Yes, economically it summarizes a situation where price is unable to rise. Your regional milage may vary, but I've seen a few shortages around town lately. Here are a couple of them:
1. Price gouging laws prevented the price of toilet paper from rising when supply stocks were low in 2020. Instead of them selling for thousands of dollars per roll (or whatever it would have taken to satisfy the market), people were running the store as fast as they could to cheaply buy up everything they could get their hands on, soon leaving the shelves bare. Eventually stores had to place limitations on how many rolls individuals could buy. Here, a price-based mechanism failed to manage resource allocation, so other mechanisms (first-come, first-served initially, followed by rationing) came into effect.
2. Laws intending to maintain fairness in the medical system prevent medical practitioners accepting any amount of money from patients (i.e. the price cannot rise above zero) as to not allow those with means to offer more money to pull a doctor away from surgery to look at their common cold symptoms. As a price-based mechanism is not available, we resort to a needs-based system. If you show up with cold-like symptoms and someone else shows up with a heart attack, and there is only one doctor available, you have to give up on seeing the doctor no matter how much money you have to spend. Sorry.
That's what shortages look like, from the economic point of view.
But what does "shortage" summarize socially? I respect that you have a social take, but you've still not explained it. You hand-wavingly say it summarizes supply at a "reasonable" price, yet fail to offer the mathematical formula for determining what is reasonable. No doubt because it cannot be described mathematically as it is just arbitrary judgement.
But if you accept that it is, indeed, just arbitrary judgment then how can it be summarized further? I can't read your mind. You have to explicitly tell me what judgment you have made. Once we have established what you have judged, why are you providing a secondary summary? All the information I need to know about your judgment has already been communicated.
"Shortage" works economically to summarize a situation as the conditions that define it are external. But socially, it seems the conditions are internal and thus needs to be communicated in full anyway, so there is nothing left to summarize. This so-called summary doesn't say anything.
Yes, economically it summarizes a situation where price is unable to rise. Your regional milage may vary, but I've seen a few shortages around town lately. Here are a couple of them:
1. Price gouging laws prevented the price of toilet paper from rising when supply stocks were low in 2020. Instead of them selling for thousands of dollars per roll (or whatever it would have taken to satisfy the market), people were running the store as fast as they could to cheaply buy up everything they could get their hands on, soon leaving the shelves bare. Eventually stores had to place limitations on how many rolls individuals could buy. Here, a price-based mechanism failed to manage resource allocation, so other mechanisms (first-come, first-served initially, followed by rationing) came into effect.
2. Laws intending to maintain fairness in the medical system prevent medical practitioners accepting any amount of money from patients (i.e. the price cannot rise above zero) as to not allow those with means to offer more money to pull a doctor away from surgery to look at their common cold symptoms. As a price-based mechanism is not available, we resort to a needs-based system. If you show up with cold-like symptoms and someone else shows up with a heart attack, and there is only one doctor available, you have to give up on seeing the doctor no matter how much money you have to spend. Sorry.
That's what shortages look like, from the economic point of view.
But what does "shortage" summarize socially? I respect that you have a social take, but you've still not explained it. You hand-wavingly say it summarizes supply at a "reasonable" price, yet fail to offer the mathematical formula for determining what is reasonable. No doubt because it cannot be described mathematically as it is just arbitrary judgement.
But if you accept that it is, indeed, just arbitrary judgment then how can it be summarized further? I can't read your mind. You have to explicitly tell me what judgment you have made. Once we have established what you have judged, why are you providing a secondary summary? All the information I need to know about your judgment has already been communicated.
"Shortage" works economically to summarize a situation as the conditions that define it are external. But socially, it seems the conditions are internal and thus needs to be communicated in full anyway, so there is nothing left to summarize. This so-called summary doesn't say anything.