The history of economic ideas, then, is at least concerned with ideas about these phenomena. The developing child has ideas about how its mother will respond if it chooses a particular action. In other words, it forms ideas about the relationship between mother and father. These ideas become more intricate as brothers and sisters, neighbors, etc. are added. The child comes to make judgments about the knowledge, plan-making, and choices of all those who it believes are relevant to its own action.
Economic ideas fall into the broader class of ideas about human interaction.
They are an extension of the developing child's ideas about his family, neighbors, and relevant others. The next step is to separate distinctly economic ideas from other ideas in this class. The final step is to distinguish economic phenomena from other, non-economic yet social phenomena. There are apparently a variety of ways to make the distinction. Scarcity is not, by itself, a sufficient distinguishing concept because scarcity is a defining characteristic of choice.