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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6332735" data-attributes="member: 4937">The quoted paragraph isn't about economics.  It's about magic.  Clearly you've got a high understanding of economics, but your faith in it is too great.   Your understanding of magic is lacking.  Even with you understanding of economics though, I've got several quibbles. Quite wrong.  Supply is also set more by human psychology than anything else.  Human psychology tends to see most things as commodities and this particular seeing motivates humans to meet demand by creating supply.  The seeing of the thing as a commodity is an essential aspect governing the supply.  If the thing isn't seen as a commodity, this will determine supply - and there are plenty of things we see as a commodity in only a limited way or which are seen as commodities by only a limited number of people (who exclude themselves as suppliers), or which aren't seen as commodities at all (even if they could be).A good example of how psychology effects supply is the market for slaves.  Prior to the late 18th century, there was a robust market for slaves everywhere in the world.   Almost everyone saw slaves as commodities and so the normal laws of supply and demand applied to human lives.  To a larger and larger extent ever since the 18th century, increasingly people have been cultured to not see slaves as valid commodities and these people consequently place no price on slaves much less persons regardless of demand.   So the market gets hit from both directions - reduced demand and reduced supply.   A market still exists to be sure because of lingering combinations of culture and sociopathy, but you can't claim only the demand side is effected by psychology.One could imagine a sentient species that sees nothing as a commodity at all.   In that case, no markets or prices in a traditional sense would exist.   The species is appalled by the whole idea of, "Because you want something, I should go get it for you and then charge a payment."   Again, the laws of economics for the most part aren't physical laws like inertia or gravity.</blockquote>

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