Responding days after the fact to someone who’s deleted their account, but what the hell.
The more commonly accepted usage doesn’t work—it’s literally wrong for the purpose of the technical term; one might as well complain that in “everyday” usage speed and velocity are synonyms
I sympathize with this.
But frankly, I just never expected that people would get so hung up over the definition of scarcity. I just took it for granted that the community of a site with such a fantastic series of articles as this wouldn’t argue about definitions rather than rolling with the concept being conveyed.
I don’t sympathize with this. It’s a hypocritical bullshit move to spend 2,500 words baroquelybelabouring your preferred meaning of “scarcity”, and to then affect surprise & disappointment about other people getting “hung up” about the word’s meaning.
If “scarcity” is a problem, then just substitute “tabtab” or whatever random string on your own; no need to wait for me to do it.
But part of the point of the “37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong” post you linked one sentence earlier is that words aren’t fungible like that, because they carry connotations (way 26), can be used in a needlessly odd and hard-to-understand fashion (way 20), start needless arguments (way 22), and so on!
It’s even more surprising because this is a community based around articles like this one. Surely it’s obvious that determining the proper label for the concept being conveyed does not make you stronger, and the goal instead should be to learn the economics presented in the articles.
Sure it can make you stronger; it can help you avoid the failure modes listed in “37 Ways”. And in the end there wasn’t much “economics presented in the articles” aside from the languid discussion of scarcity.
That the modal response does not seem to be “How can I use these articles to become stronger?” is disappointing, albeit perfectly normal.
This smells like a fully general counterargument one could use to brush off any criticism of one’s writing in a cool-sounding, world-weary way.
Responding days after the fact to someone who’s deleted their account, but what the hell.
I sympathize with this.
I don’t sympathize with this. It’s a hypocritical bullshit move to spend 2,500 words baroquely belabouring your preferred meaning of “scarcity”, and to then affect surprise & disappointment about other people getting “hung up” about the word’s meaning.
But part of the point of the “37 Ways That Words Can Be Wrong” post you linked one sentence earlier is that words aren’t fungible like that, because they carry connotations (way 26), can be used in a needlessly odd and hard-to-understand fashion (way 20), start needless arguments (way 22), and so on!
Sure it can make you stronger; it can help you avoid the failure modes listed in “37 Ways”. And in the end there wasn’t much “economics presented in the articles” aside from the languid discussion of scarcity.
This smells like a fully general counterargument one could use to brush off any criticism of one’s writing in a cool-sounding, world-weary way.