[Riddick]

On a related note, is it ever possible for there to be a "shortage" in the free market? Not to be confused with a good's scarcity, a good's shortage is when consumers want that particular good, they have whatever it takes to pay for it, but the suppliers are unable to meet the demand. A blackout seems to me to be a prime example of a government created shortage. By artificially limiting the number of suppliers (effectively to one, maybe two in a given political district) any entrepreneurial opportunity to enter the market and supply electricity when more is demanded than the monopoly can provide is restricted. People die as a result of this artificial restriction.

Or a less morbid example: surfers are aware that recently Clark Foam, the leading supplier of blank foam used to mold surfboards, shut down suddenly (this shutdown was actually *caused* by the California government, but we'll pretend for now that it wasn't and that the owner was just spiteful and hated money). So relative scarcity of blank foam plunged and the cost of foam skyrocketed for the a brief time. You could still get foam, you just had to pay a much higher price for a few months last winter. Not surprisingly, entrepreneurs. unrestricted by artificial government limitation (and utilizing more of Mexico on the supply-side now, I believe) jumped at the opportunity and as of now foam is once again in abundant supply and back to previous prices.

A more simple example: Picasso's. Because I want a Picasso and cannot get one doesn't mean that there is a shortage of Picasso's. It simply means the relative scarcity of Picasso's has rendered them out of my purchasing range.