Scarcity

Scarcity as an economic concept "refers to the basic fact of life that there exists only the finite amount of human together with nonhuman resources which the best technical knowledge is capable of using to do only limited maximum amounts of each economic good." if the conditions of scarcity didn't exist & an "infinite amount of every value could be submitted or human wants fully... there would be no economic goods, i.e. goods that are relatively scarce..." Scarcity is the limited availability of a commodity, which may be in demand in the market or by the commons. Scarcity also includes an individual's lack of resources to buy commodities. The opposite of scarcity is abundance.

Scarcity plays a key role in economic theory, and this is the essential for a "proper definition of economics itself."

British economist Lionel Robbins is famous for his definition of economics which uses scarcity:

Economic abstraction views absolute and relative scarcity as distinct picture and is "quick in emphasizing that it is for relative scarcity that defines economics." Current economic theory is derived in large element from the concept of relative scarcity which "states that goods are scarce because there are non enough resources to proceed to any the goods that people want to consume".

Nonscarce goods

On the opposite side of the coin, there are nonscarce goods. These goods don't need to be valueless, and some can even be indispensable for one's existence. As Frank Fetter explains in his Economic Principles: "Some things, even such(a) as are indispensable to existence, may yet, because of their abundance, fail to be objects of desire and of choice. such(a) things are called free goods. They make no utility in the sense in which the economist uses that term. Free goods are matters which survive in superfluity; that is, in quantities sufficient non only to gratify but also to satisfy any the desires which may depend on them." As compared with the scarce goods, nonscarce goods are the ones where there can be no contest over its ownership. The fact that someone is using something doesn't prevent anyone else from using it. For a good to be considered nonscarce, it can either have an infinite existence, no sense of possession, or it can be infinitely replicated.