Marcet Conversations in Political Economy - Essay Example

The format that this paper will utilize is to first give a precise definition of what is identified above followed by a brief discussion of what the government might try to do in order to solve said problem including a personal evaluation of the effectiveness of the proposed policy measures. Thirdly this paper will discuss some alternative means by which this problem might be solved with a particular emphasis on informal social arrangements drawing on some real life examples of said arrangement.

The above passage illustrates some fundamental issues of economics and political science. In one respect one could refer to this issue is illustrating the importance of scarcity in its regard to the laws of supply and demand, secondly there is the issue of ownership insofar as it may be the case that who would protect what is free and available to everybody. As one can boil down the entire issue it is arguably the case from an anthropological and sociological perspective that without the feeling of ownership people are not often compelled to take care of any particular resource.

A great case is presented by Diamond (2005) in which it is postulated that the Greenland Norse faced their collapse as a result of over grazing of pastureland, a reluctance to trade with their neighbors and a reluctance to adapt in the wake of a potential societal collapse. What this illustrates is that when resources are relatively free for the taking the wake of poor crop yields it is invariably in the human spirit to over consume other resources which could theoretically bring with it the risks of a total collapse in society.

When one examines the case as illustrated above one could draw the conclusion that if everything were free people would not take a sense of ownership and as such there would be a case of over consumption. From an economics standpoint one could bring