In microeconomics, supply and demand is an economic model of price determination in a market. It postulates that in a competitive market, the unit price for a particular good, or other traded item such as labor or liquid financial assets, will vary until it settles at a point where the quantity demanded (at the current price) will equal the quantity supplied (at the current price), resulting in an economic equilibrium for price and quantity transacted. The interdependence of relationship between supply and demand in the field of economics is inherently designed to identify the ideal price and quantity of a given product or service in a marketplace. Say's law, or the law of markets, in classical economics, states that aggregate production necessarily creates an equal quantity of aggregate demand. The French economist Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) introduced the idea in 1803, in his principal work, A Treatise on Political Economy (Traité d'économie politique): A product is no sooner created, than it, from that instant, affords a market for other products to the full extent of its own value. And : As each of us can only purchase the productions of others with his own productions – as the value we can buy is equal to the value we can produce, the more men can produce, the more they will purchase. Moving back to dogs, there once was a time, during the frenzied heights of China’s Tibetan mastiff craze, when a droopy-eyed slobbering giant like Nibble might have fetched $200,000 and ended up roaming the landscaped grounds of some coal tycoon’s suburban villa. China’s boom-to-bust luxury landscape is strewn with devalued commodities like black Audis, Omega watches, top-shelf sorghum liquor and high-rise apartments in third-tier cities. Some are the victims of a slowing economy, while others are casualties of an official austerity campaign that has made ostentatious consumption a red flag for anticorruption investigators. Then there is the Tibetan mastiff, a lumbering shepherding dog native to the Himalayan highlands that was once the must-have accouterment for status-conscious Chinese. Four years ago, a reddish-brown purebred named Big Splash sold for $1.6 million, according to news reports, though cynics said the price was probably exaggerated for marketing purposes. No reasonable buyer, self-anointed experts said at the time, would pay more than $250,000 for a premium specimen. Nomadic families have long used mastiffs as nocturnal sentries against livestock thieves and marauding wolves. A primitive breed with a deep guttural bark, they are inured to harsh winters and the thin oxygen of the high-altitude grasslands; like wolves, females give birth only once a year. Like many products in economics, the hayday of China's once booming Tibetian mastiff market too has come to a close. Previously, this majestic breed was kept by wealthy families as a trendy, rather pricey pet and status symbol – but now, interest in the breed has declined dramatically, leading to the abandonment of a significant portion of the country's overbred mastiff population, media reports suggest. By 2015, about one-third of mastiff breeders in the Tibet Autonomous Region had closed down their businesses, and the annual trade in mastiffs in neighboring Qinghai province had dropped from over 200 million yuan ($29 million) at its peak to less than 50 million yuan ($7.2 million), according to China Dialogue. Upon closing up shop, many breeders simply left their dogs on the street. This continues to cause problems in the region today, besides the insane amount of dog feces on the street and the diseases that these animals carry, free-roaming Tibetan mastiffs have proved to be a danger to livestock and even people. Last November, an 8-year-old girl died after she was mauled by a stray in Qinghai. There are regular reports of mastiffs chasing people in packs and even small towns are known to have a population of at least 500 stray dogs.
17th Sept. 2017.