We Do Not Live in a Post-Scarcity World

Understand something at the very beginning: to say that something is “no longer subject to market forces” is to say that the good in question is non-scarce, or free.
We Do Not Live in a Post-Scarcity World
American economist Jeremy Rifkin poses for a picture during an interview with AFP in Paris on Oct. 18, 2019 for the release of his book "The Green New Deal: Why the Fossil Fuel Civilisation Will Collapse by 2028, and the Bold Economic Plan to Save Life on Earth." Eric Piermont/AFP via Getty Images
William L. Anderson
Updated:

Jeremy Rifkin long has perfected the art of adding two and two and getting five. In the 1980s, he claimed that entropy made it impossible for a free economy to exist, and therefore Rifkin concluded the state needed to plan and run things. How the state would triumph over the second law of thermodynamics is anyone’s guess. He later declared that a new “hydrogen economy” was just around the corner — government just needed to engage in central planning and order hydrogen to be our new fuel of choice.

However, in an op-ed article in The New York Times, Rifkin does the impossible: he outdoes himself. Rifkin wants us to believe that the law of scarcity essentially has been repealed, and that the conditions this situation creates are unsettling. He writes: “We are beginning to witness a paradox at the heart of capitalism, one that has propelled it to greatness but is now threatening its future: The inherent dynamism of competitive markets is bringing costs so far down that many goods and services are becoming nearly free, abundant, and no longer subject to market forces. While economists have always welcomed a reduction in marginal cost, they never anticipated the possibility of a technological revolution that might bring those costs to near zero.”
William L. Anderson
William L. Anderson
Author
William L. Anderson is a fellow of the Mises Institute and professor of economics at Frostburg State University. He has published numerous articles and papers on economics and political economy in many publications and is a frequent contributor to LewRockwell.com.
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