Re: OPEC & Oil Prices - Typos corrected

["Harry Veeder" <veed0001@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

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>From: "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>
>To: POST-KEYNESIAN THOUGHT <pkt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: OPEC & Oil Prices - Typos corrected
>Date: Fri, Mar 17, 2000, 7:51 pm
>

>Harry,
>     My real problem with your remarks had to do with
>all this talk of the "market's attitude."  Markets are not
>entities.  They do not have "attitudes."  People have
>attitudes and markets are made up of people.

Markets are entities, but they aren't necessarily
wise entities. It should not be unrealistic to speak of
"market attitudes". Environmentalists, feminists and everyone
in general discusses "social attitides" so why shouldn't attitudes
also pervade social systems known as markets?

>      I did not say the price went up because of "scarcity."
>To the extent that there is a "scarcity" right now it is
>because OPEC reduced production consciously.  No
>big mystery about any of this.  In doing so at a time of
>rising demand they have triggered rising prices.  I stick
>with my original story.  It is the rising prices that engenders
>all that "respect."

If you say price rises because demand rises this must be
because oil is *apparently* more scarce relative
to demand. Thus you are implicitly relying on some notion
of scarcity as a causual factor in the dtermination of price.

Harry Veeder