Re: Wants and needs (Was Re: Blumenstock's Beef)

[Hyman Blumenstock <hystock@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bruce R. McFarling wrote:
>
> On Sun, 26 Oct 1997 16:40:10 -0500 (EST), Harry Veeder
> <aa361@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >A "want" is not the same thing as a "finite capacity to consume".
> >Perhaps, it should be stated like this instead:
> >
> >      Each person has a finite capacity to consume over any given
> >      interval of time due to physical limitations.
>
>         Let me draw your attention to Frank Ackerman's paper, "Perspectives
> on the Economics of Consumption," in the Sepetember 1997 Journal of
> Economic Issues.  Frank cites a study by Tibor Scitovsky, _The Joyless
> Economy_, 1976, from the Oxford University Press, in which Scitovsky
> points out the distinction that psychology draws between two different
> types of consumer Satisfaction: comfort and pleasure.  Nearly all desires
> for comfort are satiable -- and Hyman's paradigmatic example of food
> is a good example of this: the discomfort associated with hunger is
> satisfied by consuming food, and there is a limit on the amount of food
> of adequate quality that is required to alleviate this discomfort.

I read a suggestion by a nutritionist that the ideal approach to the
essential act of eating is to treat it and think of it identically as we
do of breathing.  A natural function that is performed unconsciously
throughout the day.  The eons of time of traditional concern about
finding enough to eat has upset that ideal concept wherein today, people
have the act of eating too much on their minds, leading to the ritual of
"dining" and obesity.  Most damaging of all, is that the entire
discipline of "Economics, the Science of Scarcity," along with the
entire Financial Industry, is a  deadly cancer upon the body politic,
and is a direct outgrowth solely of the ancient scarcity of Food.

> The
> exception is the comfort of belonging -- of social acceptance -- and if
> society is organised so that the discomfort of lack of social acceptance
> is alleviated by acquisition and display of positional status goods,
> then the demand for these positional goods need not be satiable, since
> an increased abundance of a positional status good simply increases the
> amount that must be displayed as a marker of a given position.

This follows that ultimate philosophy I've suggested, as is the
identical approach of the Real Sciences, that "Achievement is
Proportional to Motivation and Inversely Proportional to Frustration"
wherein Motivation is comprised of two distinct elements, Security and
Self Esteem.  To those loaded with Money, Security is virtually assured,
though compromised a bit by the possible attacks by those who do not yet
know such Security themselves and are prone to forcibly take some of
that from the more fortunate.

Some of those "positional" goods include the artifacts that we often
call "Money" wherein one's Self Esteem may be enhanced by being known to
have more Money than anyone else.  There is a current contest being
monitored by Forbes Magazine on who is where on the scale of possesion
of quantities of money, wherein Gates is the still current leader.  The
only prize he can claim is the Self Esteem of being the best in that
accomplishment, as some children do on who possesses the most lollipops
or baseball cards.

>         It is consuming for pleasure that is potentially insatiable,
> since the pleasure derived from consumption is in part due to novelty,
> so that the pleasure derived from maintaining a given level of consumption
> declines over time.  For durables in particular, the old novelties
> accumulate while most of the pleasure is derived from playing with the
> most recently acquired possession.

"Consuming for pleasure" cannot be even "potentially insatiable," as a
practical matter, except if we were to believe in Superman powers.
Under the natural human need to sleep, the contraints that permit no one
to be in more than one place at a time, of being able to do only one
thing at a time, means that there is a limited capability to consume or
use, no matter how much anyone may want to have the powers of Superman.
It is incumbent upon a purportedly practical discipline such as
Economics is supposed to be, to evince reality and not fantasy.  As that
discipline so obviously needs "insatiability" to remain viable, and that
has proven to be impossible, the time has long come that "Economics, the
Science of Scarcity" add some more chapters on Abundance, or write an
entirely new textbook called "Econmics 2, the Science of Abundance."
>
>         Quote.
>         This leads Scitovski, like Galbraith and Hirsch, to skepticism
> about the urgency of incessant growth in production.  That attitude
> is reinforced by Scitovsky's answer to the second question [that is,
> which satisfactions are necessarily obtained through purchases in the
> marketplace?]: many of lifes most important satisfactions come from
> non-market activities or from the process of work, rather than from
> consumption of purchased goods and services.
>         Unquote. pp. 658f.

It should be obvious that "incessant growth in production" is anathema
in the light of our limited capacity to consume or use.  Satisfactions
most properly will no longer be within the area of possession of
anything, open to everyone, but in accomplishments in the Pursuit of
Knowledge and the maintenance of a most durable and satisfactory
condition of our sphere of influence, that ought to be of unlimited
possibility into the unforeseeable future of now unbelievable magnitude.

Hyman
>