Scarcity

[Justin Schwartz]

Here I am agreeing with Charles again, whaddayknow. One of us should have 
our head examined. Maybe both of us. When I said that scarcity was 
ineliminable, I did not say that it was necessarily infinite. I agree that 
suffering due to deprivation of basic needs is wholly eliminable--in a 
rational society, no one need go hungry, (involuntarily) naked, sleepless, 
be homeless, or be condemned to dull round of meaningless repetitive 
activity. We are rich enough for that. My point about scarcity is just that 
we will never be rich enough not to care about about avoiding waste of time 
and material resources. I agree with Charles that the attention we devote to 
that need not be the dominant fact in our lives. But "not dominanent" does 
not mean "not important."

Incidentally, although it is a side issue here and now, at least with 
respect to the task before us, it will not be a side issue under socialism 
that deprivation of basic needs is not the only source of serious suffering. 
There will be unrequited love, frustrated life projects, unobtained goals, 
regrets for evils done or good deeds undone, death of friends, illness 
curable and otherwise, and no doubt, but perhaps to a lesser extent or a 
different one, envy and resentment of those more fortunate.

These things cannot be eliminated. Perhaps they will be intensified as they 
become even more significant sources of unhappiness than they are now, once 
the struggle for basic needs is eliminated. Nozick has a tongue in cheek 
argument--I _think_ it is tongue in cheek--that capitalism is more fair in 
its unfairness to the less lucky or talented, because they can blame their 
misfortunes on someone or something else, whereas under a socialist society, 
it would be hard to avoid the conclusion that one's failures were actually 
due to one's own inadequacies, a hard thing to face, worse in some ways than 
the failures themselves. This hasn't to do with scarcity, however.

--jks


>  I agree with Yoshie's interrogation of the concept of infinite scarcity. 
>There will be limited scarcity in communism. In the Econ and Philosophic 
>Manuscripts of 1844 Karl Marx says something like humans are inherently 
>suffering beings in that there is always something more than that they have 
>that they may  want. But this does not mean that these unfulfilled wants 
>and the scarcity and suffering that this implies must be predominant in the 
>life, sense and sensibility of individuals or anybody.  First, the 
>provisions for natural historic physiological needs such as eating, 
>sleeping, breathing, exercise, productive activity, need not be scarce or 
>suffered by anyone. Beyond this, a myriad of other historically developed 
>wants may be met, such that people may feel happy. On the other hand, there 
>will always be contradictions and struggle and challenges in existence, 
>i.e. new forms of suffering and unfulfilled want even as we abolish old 
>forms,  and that's life ,as much as overcomi!
>ng and limiting scarcity and suffering.
>
>Also, Marx specifically claims that humans are only free or fully capable 
>in developing a rich pallet of wants  in the absence of lack of  or without 
>scarcity with respect to use-values to meet basic physiological needs.
>
>
>Charles
>
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