ABSTRACT
It has been an important tenet of economics that every commodity is freely available at a price determined by the relation of supply to demand, an assumption that has not always been true. The supply of whale oil, used in the 19th century for candles and lamps, could not be increased indefinitely, no matter the price offered for it. In such exceptional cases it has usually been found that a steeply rising cost for one commodity encourages the development of alternatives capable of doing the same job—natural oil replaced whale oil, and if the price of a particular metal goes too high, some other material usually takes over its function. Shortly after coming to office, President Carter caused the US Non-proliferation Act to be passed by Congress. It was these liberal conditions which the new Non-proliferation Act replaced by the stringent conditions described above, even though the original agreements had not yet run their course.
