the.com/scarceness
Value's favorite costume — rarity dressed up as worth, worn by diamonds and your attention span alike.
means The state of being scarce — not enough of something to go around, which is exactly what makes everyone want it more.
from Scarceness rides on 'scarce,' which came into English through Anglo-Norman 'scars' / Old French 'escars' meaning stingy or scanty, tracing back to a presumed Vulgar Latin 'excarpsus' — related to 'excerpere,' to pick out or extract. The sense is of something picked out sparingly, rationed rather than given freely — so a word for stinginess slowly widened into a neutral term for simply not having much of a thing.
- vs scarcity
- scarceness is the quality, scarcity the condition
- econ logic
- demand held constant, less supply means higher price
- dark use
- manufactured by cartels to inflate perceived value
- linguistic fate
- older word, steadily losing ground to scarcity