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Relative scarcity, the simple yet infinitely prevalent
reality of human nature. That our greed, regardless of how tamed can never be
satiated. There are never enough resources to satisfy all our wants. Or so we
are told. The worlds economists, politicians and citizens each come up with
their own perspective and a way to allocate the limited resources available.
Yet there is something that is consistently overlooked. Something so basic and
simple, that every single child across the world is taught it within the
confines of a grade school class. What could it possibly be?
“The Three R’s” a phrase that is constantly regurgitated and often not fully understood. The
three seemingly simple terms; “Re-use, Reduce and Recycle”, we often
tend to think about the environment, which is a completely separate issue to
the one at hand. A simple reapplication of these principles to economic
practice may very well be part of the answer to the demanding issue that is
relative scarcity. The proposal being a combination of the original Three R’s
to create a Fourth R: Reselling.
For the past decade, especially so in more recent times, the reselling of
goods is growing consistently more popular. This can be attributed to many
factors; such as the push for greener consumerism, changes in trends and an ever-growing
culture of opportunism and entrepreneurship. This is an incredibly positive
thing under almost every light. Particularly in the sense that under the widespread
application of reselling already existing goods, such as vintage electronics or
collectables, there becomes less of a need to produce retail goods, in turn,
lessening the need of resources and alleviating the ramifications of the
scarcity of them. While this is not a comprehensive and absolute solution it is
definitely a start to pleasing the masses and more specifically catering to
their wants with the ever-finite resources we have.
More and more people are falling under this school of thought with many pushes
for more sustainable consumerism and a growing culture of The Three R’s. Many
local examples of this being the Sunday Rotary Markets, the most prominent one
being the Sunday Camberwell Market, or the Southside Flea Market run right on
our very own Chapel street. The concept has even spread to the digital world
with popular sites such as Gumtree and Depop running entirely off of the basis
of reselling or trading already existing goods. Many opportunists have also taken to social media in order to resell and establish independent businesses (examples below), which have gained quite a following and even formed regular community market dates.
The time is right and there is a need more than ever before to reimmerse yourself in The Three R’s.
Year 11 MHS Economics 2020 