ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

Econ: What is scarcity? 71 Views


Share It!


Description:

What is Scarcity? Scarcity is the economic concept and study of limited supply of a product or resource vs. potentially unlimited demand. The study explores allocation and prioritization of products and resources to meet different demands depending on the designated category groups and individuals. Resources can also include intangibles such as leisure time, sleep, and education levels.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

And finance Allah shmoop What is scarcity Oh diamonds gold

00:09

oil Oscar winning actors These things are scarce Well a

00:14

handful of beats sand a box of garbage An alley

00:17

cat You have things Things are not scarce But what

00:20

a scarcity even mean in economic terms All right let's

00:22

back up a bit Basic forces of economics supply and

00:26

demand Well the fundamental pricing action in an economy lies

00:29

in figuring out how to distribute Limited resource is basically

00:33

finding a way to get supplying two man in tow

00:35

balance Yeah remember that graph This one right here Supply

00:38

demand And here's why Base wife Right So that's the

00:41

theory Okay People want stuff like hamburgers They get angry

00:48

and need comfort food and or fuel and or calories

00:51

masquerading as love Joe six Pack wants his burger demands

00:55

it So yes that's demand And someone provides the stuff

00:59

like supplies it like Freddie the fry cook and that's

01:02

applied in the middle You get crisis which helped match

01:05

and meter and measure The metrics are of Scarcity III

01:08

where supply hooks up with demand Everything is relative or

01:12

contextual right A bottle of water in the middle The

01:14

desert can be worth a hundred bucks that same bottle

01:17

in Kawai Hawaii where it rains five inches a day

01:21

not so much so in contact When there's a lot

01:23

of supply and limited demand Prices are low People might

01:27

love hamburgers but there are a lot of them around

01:29

a lot of supply They aren't scarce and all the

01:32

ingredients to a burger well easy to find There are

01:34

plenty of sources of all beef patties special sauce lettuce

01:37

cheese pickles onions and plenty of wheat and you know

01:40

sesame seeds to make the sesame seed buns there Yet

01:43

tons of suppliers easy to make their called commodities a

01:47

good or service that's more less the same wherever you

01:49

biden in whatever form you receive it in But there's

01:52

no significant scarcity of hamburgers so prices are relatively low

01:56

in this sense There aren't infinite burgers but compared tto

01:59

amber with the dinosaur blood in it and Olympic gold

02:02

medalists and no brilliant honest Congress People Yeah Hamburgers aren't

02:07

really scare So what is scarce How about beachfront property

02:11

Everyone to live in a mansion in Malibu Yeah This

02:13

little baby will set you back a cool twenty mil

02:15

in this one eighty mil beachfront property in a good

02:18

location is rare supplies very limited But everyone anywhere near

02:22

the coast wants to live there There's huge demand for

02:25

this scarcely supplied resource Now technically not all beachfront property

02:30

is expensive but remember Three Mile Island you have this

02:33

thing easy pickings But if you want to live by

02:35

the beach in California without nuclear waste well you're going

02:38

to have to pay up competing with other rich people

02:41

willing to shell out millions and millions for a close

02:43

up view of movie your flipper or well smog And

02:47

note that what scarce today might not always be scarce

02:49

or even prized beachfront property in California won't always be

02:53

as rare if global warming continues There are a random

02:57

new kits Greenland and all that ice sheet melts Well

03:00

then here's the U S Map At that point the

03:02

ice sheets melted oceans have risen and you remember that

03:06

twenty million dollars Malibu home Well that used to be

03:09

beachfront Now it's Atlantis and not the cool kind where

03:12

you can swim with dolphins or the kind with superheroes

03:15

know just bottom of the ocean Formally twenty million dollars

03:18

fish habitat Yeah Demand has dropped to zero It's no

03:21

longer scarce It's as common as junk on the bottom

03:23

of the ocean Which basically is meanwhile with California's new

03:27

coastline will land that used to be inland orange and

03:30

walnut groves now has a spectacular view of the ocean

03:33

Farmer McGee Yeah How about twelve million dollars for a

03:36

couple of euro woman acres there by the coast Yeah

03:39

I think that one of two carat diamond ring for

03:41

your brand new wife Yeah The one who doesn't nag

03:44

you daily to take out the garbage Yeah well that

03:46

ring's gonna cost you about fifty thousand dollars because well

03:49

there aren't many diamonds that big guy either Relatively scarce

03:53

and they are desired If you want Cady playing on

03:56

your hopes team Well it's gonna cost you about a

03:57

quarter unit a season That twenty five million dollars because

04:00

you know units hundred million bucks Why Well they're scarce

04:03

They're scarce their desired They're not like a hamburger and

04:06

their desired by many rich people who bid up pricing

04:09

and well that's just how the game is played So

04:11

these air today's prices for the intersections of supply and

04:14

demand Tomorrow prices will move his attributed values or continually

04:17

influx We value something's more today than we will in

04:21

the future and all that stuff and I did might

04:23

be scarce But that doesn't make it worth a lot

04:25

of money Not if demand is low like well the

04:27

Shmoop Family Singers song album is scarce and oh so

04:32

not desired Yeah there's only one Steven Seagal this fat

04:35

bald guy here he used Teo you know be somebody

04:38

big action star in the day But he's not getting

04:40

Denzel or even Brad Pitiful money These days the values

04:44

attributed to scarcity can go the other way to something

04:47

that used to be very common can become scarce you

04:49

know like a bald eagle about that And if demand

04:52

remained flat or steady well these now scarce but demanded

04:56

things can become prized So watch out Brad you might

04:59

be one of a kind of scarcity doesn't always mean

05:01

high value your homies Just one hamburger addiction away from

05:05

heading down the Steven Seagal path to oblivion But on

05:08

the other side of the coin will maybe put a

05:09

burger into your deep freezer just in case Who knows

05:12

If it'll be scarce one day if all the cows

05:14

were wiped out in a plague you know that mad

05:16

cow disease thing is the thing Well Burger's just might 00:05:19.384 --> [endTime] become a scarce resource again

Up Next

GED Social Studies 1.1 Civics and Government
39794 Views

GED Social Studies 1.1 Civics and Government

Related Videos

Fake News
11938 Views

How do you tell fake news from real news?

Finance: What is Bankruptcy?
260 Views

What is bankruptcy? Deadbeats who can't pay their bills declare bankruptcy. Either they borrowed too much money, or the business fell apart. They t...

Finance: What is a Dividend?
1777 Views

What's a dividend? At will, the board of directors can pay a dividend on common stock. Usually, that payout is some percentage less than 100 of ear...

Finance: How Are Risks and Rewards Related?
589 Views

How are risk and reward related? Take more risk, expect more reward. A lottery ticket might be worth a billion dollars, but if the odds are one in...