Murray argues that the free market can handle all problems of shortages without a government campaign for “sacrifice,” and what he said about energy conservation in the 1970s applies to government calls today to curb our use of fossil fuels: “Is there an ‘energy shortage,’ and are Carter’s draconian measures necessary to alleviate it? Here, we must point to a vital distinction that lies at the heart of economic science: between ‘scarcity’ and a ‘shortage.’ Not only are all forms of energy scarce, but all goods and services, without exception, are scarce as well. That is, people could always use more of them if available. We have always lived in a world of scarcity for all goods, and we always will, short of the Garden of Eden; economic development over the centuries has consisted in making goods relatively less scarce than heretofore. The test of whether or not any good or service is scarce is very simple: is its price greater than zero? If it is, then it is scarce. Happily, air is not scarce, and so its price on the market is zero (although this is not true of conditioned air.) Everything else is scarce. How, then, are these universally scarce supplies to be allocated, to be ‘rationed’? In the free market, such ‘rationing’ is done, smoothly and harmoniously, by the free price system. The price of any good on the market equates its available supply with the demand for it — with the amount that consumers are willing to purchase at the market price. The free market smoothly adjusts to differences in relative scarcity. Suppose, for example, that a frost kills much of the orange crop, and the supply of oranges on the market is reduced. The free market price then rises to equate supply and demand. There is no need for anyone, least of all government, to order everyone to ‘conserve’ their purchases of oranges because supply has been reduced.”