. Thus the competition is imperfect because only some people actually decide what happens to the hole economy. Another point in which scarcity is a big influence is in the rationing of products. Since most products are scarce, or limited, it is necessary to ration them so that they don't cease to exist. Thus the most scarce a product is the more it is rationed and supervised so that it doesn't ends before humanity loses its interest on it. Many tries were made on trying to manage those products, each approach working for some time but a permanent solution never being created or applied. After analyzing the three points, scarcity's influence over choice, rationing and choosing a economic system, it is possible to conclude that scarcity has a major influence on our societies economic decisions and how we manage certain products. It influences the amount we use and spend and how to ration them. Also many tries have been made to solve scarcity, however, I recognize that it is a unsolvable problem and that there will always be scarce resources, thus society should be less interested in how to solve scarcity but yes in how to manage those scarce resources.

Bibliography http://mrchiuclass.wikispaces.com/Economics+12 http://www.ehow.com/facts_5175741_scarcity-economics_.html http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=149160 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_system http://www.slideshare.net/opaprb/ch02-8429839 http://www.ssag.sk/SSAG%20study/EKO/scarce%20resources.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

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