Thoughts to ponder

This book review has introduced me to a new enemy, the economist Tyler Cowen…

…”The critical economic problem is scarcity,” he says in his book.
Like all other capitalist economist, Cowen is ideologically welded to
this bad idea of lack and shortages as the key problem. However,
scarcity is rarely real but manufactured. There is an abundance of
energy in the world. The sun gives it to us daily for free. All this
talk about there being not enough energy, food, fuel has been
essentially false. And the wars that have been fought to protect the
little there is for survival have been false wars–wars whose only truth
is that they befitted those who in this or that period of history owned
the means of production.

If scarcity was an authentic problem (rather than a fabricated one) then Africa would not be poor.

Here is the full review, which is titled "Bad Economics."  The pointer is from a loyal MR reader.