1.2 稀缺性

The entire field of economics is based on the idea of scarcity.

整个经济学领域都是基于“稀缺”这一概念。

And, arguably, we wouldn’t even need a field of economics, if there wasn’t the notion of scarcity in the world.

可以说，如果世界上没有稀缺性的概念，我们甚至不需要经济学这个学科。

And the reason why scarcity is essential to economics is because economics is the study of how do you allocate these scarce resources.

稀缺性之所以对经济学至关重要，是因为经济学是研究如何分配这些稀缺资源的学科。

Air for most of human history has been considered a free resource.
And even today I’d argue that something like oxygen, at least on our planet, is considered a free resource.

When I take a deep breath it does not affect your ability to take a deep breath.
It does not take oxygen away from you.

Now is there an infinite amount of oxygen in our atmosphere?
No. But for our purposes it feels like there’s an infinite amount.

Now if the photosynthetic plants were to disappear and all of a sudden oxygen started to get diminished, or if we were in a space station where there isn’t a seemingly infinite amount of oxygen, well then you could imagine a world where it could become a scarce resource.

如果光合作用植物消失，氧气一下子开始减少，或者如果我们在一个空间站里，那里没有看似无限的氧气，那么你可以想象一个氧气可能成为稀缺资源的世界。

You can imagine a colony on the Moon or on Mars or in the space station where it had some type of economic system to decide who gets how much oxygen.

你可以想象月球、火星或空间站上的一个殖民地，那里有某种经济系统来决定谁获得多少氧气。