> Food has always been scarce for some and plentiful for others. Same as land. Same as capital. And there have always been some people who have enough or more than they need who have a drive to amass even more, but that does not mean they have a shortage of it. And inversely if they don't try to horde more of a particular resource or asset that doesn't mean that asset is post-scarce for society as a whole.
Sure, so you can say that everything is scarce - because for any given thing there will surely be one person for whom that thing is scarce. But that has no explanatory power. If we want to talk about what's scarce for society as a whole, looking at what most elites and most everyday people focus most of their attention on takes sense.
> Less than 20 years ago we had the credit markets almost cease functioning, major banks collapsed almost taking the banking sector with them, hundreds of thousands of home owners being unable to service their loans and were foreclosed. In my layman's understanding a major cause of this was undervaluing the cost of loans. Things have changed since then of course, but these industries and environments are very cyclical.
I completely agree with this, but it's worse (or better) than cyclical - the 2008 financial crisis was a small bump in the road that we've kept travelling down. Mortgages, subprime mortgages, subprime debt, indebtedness... take any measure you like, there's now more of it than in 2008. There's just so much capital sloshing around the system looking for anywhere to go.
Sure, so you can say that everything is scarce - because for any given thing there will surely be one person for whom that thing is scarce. But that has no explanatory power. If we want to talk about what's scarce for society as a whole, looking at what most elites and most everyday people focus most of their attention on takes sense.
> Less than 20 years ago we had the credit markets almost cease functioning, major banks collapsed almost taking the banking sector with them, hundreds of thousands of home owners being unable to service their loans and were foreclosed. In my layman's understanding a major cause of this was undervaluing the cost of loans. Things have changed since then of course, but these industries and environments are very cyclical.
I completely agree with this, but it's worse (or better) than cyclical - the 2008 financial crisis was a small bump in the road that we've kept travelling down. Mortgages, subprime mortgages, subprime debt, indebtedness... take any measure you like, there's now more of it than in 2008. There's just so much capital sloshing around the system looking for anywhere to go.