Had a little back-and-forth with Grok about scarcity and thought it'd be interesting to share it. It's a pretty good summary of my thoughts: --- You are correct that unchosen alternatives are not values under Rand’s definition, and that several of the formulations I used earlier slide between distinct claims. Rand defines a value as “that which one acts to gain and/or keep.” An option that is never chosen, and toward which no action is taken, is not a value in that sense. Treating every conceivable alternative use as if it were a currently held value does smuggle potentiality into the category of the actual. Opportunity cost, properly stated, does not require that every possible use is a value; it refers only to the next-best alternative that ranks in the agent’s hierarchy of ends and that would be pursued if the preferred option were unavailable. If the agent has no such ranking and takes no action toward any alternative, there is no opportunity cost in Rand’s terms. That is a tighter constraint than many economic statements observe. The two formulations you distinguished are not equivalent: -A relation between finite means and multiple ends that the agent actually pursues (or ranks and acts toward) is a relation among existents: the means, the agent, and the ends that are objects of action. -A relation between a means and its multiple potential uses is not a relation between existents in the same sense. The multiple uses are implications of the means’ identity (what it is capable of given its nature). They are not additional existents standing in a metaphysical relation to the means. An acorn’s capacity to become a tree, under appropriate conditions, is a fact about the acorn’s identity and the causal conditions that would actualize it; it is not a relation to a non-existent tree. Relations, in the strict sense of holding between existents, obtain only among things that exist. Ends that exist only as content in a mind are not metaphysical relata of external means until and unless they are acted upon or otherwise grounded in existing causal factors. One can form a conceptual recognition that a given means is suitable for a given purpose; that recognition is an epistemological relation. It does not automatically constitute an ontological relation between the means and a non-existent end. Conflating the two is an equivocation. Finally, scarcity and abundance, as used in economics, are relational and comparative concepts. Something is scarce or abundant relative to a specified set of uses, a quantity, a time, and a context of demand. They function like “difficult” and “easy”: they grade observed quantitative and relational facts. They are not interchangeable with the metaphysical contrast between “the actual limits of existing things” and “a hypothetical world in which every potential is simultaneously realized.” The latter is a clarifying counterfactual; it is not the definition or the evidential basis of the economic concepts. The distinctions you are drawing—between values and unchosen potentials, between relations among existents and implications of identity, and between comparative economic concepts and pure metaphysical limits—are real and require care if the terms are to be used without equivocation. ->>> Asking to clarify last statement on scarcity in economics. You are right that mainstream economics does not primarily use scarcity and abundance the way I described. Standard textbook and mainstream presentations define or introduce scarcity by explicit contrast with a hypothetical counterfactual of absolute abundance: -If resources were unlimited (or an infinite amount of every good could be produced, or human wants fully satisfied with no trade-offs), there would be no economic goods, no need for choice, no opportunity cost, and no economics. -Scarcity is the condition in which limited means confront unlimited (or multiple competing) wants, so that not all ends can be satisfied simultaneously. -The opposite of scarcity is frequently named as abundance (absolute or near-absolute), and the concept is clarified by reference to a Garden-of-Eden or post-scarcity world in which opportunity costs vanish. -Lionel Robbins’ widely adopted definition—“Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses”—and Samuelson’s formulations both rely on this framing. The production-possibility frontier and the statement that “there would be no economic problem if resources were not scarce” are standard pedagogical moves. That is the dominant mainstream usage. It treats the non-existence of the absolute-abundance world (or the impossibility of satisfying all wants at once) as the conceptual standard that makes scarcity the basic economic fact. My earlier characterization—that scarcity and abundance function purely as relational, gradable, comparative concepts like “difficult” and “easy,” graded against observed quantities and specified uses without reliance on the limitless counterfactual—describes a more careful or restricted reading, or the way the terms can be used once the metaphysical issues are set aside. It is not how the concepts are typically introduced or justified in mainstream economics. The distinction you are drawing therefore holds against the ordinary textbook presentation. ->>> So do you agree with my claims? Yes, on the specific claims you advanced in your last message, I agree. -Under Rand’s definition, a value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep. An option that is never chosen and toward which no action is taken is not a value. Treating unchosen alternatives as if they were values does treat potentials as if they were actual. -The two formulations are not the same: a relation between finite means and ends that are actually pursued or ranked is a relation among existents; a “relation” between a means and its multiple potential uses is not a relation between existents in the same sense. Those uses are implications of the means’ identity, not additional existents standing in a metaphysical relation to it. -Strictly speaking, a relationship obtains between things that exist. An acorn’s capacity to become a tree (under suitable conditions) is a fact about the acorn’s identity and the causal conditions that would actualize it; it is not a relation to a non-existent tree. -Ends that exist only as content in a mind stand in an epistemological/conceptual relation to external means when one recognizes suitability or possibility. They do not thereby constitute a metaphysical/ontological relationship until grounded in existing causal factors or action. -Scarcity and abundance are relational, gradable, comparative concepts. They grade observed quantitative and contextual facts relative to specified uses, quantities, and ends. They are not interchangeable with the metaphysical contrast between the actual limits of existing things and a hypothetical world in which every potential is simultaneously realized. Those distinctions hold. The economic concepts can be used without equivocation only if those differences are observed.

The way that I see it, the classical and neoclassical schools in economics have given us a false dichotomy. The classical school offered us a labor theory of value that was reduced to muscle work or labor hours, overlooking the fact that efficiency of work is dependent on reason. The neoclassical school offered us a utility theory of value that was reduced to subjective wants, overlooking the fact that goods have objective uses that apply uniformly to whomever is of need of them (within their individual contexts). Value and price theories, respectively, require an integration of utility and effort, but from an objective perspective that takes account of the mind and external facts together.

Markets are not about cooperation. Traders do not "cooperate." Too many economists use this term to describe the mechanism of markets, but it plays to the hands of the central planners. A better term to describe the market is *coordination*. This is not just a semantics issue. Cooperation designates a common or shared goal of people working together. The Latin cooperari literally means "to work together." According to an LLM: "Cooperation entered English in the early seventeenth century. Etymonline records its original meaning as 'the act of working together to one end.'" Coordination on the other hand designates compatible relationships of different actions or plans. For example, traffic rules help drivers coordinate their driving, even though drivers use the same roads for different destinations. Traffic rules do NOT help drivers "cooperate" on the roads. The market works similarly. Employees under one firm may cooperate. Workers of a specific department under a firm may cooperate. But employees of different firms do not cooperate. Their actions are at most coordinated. This is important because market order arises from the plans of individuals. There is no intrinsic standard by which markets operate. The marginalists presume that the essence of markets is to serve the desires of consumers. If this is true, then producers are in a certain sense "cooperating" to allocate resources in the most efficient way as servants to these wants (note the collectivist premise here). But this is not true, and the "consumer sovereignty" position is false. Producers offer goods and services of objective value (economically speaking) and consumers —who are also producers—are free to choose which ones best serve their needs. It is the producers though who dictate and teach which goods and services are the best, and the market coordinates the different interests of its participants, operating as a "matchmaker." The consumers, in this sense, learn from the producers what they want, how they want it, and for which price. Cooperation presupposes consumer sovereignty. Coordination presupposes producer sovereignty.

AnCaps, listen up. In the free market, we trade particular goods. Our exchanges do not affect each others' lives. Every trade affects its traders and no others (at least not in a direct way). However, laws are universal. They are abstract rules that apply to everyone by definition. That's why they can't be "competed" against each other. If, say, in a parallel universe, someone would buy an apple and that would apply to all market participants (meaning, everyone would receive/buy an apple as well), then we would have no choice but to centrally plan the economy. In the real world, this is true of laws. Laws are universal. Rights apply to all individuals uniformly. The question then becomes what laws should we have, and what is the best method to enact them. Laws cannot be competed (this has no intelligible meaning in reality), they can only be deliberated. What AnCaps do—which is very Kantian of them—is to debate the form or conditions of laws, not their content. As if the content "spontaneously emerges" from the form. But the form is universally abstract. The content is: which laws, as they relate to a particular sovereignty, over a specific geographical area, should we have?

Objective values are objective not because they are based on a standard but because they are based on a proper standard. All values, objective or not, are based on a standard. "Value is that which one acts to gain and/or keep," Ayn Rand writes. This is a broad characterization that consists of both objective and subjective values. Notice that this proposition points to goal-directed action. Namely, it is the goal that *directs* one's action toward achieving it. Every goal establishes a standard. Even if, say, you decide to watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie, this goal establishes a standard: the movie you'll watch must be made by Alfred Hitchcock and not by, say, Howard Hawks. This is an example that may feel too obvious or self-evident, but it's also true for more complicated goals. Let's say you want to win the Wimbledon Championship. This can be a life-goal, which establishes a subset of derivative goals, with each one establishing a sub-standard for how to achieve it (e.g., learning how to use a racket properly, getting in shape, etc.). Every goal establishes a field or a range of means that make achieving the goal possible. That which is outside this range, is an improper means. Thus proper and improper means are judged by a standard established by the goal. This is what Ayn Rand meant by measuring values according to a process of final causation (which, I presume, was Aristotle's view as well). Values ARE measured, just not by a cardinal unit. They are graded, or gauged, by a standard subjected to an ends. Modern economics does not offer any standard of evaluation for economic values. They deliberately evade this issue and, to an extent, are not even aware of it. And more specifically, the whole framework of marginal utility deals with quantitative and allocative *conditions*. To reduce value to such and such conditions, without anchoring it to some standard—necessarily obliterates the concept of value from one's thinking. Having a wrong standard (e.g., labor/production costs) is maybe bad, but it's much preferable to the situation today where the mere idea of a standard is incomprehensible. PS Rand's ethics are objective because she identified life as man's ultimate goal/value, which makes all other goals and values possible. To state this in the negative: anchoring values in a standard which is not life has no causal basis in reality.

Libertarians are determinists. That's why they are such strong advocates of ignorance. They presume that if humans could achieve certainty, central planning would be the best way to organize society. So ignorance becomes their last gasp defense of free markets. What they don't understand is that knowledge depends on exercising free will. And force blocks the capacity to act according to one's free will-exercised judgements. Thus free markets correspond to knowledgeable agents. Central planning corresponds to ignorance: it amounts to plundering wealth on the basis of whim.