Definition of
Shortage
The shortage is the lack or insufficiency of something. When an element is scarce, it is little or exiguous. By example: “The strike of bank workers generated a cash shortage in the city”, “The shortage of certain remedies could cause a humanitarian crisis in the South American country”, “There is a shortage of vegetables due to the floods that affect the central region of the province”.
If we consider the first example, we will notice that the “cash shortage” alludes to the lack of banknotes and coins in circulation, in this case due to a trade union conflict. When the banks are closed and the money from automated teller machines (ATMs), cash may be in short supply. As for the second example, if there is a shortage of drugs to treat diseases and health disorders, the situation may escalate into a serious crisis. Finally, the third example refers to a “shortage of vegetables” motivated by climatic conditions that harm crops.
In its most general sense, the idea of scarcity is linked to the lack of resources to meet basic needs. Whoever lives in scarcity, in this sense, lacks access to food, drinking water, energy, etc., and therefore cannot develop adequately in society.
Usually there is no society that it has all the necessary resources to support the needs of its people, but must relate to others to carry out the exchange of goods and services. In a community, scarcity entails the obligation to prioritize the objectives and the needs to be satisfied, so that there is an order.
For the economyOn the other hand, scarcity is a consequence of imbalance between the unlimited needs of people and the limited means of satisfying them. In this case, one should not think about scarce as a synonym of insufficient but as the description of a resource that cannot be used in an unlimited way, and that requires effort, time, capital and organization to obtain and maintain it.
In other words, this meaning of shortage It is not related to technology but to the imbalance that occurs between the needs I the desires of individuals and the means at their disposal to make them come true: there is an unlimited number of human needs that must be satisfied with a limited number of economic resources.
It is also talked about scarcity due to accumulation or inequality, in those cases in which there is a reduced amount of resources only in some portion of society. A situation of this type has two sides, since while one party experiences a lack of resources, the other benefits from a abundance. This can happen at the national or regional level, or even in smaller social groups.
The Spanish economist david anisi explains in his work Scarcity creators. From well-being to fear that when he can prevails over others that tend to attenuate or regulate it, it is necessary to come up with scarcity markets: it is about creating unemployment to reduce wages and make certain resources such as health, security and education too expensive or inaccessible for a large part of the community.
If we focus on the game of the offer and the demand, the scarcity of a good can be due to the depletion of a resource or an increase in demand. In the first group we find alterations in the production process for reasons of greater cause; in the second, overpopulation and the increase in capital power per individual. For example, a bakery that produces 50 kilograms of bread per day and registers a demand of 80 kilograms per day will have a shortage situation before the end of each day.