Scarcity

ANALYSIS : SCARCITY IN PERSPECTIVE OF ISLAM AND CAPITALISM.

As said earlier, economic is measured by five areas that are food security, health security, education security, life expectancy, moral,ethical, ideological conviction and trust in the economic foundation. Capitalism is said to solve poverty however, it turn out differently. Based on the main article, it shows that all the five areas are decreasing in percentage year by year. One of the area that it badly affected is food security where hunger become worse and not better. This happen even in United States of America where in 2004, it was reported 38.2 million of American is facing hunger and it is increasing from 31 million in 1999 where at the same time America’s GNP percapita increase roughly by 10%. This means, western style of free market is suit only for fulfilling luxuries but not to serve the basic needs of human. To make it worse, when hunger occur, it will cause many other problem to society especially health problem such as malnutrition and ill-health. What is the main cause of hunger? According to capitalism, hunger is caused by scarce of food (resources), but Islam firmly believe that Allah had given all His creation enough sustenance and there is no such thing as scarcity in Islam.

Capitalism set their view that scarcity is the main problem of economic that must be solved. Scarcity happened due to population that keep increasing. Based on Malthus idea, when there are too many people, needs will keep growing and consequently resources are depleting and will not be sufficient for everyone. He afraid of the risk that population would increase faster than food supplies so, he came out with solution by seperating gender that result in birth-control. In reality, the long term effect of birth-control will cause labor force insufficient thus, worsen the economic perfomance as a whole regarding inefficiency in production. Opposite to capitalism, Muslim does not suppose to be afraid of population...