Talk:Shortage economy

message: Right, so let's see, what are the actual differences between my version and yours? I see the following:
:you seem to be doing a good job of sorting this out between the two of you, but let me still give you a third opinion on the disputed points.
*In the first paragraph, your version unnecessarily mentions twice the fact that Eastern European economies were planned. I simply removed the second mention of it.
** I don't mind that, but I don't understand why do you remove the phrase: which to Kornai were inevitable consequences of the 'classical' communism economic system
***Well, because that's the meaning of "systemic flaws": flaws that are inherent in the system... -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 09:06, 6 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Dispute of August 2005

message: A comment on structure: This is great as a beginning - for improvements, I'd suggest shortening the lead section (before the TOC) and putting some of that in the article. I, and several other Wikipedians, have somewhat of a distaste for bullet point lists as in the "definitions" part. I'd suggest putting this in prose, including a one or two sentence concise definition.
The article would certainly benefit from some mention of voices critical of Kornai, which I'm sure do exist. bastel 18:34, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Structure of Article

message: I'm left with a question the article didn't seem to address; I hope someone here can answer it for me. The article says that people would usually que for hours a day to get their goods. What is the distribution like? I'm having a hard time imagining what it would of been like for those people. Did they have to wait in line for hours a day, over multiple days, at the same store, for a period of a week, to finally get a pair of shoes? Did they wait in line for a couple hours at one store, get their goods, then head to another store just to wait again? Thanks for any info you can give me; I'll try my best to integrate it into the article if you would like. Triddle 16:43, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I am too young to remember the details, (un)fortunately. I think that multi-days queues were rare. What happeded is (IIRC) that the word of mouth spread that the given shop (which usually was empty) would receive a shippment of meat/shoes/toilet paper/milk/etc., and then people from the neighbourhood would go queue there as soon as they god the word. I don't think people would wait for days, but it was not uncommon to get up few hours before the opening, before the dawn, and go there (the best pararell you may be familiar in Western culture is die-hard fans waiting for movie tickets, like Star Wars). The key point is that queues were not common, since most of the time there was no reason to queue for empty shelves, so they happend only when there was (a possibility of) a new shippment. You'd better interview some older people for the more 'hands on' answer though. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 18:23, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it depends. Multi-day queues were common in Poland in the 1980s, but mostly in case of furniture and other harder-to-get items. With meat it was easier, sometimes you could even buy it in an hour or two. What Piotrus did not mention is that a completely new queue culture developed in Poland back then. There was a new occupation called stacz (literally stander). A stander was a person (usually a pensioner) who - in exchange for money or some goods - spent his or hers day in queues to buy items for other people. Another institution was a so-called queue committee. Usually when it was apparent that a queue would last for hours and days, people gathered up and formed such a committee and created a queue list. That way you did not have to stay there all day and night, but instead simply had to report once every two hours, for instance. This did not always work obviously and there were queue-jumpers as well. //Halibutt 22:15, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Question

message: Is the market for video game consoles as of November 2006 through January 2008 a shortage economy? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 17:55, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Look for citations and research. I doubt it - it is a luxury good, and those are governed by different laws than normal ones. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk  22:51, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I know this query is really old, but the market for video game consoles is actually a textbook example in many Industrial Organization courses of a situation where private companies may create artificial shortages for strategic reasons (more or less to "generate buzz"). This is perhaps a topic which deserves its own article on Wikipedia but it is distinct from Kornai's ideas.radek (talk) 00:26, 20 August 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wii]] as an example? 

message: The subject "shortage economy" is clearly a distinct concept, of different category: "shortage" is a fact of life, while "shortage economy" is an economic theory. It is a reasonably large article, and in wikipedia actually the opposite actions is preferred: to keep separate subjects in separate articles. - üser:Altenmann >t 21:18, 16 August 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Undone merge to "[[Shortage]]" 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This is quite a poorly written article and would benefit from being rewritten by somebody else. I will focus on the introductory statement which is confusing, slightly non sequitur and possibly illogical. 
"In his article Economics of Shortage (1980), Kornai argued that the chronic shortages seen throughout Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1970s (and which continued during the 1980s) were not the consequences of planners' errors, but rather systemic flaws."
The next statement sounds a little like the author's opinion. The way it is phrased makes it unclear if this is part of Kornai's opinion or the author's. Clarification is needed. 
"A shortage of a certain item does not necessarily mean that the item is not being produced;" 
This statement is so obvious, that is either absurd or patronises the reader. At any rate it is ambiguous as it does not differentiate between the following three possibilites: Not produced at all. Produced, but at a level that falls short of demand. Produced at a level that exceeds demand but is being obstructed from reaching the point of demand by some factor. Perhaps you meant to say "produced in a quantity that would satisfy demand"?
"rather, it means that the amount of the good demanded exceeds the amount supplied at a given price (see supply and demand)."
This is self contradictory. In the first half of the sentence, you imply that supply may adequate for demand but is being prevented from reaching the point of demand under the law of supply and demand and in the second, you imply it is not. It is irrelevant for this purpose what the cause of the demand (ie price) is. Demand is demand. It is better to be explicit or to explicitly state uncertainty than to insinuate and imply. 
This may be caused by a government-enforced low price which encourages consumers to demand a higher amount than is supplied. 
"may be" is vague and implies that there are other possible causes, which are not discussed here. Again, the reader is left wondering what he or she is not being told. 
"However, Kornai concentrated on the role of reduced supply and argued that this was the underlying cause of Eastern European shortages during the 1980s." 
Implying that what was written before is nothing to do with Kornai and is the author's opinion instead. This corresponds to comments made by other Wikipedians on this article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.93.146.80 (talk) 13:34, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quality Issues