I guess you weren't paying attention at all then, which is why you missed the entire point of the exercise, and the proof provided for why that assertion is completely untrue, based on both reality and the economic definitions of supply and quantity supplied.
Here, hopefully this will make it easier for you to get your head around:
Note (and this is crucial) how the seller is always the owner, but the owner is not always a seller.
EACH owner has sole discretion, sole control over the quantities he is willing to make available to the market at a given price (the very definition of supply). Furthermore, the owner is under absolutely no requirement whatsoever to make ANY of the quantities in his possession available to the market AT ANY PRICE. If he has not made a thing available to the market for a price, then he is not consider the SELLER of that thing. That is what full control over both the supply and the quantity supplied means, and why that quantity is anything but fixed.
The sources of your common misapprehension:
- The total quantity owned in existence is not, nor has it ever been, the economic definition of "supply", nor does that have anything to do with the economic definition of supply or quantity supplied. No assertion or insistence on either of your parts will change that. The more common definitions or meanings of supply are not interchangeable with the economic definitions. In economics, ONLY the owners control supply (which is concisely defined), just as ONLY the potential buyers control demand (also well defined).
- Not every good or service is considered supplied simply because it exists. Again, that is not the definition of supply, nor is it simply a matter of price. It is first a matter of whether or not a good or service is even made available for exchange at any price.
This goes to the core of why a million profit-maximizing owners do indeed (TODAY - IN REALITY) behave
very differently, as each one has full control over his units (quantity, area) of supply, whether or not to make ANY of available to the market at all, and if so, at what price they are each willing to make a given quantity available.
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