Re: [ox-en] Free market and the Internet
- From: Stefan Meretz <stefan.meretz hbv.org>
- Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003 09:00:50 +0100
On Sunday 02 February 2003 00:54, Graham Seaman wrote:
On Sun, 2 Feb 2003 oekonux phk.at wrote:
Our ability to produce apples is limited.
Only in a very general sense.
While scarcity may become less and less of a problem it won't cease
to exist. And the trend could reverse as well (oil/water etc.)
This is thought from our given way to produce our lives. It is not a
property of the "things", they are not scarce, they are limited. Scarcity
is societally produced.
And there are other areas of scarcity besides food and information:
medical attendance, front row places at a soccer match, villas in
south france, stuff like that.
Again: not a property of the things. You may mean limitations.
Those might not be as important but they are and will be the source
of rivalry and therefore things that need to be handled by society
and its economic system.
Other things that will very likely stay scarce:
attention, reputation, respect etc.
Limited, not scarce.
Another example of the difference between scarceness and being
rivalrous. I'm not sure if the meaning of the word 'rivalry' is clear
to German speakers - does anyone know the German word?
Rivalitaet? And this includes the meaning of "competition". For
competition we have two different words in german: Wettbewerb (say in
sports) and Konkurrenz (say in economy). Rivalry includes all this, IMHO.
Although Konkurrenz sounds bad, it originally means "running parallel"
(concurrent).
In german Wettbewerb sounds more friendly. This leads to the demand to
abolish Konkurrenz, because Konkurrenz seem only to be a feature of
capitalism and the opposite of cooperation. Some don't think so
(including me). There are two papers discussing the relationship between
cooperation and Konkurrenz by Benni and me - unfortunately in german:-(
http://www.opentheory.org/kooperenz/text.phtml
http://www.opentheory.org/ko-kurrenz/text.phtml
Ciao,
Stefan
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