# Scarcity and Opportunity Cost

**URL:** <https://www.libertarianism.org/videos/scarcity-and-opportunity-cost>

**By** Howard Baetjer

**Published:** October 26, 2015

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Baetjer explains scarcity, the problem that any given good of finite supply can only ever be put to some of the many ends for which we might use it, and opportunity cost, the concept that taking one option costs us the benefit we would have gotten from taking the next-best option instead.

Baetjer explains scarcity, the problem that any given good of finite supply can only ever be put to some of the many ends for which we might use it, and opportunity cost, the concept that taking one option costs us the benefit we would have gotten from taking the next-best option instead.