Ok so jumping back to applies, say I have an apple and Mr A and Mr B want it. I'm going to give the apple to the person who pays me the most money. To keep it simple, this is the only apple. Maybe I've drawn a smiley face on it to make it an artwork, maybe there has been a breakout of Apple Plague, I dunno.

How do you square that with this conception of affordability? Since only one apple exists, is the person who doesn't get the apple in a state where they can afford it even though they didn't have enough money to buy it?

> The only thing standing in your way from not getting the oil you want to have is what people believe.

I'm pretty sure it is physical limits. I can think of a lot of schemes for infinite oil it is were available. There'd be a lot of space travel involved.

You could choose to give the apple to the hungry person. You might choose that because you want their help in a different way. Or because you feel it is right. Or they are your kid. Or you give it to the strong person to have a better alliance.

Or you could have the apple taken from you. You might even have more taken, like your life. The other side has a say too! They both might believe that you shouldn't have it and (might makes right, right?) capitalism wont save you there.

That we don't (or do) take by force is a social construct. That we choose to instead honor an imaginary dollar tied to the intrinsic ability of our government to service its own debts is a social construct. Or the idea that maybe we should split the apple or plant it to make more apples. I can imagine a parent with two kids: "fine, nobody gets an apple, it goes in the trash since we can't agree." Nothing here is "one natural order." It is what people decide. And why they decide is based on squishy human reasoning. Social constructs.

I'm on board with people getting excited about living in a society, it is all pretty magical. But affordability isn't some random social construct, it is in great part about physical limits. Unless you want to redefine what words mean which is always an option available to us.

Your strange and desperate attempts to turn this off-topic continue to be recognized, but for those still reading in good faith, it was resource allocation that was said to be the social construct. Who can afford and who cannot afford something is decided by the whims of people and nothing more.

Scarcity is a physical phenomenon. Only one $thing exists and more than one person wants it. Scarcity. The agreement to transfer that $thing to someone is based on humans respecting made up rules. Society. Social constructions. How we define affordability is different. You can "pay" in different ways, some that don't have physical mapping t real world like "social standing."

The laws of supply and demand and scarcity still apply, yes. But how that plays out is social. People have to agree or fight. "Affordability" is based on what we agree is worth an exchange. You may value the approval of the recipient more than money. What does affordability mean here? To curry favor later with someone else or because your moral framework lets you sleep better (they were a hungry kid and you don't want kids hungry - another kind of scarcity where we define affordability by how hungry you are).

Like you said, unless we redefine words. Then you can have affordability and scarcity mean the same thing.

Edit: snark reduction

Right. Purely a social construct. You are enabled to make that choice because Mr A and Mr B also believe you should be able to make that choice.

But what if they stop believing? Consider that Mr A and Mr B now believe the Mr B has the devine right to the last remaining apple. Do you think they are going to continue to respect that you want the most money for it? Of course not. They'll simply take it from you.

> I'm pretty sure it is physical limits.

Do you mean like if you attempted to take oil that isn't considered to be yours that an army will roll in and destroy you? That is quite likely, but the consideration of it not being yours and even the army itself are social constructs. That only plays out because the people believe in it. If, instead, people believed that the oil should be yours, you'd have no issue.

Again, whether or not you can afford oil — or anything else — simply comes down to whether or not people believe you should have it. It is entirely a social construct.

Exactly. Now you're starting to get it. Mr B being able to get an apple by "devine right" and him being able to afford the apple are the exact same thing. And as you witnessed, Mr B was suddenly able to afford an apple he previously may not have been able to afford just because on a whim people changed what they believed in. So, as you can now plainly see, resource allocation is entirely a social construct, just as I said originally.

> The social construct you're pointing at is the labelling of the situation rather than the underlying physics of the situation, is where I'm going with this.

In other words you are trying to randomly change the subject? Resource scarcity is a thing. That much is true. We couldn't recognize resource allocation if it wasn't. But it is not the particular subject we are discussing.

The discussion, in case you have already forgotten, is about how better resource allocation would, apparently, solve many other problems people face. Whereas I am dubious of the claim. My take is that if humans are screwing up something as simple as resource allocation, they're going to continue to also screw up everything else even after you've taken resource allocation out of their hands such that all the other problems will remain.

Is this weird diversion of yours because you want to support the original assertion emotionally but can't actually stand behind it logically and hoping that if you can steer us into talking about something else that that we'll forget all about it?