The Political Economy of Continuance Scarcity, Crisis, and Reconfigurative Capacity in Finite Continuance

Economic theory has developed sophisticated accounts of scarcity, exchange, production, distribution, growth, equilibrium, crisis, and institutional adaptation. A further philosophical question concerns the capacity of an economic order to continue when the conditions constituting its problems are themselves transformed through economic action. This article develops that question through the ontology of Finite Continuance. The central claim is that economic continuance consists in the preservation of reconfigurative capacity under conditions of scarcity, erosion, crisis, and structural transformation. An economic problem can change through the attempts made to solve it. A policy designed to address one form of scarcity can alter prices, incentives, dependencies, technologies, expectations, and patterns of distribution, thereby generating a transformed problem. Continuance consequently requires an economic capacity to reorganize in response to problems whose structures are themselves changing. The article develops four interconnected arguments. First, scarcity is treated as a dynamic economic relation whose significance depends upon production, distribution, technological organization, institutional access, and temporal conditions. Second, the transformation of ordinary goods into luxury goods and the diffusion of formerly luxurious goods into ordinary consumption reveal two directions of economic reclassification. Third, economic power is interpreted as differential control over the conditions of reconfiguration, including temporal reserve, institutional access, exit capacity, and the ability to absorb or impose erosive costs. Fourth, economic crisis is conceptualized as transformation of the problem itself. This perspective extends conventional discussions of resilience by identifying reconfigurative capacity as a distinct criterion of economic continuance. The resulting framework contributes a philosophical vocabulary for analyzing political economy under chronic instability while preserving a distinction between conceptual ontology and empirical economic measurement. The article also engages contemporary literature on capabilities, institutionalism, complexity, ecological economics, and feminist political economy, proposes a set of measurable indicators for reconfigurative capacity, examines a range of case studies, and offers deeper responses to anticipated objections. Keywords: Finite Continuance, political economy, scarcity, economic crisis, reconfigurative capacity, erosion, economic power, economic change, homeorhesis, political economy of erosion, capability approach, resilience, institutional economics.