I have been thinking about the (supposed) issue of "scarcity" as a
result of my (fruitless) attempts to explain the issue to Tiny Tim.

Watching the Forest Hills tennis matches on TV provided a wonderful
example of how capitalism solves the problem.

If you wanted to watch the match in person, it would probably be
impossible now to obtain seats. There are just so many seats and there
is no way to produce more. This is an example of scarcity. A genuine
example of scarcity.

So what does capitalism do.

It invents television.

Now millions, even 100's of millions, of people can watch the matches.

For free, btw - or at most at the nominal cost of their pro rata cable/
satellite fees.

But it gets even better.

Capitalism not only wants to make it possible for you to watch the
matches from virtually any place in the world, but to do it at your
convenience.

So, it invents video taping - and now even digital recording with far
greater capacity. In fact you can now go on your computer from, say,
work and instruct your dvr to record a program in your absence.

Now, anyone can watch the matches from virtually any place in the
world at their convenience - for what amounts to pennies.

So much for scarcity.

This is why I asked Tiny Tim to study the history of capitalism over
the last 100-200years. Because what has happened in
telecommunications, in principle, has happened in innumerable other
product categories - telecommunications perhaps being the most
dramatic example. But the point being essentially the same.