Yes, that's true. There can be localised relative abundances of some inputs. Eg almost all of the world has an abundance of air. But submarines and space stations do not.
I guess I can rescue my statement that we don't have localised abundances of (easily) tradeable goods. And that leads to no localised abundances of all the inputs required to make a tradeable good.
To come back to the original example: flood farming would produce an abundance of agricultural outputs, and those are fairly easy to trade. Both across space and these days also across time, thanks to preservation techniques.
(Not all agricultural outputs are easy to transport or preserve, but there's probably something you can grow that is.)
I hope that in the future almost everywhere in the world will still have way too much air so that it's too cheap to measure; but thanks to global trade food prices will always be relatively flat across the globe.
So even people farming insanely productive regions will have plenty of incentives to innovate to further improve productivity.
Yes, we can see that in the American West where most water is used by agriculture. Exporting food can be seen as a more practical alternative to exporting water. When there's a drought, maybe don't export quite so much?
Water rights are complicated, so water is far from freely-traded commodity, but over time, cities do pay more, and that means they tend to get their way. There's a saying that water flows uphill towards money.
Local abundance is traditional: fruit and vegetables in season. It's still true for people with big gardens, when it's not worth their while to sell it.
> Local abundance is traditional: fruit and vegetables in season. It's still true for people with big gardens, when it's not worth their while to sell it.
Yes, that was basically my point: participating in modern economies tends to smooth out local abundance. [0]
That's good overall! Less waste, more innovation. But, of course, there are certain specific things lost to be nostalgic about.
You are also right that water as an input is subject to lots and lots of distortions. And that leads to wasting of water, especially expensive in places where water is actually scarce.
> Yes, we can see that in the American West where most water is used by agriculture. Exporting food can be seen as a more practical alternative to exporting water. When there's a drought, maybe don't export quite so much?
When water has a proper market clearing price, that's exactly what happens.
[0] Home production in a garden is a good example here, because it's usually not for participating in the wider market economy.
Yes, agreed. To continue, though, I think it's not just nostalgia; people who benefit from local abundance can lose something from more efficiency.
AirBnB is another example. There are benefits to living in a desirable location and they're often free for the residents. If the neighbors are, effectively, selling off those amenities, it benefits them and their customers, but not you. And that's why some communities place restrictions.
I believe the Coase theorem suggests that paying off the neighbors would be somehow efficient, if a deal can be reached. It can be difficult to agree on a price, though.
> AirBnB is another example. There are benefits to living in a desirable location and they're often free for the residents.
To be more precise, they are baked into land values / rent.
> I believe the Coase theorem suggests that paying off the neighbors would be somehow efficient, if a deal can be reached. It can be difficult to agree on a price, though.
I guess I can rescue my statement that we don't have localised abundances of (easily) tradeable goods. And that leads to no localised abundances of all the inputs required to make a tradeable good.
To come back to the original example: flood farming would produce an abundance of agricultural outputs, and those are fairly easy to trade. Both across space and these days also across time, thanks to preservation techniques.
(Not all agricultural outputs are easy to transport or preserve, but there's probably something you can grow that is.)
I hope that in the future almost everywhere in the world will still have way too much air so that it's too cheap to measure; but thanks to global trade food prices will always be relatively flat across the globe.
So even people farming insanely productive regions will have plenty of incentives to innovate to further improve productivity.