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I'm not sure that I really understand Adam's post. on the issue of copyability, there is a clean division here. My words can be taken by you without removing them from me. Not so my shirt. This sums up the scarce/non-scarce distinction.
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By the way, I don't like that definition of non-scarcity either. I only use it to seque out of conventional defintions. For my own part, in my own belief, I don't see that the real world offers any examples of non-scarce goods that are not infinitely replicable goods. I would would define non-scarcity in those terms, but I don't think it
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On fire, I would say it is a non-scarce good because of the absence of displacement. If I take your car, you no longer have it. But I can't take your fire from you. You give me a flame and I can have a flame without taking yours. To be sure, I can douse your flame but that is taking the scarce good of the fuel that makes the flame burn.
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We can define non-scarce in the same way that Menger, Fetter, Mises, and Rothbard did, something that exists in such superabundance that it no longer needs to be rationed by economic means. In practice, non-scarce goods are those things that can be recplicated without displacing or depreciating the integrity of the original. Ideas, speech, images, sound
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oh and yes that article helped push this forward, but Stephan and I are working on a non-scarce goods manifesto.
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Well, ice is just frozen water and water is certainly a scarce good. So is air. Just the morning, I came in the office and left the door open and someone said, "shut the door, you are letting the air out!" ha ha. In any case, it is true that air is a scarce good. Ok, here is an example of a non-scarce good that takes up space. Consider two
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Yes of course. In the same way, you have to have a computer to send email. All things mix scarce and non-scarce goods. A Lady Gaga concert is a scarce person on a scarce stage using scarce equipment to deliver what becomes a non-scarce good.
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As you say, the non-material nature of non-material things is the reason they are non-scarce. I think that's probably right. But one exception besides ocean water (which is actually scarce if you think of shipping lines): fire. It is a non-scarce good that takes up material space. Can anyone think of another real-world case?
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I thought everyone would enjoy a recent correspondence I had with Kinsella. I wrote him as follows: How does the presence or absence of a good's consumed physical space affect its scarcity? Non-scarce goods tend to consume no space but scarce good tend to. I can think of very few exceptions here - fire consumes space but is non-scarce but ideas
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I thin it is this . We should put this in print somehow