Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Scarcest of All Resources

"The one thing that I learned in jail is that money is not the prime asset in life. Time is."
--Gordon Gekko (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps)

We live in a world of scarcity. To survive and prosper, each of us must consume resources that are in short supply. Scarcity of many resources can be alleviated through production. By combining labor with materials and other productive resources, we can produce more so that we can further pursue our interests.

Production reduces scarcity, but does not eliminate it. This is because one or more inputs constrains production. Usually that resource is time. At any moment we can be in only one place, which limits what we can work on at a particular time.

Longitudinally our time is constrained as well. In the near term, factors like preference for leisure over work interests and fatigue limit how long we engage in production before doing something else. In the long term, our lives on earth are limited and death is certain.

Indeed, time may be the scarcest of all resources. Each second that we consume cannot be recovered.

Because we are practiced economizers, one of the more important questions we can constantly ask ourselves is, "Am I making the most of my time?"

2 comments:

dgeorge12358 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
dgeorge12358 said...

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day.
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town.
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking.
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older.
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time.
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines.
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
The time is gone, the song is over,
Thought I'd something more to say.
~Pink Floyd, Time