Scarcity and the human ability to consume

[Edric O]

I've been thinking about the concept of scarcity - that axiom of economics which states that human wants are infinite while our ability to produce things is finite at any given time. Since our wants are infinite, the theory goes, we will never have enough. We will always seek to produce, buy and consume more and more stuff.

But wait: What about the time we need to enjoy all of that infinite stuff? We do not have infinite time. There are only 24 hours in a day, and there are only so many days in our lives. The only thing that we cannot produce more of is time. And our ability to use things - our ability to consume and enjoy our consumption - is strictly defined by our free time.

Let's say you buy a cool new suit or a gorgeous evening dress. Just having it sit in your closet does not give you any enjoyment. You can only enjoy it while you wear it, and there are limited periods of time when you can do that. Likewise, the delicious food in your fridge doesn't add to your happiness until you eat it. Your brand new car is useless unless you have the time and the opportunity to drive it. In brief, people don't want to own things, they want to use things. The only reason you might want to own something is because you want to have the ability to use it at any time. And your ability to use things is limited: There are only 24 hours in a day. If you want to spend more time driving your brand new car, you have to give up doing something else. Thus, your ability to consume is limited. You may own the entire planet, but you can only use a limited number of things in your day (or your lifetime, if you want to think long-term).

What we call "consumption" in modern capitalist society involves buying more and more things but using them less and less. We don't really consume; we own. And this creates tremendous waste, because we rarely use most of the things we own.

The reason why scarcity exists, the reason why we say that our wants are "infinite", is because we define our wants in terms of the things we want to own rather than the things we want to use and the time we want to spend using them.

Suppose you wanted to establish an economic system with no property rights, where anyone could use any object at any time. Conventional wisdom might make you believe that such a system would require an enourmous common pool of objects and that it would be wasteful. Not true. For any object X, you will never have more copies of that object than there are people in your society. One person cannot drive two cars at once. Thus, the maximum number of cars that can be used at any one time is equal to the number of licensed drivers in your country or society. If you created a common pool of cars, and allowed anyone to use any of those cars any time they wanted, you would never need more cars than there are people. Does that sound like a lot of cars anyway? Well, consider the fact that right now there are more cars than licensed drivers in the United States. Therefore, if we allowed anyone to use any car any time they wanted, the United States would actually need less cars. That should give you an idea of how wasteful private property really is.

By the way, such common pooling of resources would also eliminate theft. Why steal a car when you know you always have access to one anyway? And how could you keep a stolen car if you cannot declare it to be your private property?

Of course, if you wanted to maximize efficiency, you would quickly realize that you don't actually need a car for each licensed driver. Actually, the number of cars you need is equal to the maximum number of drivers that are ever on the street at the same time (which may or may not be significantly less than the total number of licensed drivers).

You would also quickly realize that it is inefficient to have large numbers of people doing the same thing at the same time. Why? Because that means they are all using the same kinds of objects at the same time, which increases the total need for those objects. Let's use cars again as an example. Suppose you have a town with 1000 licensed drivers. If they all go to work at the same time, your town needs 1000 cars (they will all be in use at rush hour). But if half of those people go to work in the morning and the other half go to work in the afternoon, then your town needs only 500 cars (because there are never more than 500 people driving to and from work at any given time). So you can cut your need for cars in half just by shifting people's schedules. If you shift schedules a little more, you could reduce your need for cars even further. There are limits to how far you can go with this, of course, but you would be able to save significant amounts of resources and energy by diversifying people's daily activities. The less people do the same thing at the same time, the better.

This has very interesting implications for communism (which would be based on a kind of communal property like the one described above). One of the enduring stereotypes of communism is that of a regimented society where large numbers of people follow the same daily routine. But, in fact, a communist society would want to have as few people as possible doing the same thing at the same time. Far from being regimented, you would be encouraged to follow a daily schedule that is different from everyone else's.

[chatfsh]

Interesting concepts, but...

What comes to mind are vacation/holiday time shares.  You know, where you invest a certain amount of money to become a co-owner of a fabulous beachfront condominium in the Bahamas or somewhere.  The idea is that as a co-owner, you would simply schedule the time of the year that you would like to use the condo and only use it during that time.  Sounds great in theory, problem is there are certain peak times that all owners desire to use the condo (summer months or even winter months, whereas no one wants it during hurricane season, you get the point

[Darth Kwisatz]

I think a crash course in supply chain logistics and social behaviour is in order.

[Dante]

Oh don't get started on social behaviour...

The argument and following reasoning seem to make sense from the given premise (to some degree), but unfortunately the premise is flawed.

Premise: That people do not want to own, they want to use, since they cannot enjoy or take advantage of something unless using it. Wrong.

People like to own. Some people like to hoard. I myself am something of a packrat; I collect books, pictures, stamps, dvds, interesting leaves, coins, pseudo-weaponry, scarves... I can't use all of those at once. Some of them can't be used at all. But the point is not to use, it is to own. I derive great pleasure both in having things that are easily accessable and having things that are mine, and nobody else's. I dislike lending books to people, I hate it when people take my things without asking.

But then I'm a possessive sort. Nobody uses my crockery but me, nobody enters my room, nobody uses my cup or borrows my shoes... It may be a form of OCD.

But I'm not the only one. Think about the vintage car collectors, the art patrons, the moneymaking entrepreneurs, all of whom collect and have and own but very rarely use. The man with three houses, he can't live in all three at once but certainly won't sell two because he likes to own them. The woman who is shocked at the very suggestion that she should pack less than ten pairs of shoes.

People, in my experience, don't like to share. They will do it when they have to, sometimes in good grace, but wherever possible they prefer to have something that is their own. Ownership means a lot to most people - it certainly does to me.

When you own something it is yours to do with as you will, to customise. A car with a stupid thing on the dashboard, for example. You can't trust that someone else using this car will not throw it into the nearest bin. And furthermore... this may seem weird, but sharing contaminates things.

I think this is the OCD again. When I lend things or other people touch my things I somehow get the feeling that they have left a mark on it, left a claim on something that is mine. That's why I never let anyone eat off my plate, or drink from my mugs. Other people leave their marks on things, they might leave dirt or hair or grease and who knows where those hands have been?!

I'm getting hysterical. Time to calm down. Whoow.

Prime point: People like to own, not just to use. I'm not the only one either.

Secondary point: Ownership conveys rights that sharing does not.

Tertiary point: I fully expect that anyone given a choice between having a personal car that might be stolen and a safe car that they would have to share with five others would go for the personal car and just take extra care with it.

Quaternary point (aka paranoid rant): Some people hoard, and they fiercely resent any intrusion into their space or influence upon their property. People shouting "Get off my lawn!" because it is their lawn and nobody else's. People who have weird rules about what goes on in their car because they view it as their personal space, where they are king. I don't have an uncontrollable urge to buy stuff (I'd be much poorer if I did), but things that are bought are kept, and stored. They are owned. I still have toys from when I was a child, and newspapers from last year. It would be ordinary for me to dislike people throwing them out, yes? I don't like people standing next to them. That is how very dedicated I am to ownership, and how very fiercely I would resist anyone trying to make me share them.

That turned out a lot more personal than I meant it to be... Meh, you all knew I was crazy anyway.

[Edric O]

Interesting concepts, but...

What comes to mind are vacation/holiday time shares. You know, where you invest a certain amount of money to become a co-owner of a fabulous beachfront condominium in the Bahamas or somewhere.  The idea is that as a co-owner, you would simply schedule the time of the year that you would like to use the condo and only use it during that time. Sounds great in theory, problem is there are certain peak times that all owners desire to use the condo (summer months or even winter months, whereas no one wants it during hurricane season, you get the point

[Edric O]

Dante, "some people like to do X" is not a valid argument for the idea that X must be kept as a social norm. Yes, some people like to own and hoard. Some other people like to steal - compulsively so. Yet other people like to kill. And so on.

As long as most people do not have a compelling urge to hoard most things, a few exceptions won't be a problem. Yes, a use-time economy would deprive collectors of their hobby. Tough luck. They'll survive. Most people are not collectors, and even those who are collectors tend to collect only a single type of object. Oh, and most people do not yell "get off my property" to anyone who steps on their lawn. The point is that you are invoking a few aberrant exceptions rather than the general rule.

In addition, I see good reasons to believe that the behaviours you describe are caused by the existence of private property in the first place. If you were born and raised in a society that did not teach you the concept of permanent ownership (that an object can be yours even when you're not holding it), would you still feel a compulsion to own things?

[Darth Kwisatz]

Dunno if you own a car or not. Hire a very expensive luxury car for a day and drive it. Then buy an ex-taxi or an ex-rental car, and see the results of the contemptuous trashing that is the norm for common property. See how good a system that is.

You've limited the supply of cars globally from 4 billion to 2 billion, which means you can avoid razing heaps of fertile arable land to build car parks. Excellent. I've decided I'm going to be late, or I'm stuck in the traffic jam you've facilitated. The next driver is short of her promised car, and the spare is broken down, she can't drive a manual, its a 4WD & she can't fit it into shallow shopping centre car parks, etc etc etc. She won't be thrilled with this new system. 2 billion cars is suddenly up to 2.3 billion cars, or depending on the level of specialisation of vehicles, probably 3 billion. Because everyone thrashes the shit out of them they have a shelf life of 3-6 years instead of 6-15 years. Everyone better double as a demolition derby driver in their leisure time to get rid of the clunkers. Is there insurance in this fantasy world? What does it cost and who pays? Or does the govt self insure? Are there roadworthiness checks? These would have to be an intense daily or half-daily routine, instead of one formal inspection annually. Do these cars get parked in depots or does everyone take one home? In which case you need cars one for one. And the shift change to allow half the population to sleep whilst the other works is straight out of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

There is such a car pooling scheme in the Sydney suburb of Newtown (3km from the city centre). There are also "walking buses" and "cycling buses", where groups proceed together by their mode of choice in an organised group commute. I don't see it catching on though, especially since we've been very cheaply decentralising employment centres for the last 60 years, and 25km is the average commute and 60km is not unusual.

What is the form of "encouragement" to follow a diverse regime from others? What effect on one's social life (not everyone is an internet nerd)? Is it through pricing or physical policing? Is there a curfew or would we all be cocaine addicts so as not to miss a moment of utopian bliss?

Dante took the rest of the words out of my typing fingers.

Utopia or dystopia? 

[Dante]

Dante, "some people like to do X" is not a valid argument for the idea that X must be kept as a social norm. Yes, some people like to own and hoard. Some other people like to steal - compulsively so. Yet other people like to kill. And so on.

It is, however, an argument that X should not be considered inherently wrong or be disencouraged. This usually does not apply to examples like killing and stealing, but lets take some others.

Some people (though still a very large number) like to collect, and own.

Some people like to risk their lives by jumping off mountains or swimming with sharks.

Some people like to eat more than is good for them.

Some people like to sleep with members of their own gender.

Some people like making money, just for the pleasure of having it.

Some people put the welfare of others ahead of their own.

There is no reason why any of these things should not be accepted as social norms. Some of them are. Others are still seen as foolish or somehow 'wrong.' People like to act differently from each other, and there is no justification for pushing them into behaviour that they would not like. Personally I have a great dislike of smoking. It smells nasty, is unhealthy, and really has nothing to say for itself. All of my good friends at university are smokers. Without exception. It's frustrating, but it's their choice and I just have to sit through it.

As long as most people do not have a compelling urge to hoard most things, a few exceptions won't be a problem. Yes, a use-time economy would deprive collectors of their hobby. Tough luck. They'll survive. Most people are not collectors, and even those who are collectors tend to collect only a single type of object. Oh, and most people do not yell "get off my property" to anyone who steps on their lawn. The point is that you are invoking a few aberrant exceptions rather than the general rule.

Firstly, a behaviour pattern does not need to be the general rule to be accepted, as described above.

Secondly, this behaviour is much more common then you seem to realise. There have been many extended legal battles in this country between landowners and people protesting their "right to roam." The argument is between those who believe that all land should be public and that they should be allowed to walk anywhere, and those who maintain that their land is private, fenced off for a reason, and that visitors are unwelcome and don't respect the land that they travel through. A glorified version of "get off my lawn."

Then there are the incidents of violence caused by people who dare to trim hedges that are between their lawn and their neighbours'...

Copyright issues are pretty much entirely focused on who owns particular material, and look how bitter those fights can get.

And most people do get angry when their personal property is infringed. That's why theft is a crime, y'know.

Most people are not collectors, but they all own. And what they own, they would not lightly part with. I am pretty confident that the majority of people are like that.

In addition, I see good reasons to believe that the behaviours you describe are caused by the existence of private property in the first place. If you were born and raised in a society that did not teach you the concept of permanent ownership (that an object can be yours even when you're not holding it), would you still feel a compulsion to own things?

*Shrug* I dunno. Maybe. Does it matter? Ownership is ingrained into the psyche. You can expound on the virtues of sharing all you like, private property is how things work now and it will take centuries to change that.

I for one am not prepared to put the slightest effort into bringing it about.

[Egeides]

AH! Light! Someone knowing Lang's Metropolis!! Where did you get it? Come here and give me a hug!! Love you DK

On topic:

This relation between "waste since unused" and "damaged since carelessly used" does not seem all on one side or the other. I would see the imposition of one or the other as superfluous. Basically, is there a reason why one could not pay to be more on one side or the other, as long as he accepts to get less of something else for it?

Edric: Are you proposing the imposition of such a "communitary" system "which would be better", or are you proposing to put it on the market for everyone to chose at will? You Marxist! ;)

[Darth Kwisatz]

Love and hugs.

The pricing premium for good stuff would lead one to prefer to have exclusive use tending toward ownership of the item instead of having a huge superfluous bureaucracy to administer a system with massive efficiency gaps.

Think of taxi drivers who own their cabs instead of renting them for a shift. The difference in quality is huge.

I'd like to open up the discussion to the very concept of efficiency. I think its something of a myth in the western economic mindset.

[Darth Kwisatz]

I first saw Metropolis at the movies in 1984 when it was initially restored, with electronic soundtrack. It's quite easy to get from our DVD stores in bargain bins in its extended version, but ebay or amazon is probably your best bet.

Nosferatu is another favourite. Obscure westerns, 50's sci-fi, 70's martial arts (not my fav's) and horror films are quite easy to get too, as are 50's TV shows like the awesome Dragnet.

Is anyone else here into Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch or John Waters?

[Anathema]

With a certain good, as it is right now, it's my prerogative to exclude others from its use.

Reasons why I'd want to exclude others:

A lot of stuff deteriorates in quality and value the more is used. This is especially true for cars. Very few goods have a (near) eternal life span, but last shorter the more they are used. And food in the fridge that I'm not eating right now, can't be consumed without depriving me of its use in the future. You make it seem like that every minute a good is not used, is wasted.

Related to that, you can't count on that everybody will handle stuff responsibly and make repairs if necessary if it's not theirs.

Often people will already

Some goods can be effectively shared, such is the case with appartments with shared kitchens, toilets etc. However the efficiency, as measured in % of time it's used, can never reach 100% for practical purposes. People would have to live by very rigid time planning.

Often people will already try to maximise the "profits" they reap from sharing with others. A lot of kitchenware in my house is co-owned by me and my roommates, other stuff is mine but I let the others use it and vice versa.

People will regulate these kind of things by themselves to the extent that it is practical and not objectionable.

[Dude_Doc]

But maybe we just have to adopt such a system, where people share, anyhow? Humans now consume faster than the earth can regenerate the various "products" we use, and if we are in this position today, then imagine by 2050, where we will be 9 billion. Unless, of course, we by that time colonize Mars and get all our plants and animals there etc... it's just not feasible.

Really, unless something drastic happens in the world in the coming decades, our only choise may be to willingly choose to cut down on some things, or to find ourselves in that position. I think a good example of this is the movie Soylent Green - too many people, nothing left to consume...

[Darth Kwisatz]

We were most efficient before we learnt to write and to fabricate materials. We are either destined to consume ourselves and our planet out of existence like any other species does when it reaches plague proprtions, or we'll get terribly Darwinian about who gets to survive and who doesn't, or we suffer a global holocaust that returns all civilisations to their primal origins. Unfortunately I don't see a getting of global wisdom by easy means, and I don't see it being enforceable either. All enforcement is ultimately motivated by profit, and individual greed always takes priority over the common good in the long term within hierarchies. Water finds its level, and I think that the level for the human problem will ultimately be a painful correction of our imbalances.

[Dante]

I suspect that if recycling does not take a dramatic upswing in popularity and efficiency, there will develop a gulf between the haves and the have-nots. Bigger than it already is, that is. The Haves will either dominate or exterminate the have-nots, and then dominate or exterminate each other. Sooner or later an equilibrium will be reached whereby there are now fewer people and therefore enough material to go around. Population and production will then be strictly controlled.

Unless there is a global revolution of course, in which case everyone will either die in the war or die afterwards when there are too many people and famine takes hold.

[Darth Kwisatz]

Actually, global shortages are the perfect excuse for fanatical religious wars to preserve the faithful and the brave, and to punish the rest of us.

I'd be dumping shares in nursing homes and buying up in weapons manufacture.

[Dante]

Weapons yes, nursing no. If times get tough then I suspect that the elderly will be among the first to suffer.

Also, would religious wars really take precedence over such boundaries as nationality or class? Granted there is a lot of religious disturbance now, but I do not see it growing into large-scale jihads since the warlike sectarian forces seem a bit overwhelmed by secular powers. Politics, military, economy, etc. None of these things is inherently religious, and I suspect that they will have a greater impact on any future wars than religion.

One could argue that they always did, and that religion was simply a smokescreen for more... earthly pursuits.

[Darth Kwisatz]

Global commerce and the internet already overshadow national boundaries. Instead of playing one local council or trade union off against the other in business deals, entire nations are played this way. It is conceivable that one currency and one basic language will be in global use one day. Will Africa become the world's next slave labour continent as Asia develops a large urban middle class?

Religion and ideology are the only acceptable excuses for war that aren't bad for business these days. Armies can be wrapped in any flag that the global economy needs them to be. Populous third world countries can easily be wrecked by sponsored domestic disturbances.

[GUNWOUNDS]

Darth of your various end-game sequences you proposed for the end of mankind... you forgot to mention that we could have a Utopian fate where we develop a replicator and use molecule cartridges to fabricate what we want.  Perhaps we will become a Global Federation, one world government and develop nano-disassemblers, ultra-efficient recycling, 99% biodegradeable materials, burn-clean fuel for everything , enhanced solar cells with better power output, and increased health and quality of life due to cancer et al  vaccines and genetic engineering of babies.

It could be a utopian global federation going where no man has gone before... instead of .....the "holocaust sending us back to primal age".

Gun

[Darth Kwisatz]

You're picking on me!

Seriously, I have no faith in the ability of humans to competently conspire, nor to achieve utopian ends when dystopia is so much easier. Long term conspiracies arrive at their conclusions by accident ratherthan design in my humble opinion.

We will have needed to have seriously fucked up the planet before a space-based economy becomes viable, and note my market capitalist assumption here. By that stage, given that pretty much three quarters of the world's money is phoney money made up in ledgers rather than being hard cash of permanent value, I doubt anyone capable will be able to afford to establish an extra-terresrial economy when the breaking point arrives.

There is really no point in discussing either god or the merit of Star Trek with fans, except strictly as a sport.