Final answer:
Increasing opportunity costs in producing goods are due to increasing resource scarcity, as per the law of increasing opportunity cost, which implies that resources are not equally effective in producing all types of goods, thus leading to higher costs for additional production.
Step-by-step explanation:
The cause of a society's increasing opportunity costs with respect to the production of goods is increasing resource scarcity. This concept is known as the law of increasing opportunity cost, which states that as more of a good or service is produced, the marginal opportunity cost of producing additional units increases. This increase in cost happens because resources are not equally suitable for producing all goods and services. As a specific resource is increasingly allocated to the production of one good, the foregone opportunity to produce other goods becomes greater, translating to higher opportunity costs. For example, the production possibilities frontier (PPF) illustrates this principle; the curve is concave, indicating that the opportunity cost increases as the quantity produced increases, reflecting resource scarcity.