If economics concerned itself simply with the allocation of scarce resources, we would not need a science or study of economics.  All we would need would be the science of mathematics and good set of accounts.

In such a case, it would be adequate for some knowledgeable person or group of people - say, a dictator, czar, legislature, or department of bureaucrats - to simply allocate the scarce resources and assign the scarce human energy and raw materials necessary for the production of those items in such quantities as the authority deemed appropriate.

The factors however that make an economic science both possible and necessary, are each individual's sense of value, their right of private ownership, and the ability to make sovereign decisions concerning one's own actions and well-being.

When we understand and grasp that individuals are engaged constantly throughout the term of their lives in the ongoing processes of exchange, wherein they trade something of value that they happen to have in surplus (time, energy, money, goods) for something else which at the moment they value more highly than the item they have in surplus (the plus factor), then we begin to understand the significance of the study of economics.

Further, when we understand and grasp the reality that those processes by which these exchanges are made are based on choices that individuals are, and must be in a position to make, we begin to understand just how important private ownership is.

Without human liberty, which implicity entails the recognized right and ability of the individual to make sovereign, undisputed, and final decisions over their own persons, property, and resources, we are unable to make meaningful decisions over our own lives or properties, and we are thus unable to improve our situation.

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