Abundance Theory Economics

[ebacon]

Are you guys familiar with abundance theory economics and its rise in the 1960s? The old school of thought is called scarcity theory economics.

The basic difference between the two is simple as their name suggest. In a nutshell scarcity theory economics says that resources and size of the marketplace are limited. Government therefore has a role in managing the distribution of wealth.

On the other hand abundance theory economics says that with ever improving technology there is little need for government intervention. People will always come up with new stuff to keep themselves employed.

During the technological revolution of the 1960s-1990s it is easy to see how abundance theory could prevail in political thought.

What are your thoughts? Were you fan of abundance theory and have now changed your mind? Vice versa? No change?

I searched the board for occurances of the words scarcity and abundance. The results are pretty interesting.

The word scarcity has only been used a handful of times. It was used to describe a scarcity of:

*medical resources in light of Obamacare
*natural resources vs. population
*consumer goods in East Europe during the Cold War

On the other hand the word abundance is used quite often. My search returned too many hits to cover them all but here is a sampling from the first batch of results. The word was used to describe an abundance of:

*middlemen
*offshore accounts
*guns
*abundance is bad in the context of global warming
*abundance of gas stations causes higher gas prices in NYC
*abundance as a broken promise of communism

One curious result was that a writer believed there is an abundance of agreement between people of the right and left. I think there is a point there. We seem to agree that there aren't enough jobs and that mean people suck.