alt Hacker News> I'm going to give the apple to the person who pays me the most money.
Right. Purely a social construct. You are enabled to make that choice because Mr A and Mr B also believe you should be able to make that choice.
But what if they stop believing? Consider that Mr A and Mr B now believe the Mr B has the devine right to the last remaining apple. Do you think they are going to continue to respect that you want the most money for it? Of course not. They'll simply take it from you.
> I'm pretty sure it is physical limits.
Do you mean like if you attempted to take oil that isn't considered to be yours that an army will roll in and destroy you? That is quite likely, but the consideration of it not being yours and even the army itself are social constructs. That only plays out because the people believe in it. If, instead, people believed that the oil should be yours, you'd have no issue.
Again, whether or not you can afford oil — or anything else — simply comes down to whether or not people believe you should have it. It is entirely a social construct.
> But what if they stop believing?
That is what I'm asking you. Are you saying that you just want to use a different word capture the idea that only one person can have the apple? Because instead of saying Mr A can't afford the apple you're saying that Mr A can't have the apple because of a divine right ... that looks a lot like it has the same implications as affordability.
The social construct you're pointing at is the labelling of the situation rather than the underlying physics of the situation, is where I'm going with this. If scarcity is a factor, then affordability exists as a reality. You can relabel it as a social construct, but you can't escape the real world.
> Do you mean like if you attempted to take oil that isn't considered to be yours that an army will roll in and destroy you?
I mean that more than the social limits, the real limits are the bigger part of why I can't do what I want with oil.