The End of a Problem by Nikhil Sharda

Let us ask, first, how the problem happens to arise. It isn’t just a fanciful affair, a puzzle to be worked on for sport or entertainment. If a man has to decide whether to seek gain for himself or gain for his fellows, it can only be because circumstances are such that he cannot do both. If he could do both, if the two were never incompatible, the problem could not arise. He could then gratify his wishes with the happy knowledge that he was injuring nobody, or that he was actually helping others. There must, therefore, be certain social circumstances, which make one man’s gain a loss to others. These circumstances are chiefly two: (1) a scarcity of goods and services, and (2) the exploitation of one group of men by another group. Let us look at these further.

(1) Scarcity means that there are not enough goods and services to satisfy the normal wants of all members of society. It means that there are not enough houses, clothes, food, medical care, education and so forth, for everybody to have as much of them as he wants or even as much as he needs. From this insufficiency it follows that the possession of things by some people entails the lack or loss of them in others. Those who have, not unreasonably want to keep; and those who have not, with equal reason want to get. There ensues a competition, always vigorous and sometimes violent, which would never exist in a society of genuine abundance. For what would be the point of taking food from another’s mouth, if there were so much of it available that you, on the other hand, wouldn’t need to take it, and he, on the other, could easily replenish his loss?