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Scarcity of resources - YouTube
Channel: Khan Academy
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all of economics is based on this notion
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of scarcity of resources what does
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scarcity mean well in an everyday
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context it means that there's not as
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much of something say a resource as
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people may need or there's not an
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unlimited amount of something so not
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unlimited
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unlimited
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amount
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of a resource or resources
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resource and i'll put a little resource
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or
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is and the common examples especially in
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an academic economics class when people
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are talking about scarcity and the
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resources they're talking about they'll
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often say
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land and when by saying land they're
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speaking generally of natural resources
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and so
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examples of this would be things like
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energy
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it could even be things like water
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it could be lumber
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it could be
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minerals maybe some type of metal
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obviously it could be land itself and
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you could see some of that depicted in a
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picture like this clearly there is land
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here and you could even argue maybe even
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the solar energy that it has access to
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that these would all be broadly put into
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this category
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now another type of natural resource
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that is often talked about in an
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economics class will be labor
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and labor we associate with people
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working and that is what labor is making
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reference to it's all about work
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effort
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and when we talk about work effort we
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could talk about the workers
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and how much they are working so hours
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of labor
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hours of
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labor and this picture right over here
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is a clear picture of some workers
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now another resource that you will often
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talk about in the context of scarcity is
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capital
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and capital can be a little bit
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confusing at first well it's things that
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people make in order to make other
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things
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so things
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made
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to make
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other
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things
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and so just to hit the point home here
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pause this video in these pictures what
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capital do you actually see
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well there's actually a bunch of capital
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in these pictures there's some of the
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obvious things like these tools this
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would be a clear example of capital even
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these buildings these buildings are used
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to maybe store animals or crops so these
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are things that someone made in order to
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help make other things and some of maybe
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the less obvious things even you might
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not even notice it at first but there's
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these power lines here this is someone
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made this in order to help us distribute
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energy which could be used to make other
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things so that too could be used that
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could be an example of capital here
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now the fourth resource that you will
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hear folks talk about is really thinking
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about well how do we know how to combine
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these first three types of resources and
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we could call that
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entrepreneurship
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entrepreneurship
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some times people will refer to
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technology but this is all how to
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combine
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how to combine
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all of the above right over here one
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through three these types of resources
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right over here
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someone had to decide that hey this
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these were good places to put these
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storage houses someone had to decide
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where to put the power lines someone
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just had to decide how what crops to
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plant here and how to plant them someone
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had to decide well what type of labor do
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we need what type of land what type of
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capital the actual factory building the
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factory equipment do we need in order to
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produce whatever these these folks are
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producing right over here and that
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general notion you could talk about as
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entrepreneurship and so the big picture
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here is think about the world around you
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there is not an unlimited amount of land
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especially if you're thinking about land
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for a specific purpose there's not an
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unlimited amount of natural resources
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energy lumber some type of metal there's
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not an unlimited amount of labor there's
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only so many people who who are who
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exist and there's not an unlimited
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amount of capital we don't have an
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infinite number of buildings or
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equipment and we don't have an infinite
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amount of entrepreneurship we can only
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have so much energy to think about how
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do we put these other things together
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so i will leave you there and as we go
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further in our quest in economics we're
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going to see the scarcity of these four
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resources show up over and over again
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