Something interesting about this is that Bourgeois neoclassical economics manages to acknowledge that people won’t simply consume greedily, even if things are free.
Marginal Utility asserts that people will only consume commodities such that they satisfy some want or need. If I’m hungry, I’ll buy a banana, maybe a bunch to have later.
But my hunger won’t drive me to buy 800 bunches in one go, because that many bananas has a deminishing return in their marginal utility to satiate my hunger.
If that’s true, it doesn’t require market mechanisms for the distribution of goods and services to continue being true. Re: your healthcare example
With food, in particular, the value is in the supply chain not the ability to horde individual commodities. I don’t want 800 bananas, but I do want a banana stand on my corner where I can get fresh bananas daily.
In theory, markets are supposed to organically generate these social amenities and price them at the prevailing wage rate for the community, such that individuals bid into/out of existence goods and services through a pseudo-collective “expressed demand”.
In practice, choke points in the supply chain create opportunities for arbitrage and price fixing. So goods that should be cheap and abundant - like fruit - suddenly become expensive and scarce when a single enormous conglomerate (like the United Fruit Company) holds a vertical monopoly on the commodity.
This artificial scarcity is then used to justify price-rationing of the commodity. And pretty soon you’re selling people $500 Bijin Hime strawberries in a Japanese mega-mall, while working class people can’t afford basics.
Something interesting about this is that Bourgeois neoclassical economics manages to acknowledge that people won’t simply consume greedily, even if things are free.
Marginal Utility asserts that people will only consume commodities such that they satisfy some want or need. If I’m hungry, I’ll buy a banana, maybe a bunch to have later.
But my hunger won’t drive me to buy 800 bunches in one go, because that many bananas has a deminishing return in their marginal utility to satiate my hunger.
If that’s true, it doesn’t require market mechanisms for the distribution of goods and services to continue being true. Re: your healthcare example
With food, in particular, the value is in the supply chain not the ability to horde individual commodities. I don’t want 800 bananas, but I do want a banana stand on my corner where I can get fresh bananas daily.
In theory, markets are supposed to organically generate these social amenities and price them at the prevailing wage rate for the community, such that individuals bid into/out of existence goods and services through a pseudo-collective “expressed demand”.
In practice, choke points in the supply chain create opportunities for arbitrage and price fixing. So goods that should be cheap and abundant - like fruit - suddenly become expensive and scarce when a single enormous conglomerate (like the United Fruit Company) holds a vertical monopoly on the commodity.
This artificial scarcity is then used to justify price-rationing of the commodity. And pretty soon you’re selling people $500 Bijin Hime strawberries in a Japanese mega-mall, while working class people can’t afford basics.