Web of Wealth

There is a problem in defining "needs" and "wants".

One persons need is another person's want.

Need is in the eye of the beholder.

And so on.

So is the definition of needs and wants dependent on the individual or the cultural context?

Or is there an absolute definition?

Frank

Hi Frank. Thanks for joining in!

This is a somewhat big question, but I will make some observations which I hope will provoke further thoughts:

We are all aware of the difference between our needs and our wants, even if we are pretty vague about what our needs actually are. We tend to be pretty precise about what we want though! :-)

Every smoker in the world knows they want a cigarette, but very few now believe that they need one (although it is not that long since that distinction was not generally made).

Likewise, plenty of people know they are overweight because they eat too much, but they can't control their desire for food.

Information changes our ideas of what our needs are. So smokers know they don't need a cigarette, because they know nicotine is addictive and that smoking will probably make them ill if they keep doing it.

Maslow said there is a hierarchy of needs, with basic stuff near the bottom and more subtle things higher up. He had something called "self-actualization" at the top, but what this means clearly depends on what "the self" is. I don't think he had a lot to say about that (although I do not profess to be expert on his work).

If people are starving, it is easy for anyone to understand what they need, as well as what they want. Before the Second World War, the majority of people in Western Europe didn't have enough to eat, whereas just about everyone in the USA has had enough to eat since before the War if Independence.

Now that our standard of living has risen, it gets harder to identify what our needs are. This difficulty obviously means that measurements of our standard of living are extremely hard to do meaningfully. I must confess that it baffles me that anyone seriously believes that Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a useful measure, given that it can easily be seen to rise as a result of degradation of the environment.

For instance, if my car gets vandalised, the processing of the insurance claim and the repair of the car cause money to circulate which would otherwise not have done so, so GDP goes up. If I were to divorce my wife, sell the house and borrow money to buy another one, this would be measured as an increase in GDP too.

The fact that conventional economics just chooses to ignore this is downright weird.

It seems to me that we need to study what real wealth is before we can claim to be measuring anything useful. But most economists just don't want to think about it.

In order to understand wealth, we need to examine the question of the distinction between needs and wants. In order to do that, we have to look at our models of who we are. I think this study needs a new name, since it currently doesn't exist, except scattered across dozens of different existing disciplines.

Maybe it ought to be called Eudemonics - the study of well-being?

I know it sounds a cop out to say that it's all relative but it er is!

I remember my Grandmother hooting with laughter when a lady who she was doing some charring for said to her "My sister is so poor that she can only afford one maid!" That became a family joke. And yet the lady actually meant it and we can smile indulgently at her foolishness.

Yet we are no better than her because if we took a dip in our standard of living we would complain that we were poor.

For me my health is my wealth. After that enough food in my belly, a roof over my head and clothes to keep me warm. Ok a bit like Maslow's hierarchies.

All other needs after that are for me wants in varying degrees.

I remember my Dad saying to me "When you get to a certain age, not much matters a damn" and I'm beginning to understand what he meant :-) He didn't mean it in a negative way cos he kept himself busy in various ways.

In any case why do we want to measure wealth? Is it for the benefit of those that don't come up to some sort of benchmark and if that is so wouldn't that make them very unhappy?

This reminds me of a story about a woman who wasn't unhappy until someone pointed out her wretched condition. Can't remember the details of the story though.

It's surely a measure of our individual and collective wealth that so many of us want to do whatever we can to address the needs of the earthquake-hit people of Haiti. It's a better measure of our wealth that we have the power actually to do something. It's an even better measure of our wealth to suppose that, in the face some similar natural catastrophe - earthquakes of Haitian magnitude are pretty much out of the question round here but, seeing how New Orleans was trashed, we shouldn't discount anything - we aren't as likely as Haiti to have to depend on the kindness of foreigners for our deliverance.
Wealth is power to address both wants and needs. If we so choose.

Over the years I've spent a long time working in Africa where, compared to Beighton, where I live now, life is pretty cheap. Always, though, whatever the African context, it was transparent that my life wasn't as cheap as one of my African colleague's. Reflecting again on the lot of ordinary people in Haiti I can see the same equation at work. Are we westerners worth more because we're wealthier? Or are we wealthier because we're worth more?

Hi John,
Could you expand on what you mean when you say that life in Africa is pretty cheap?

I'll try, Frank.
RHIP is a first-day lesson I learned when I joined the air force when I was fifteen - Rank Has Its Privileges. It's the well-understood basis of 'one law for us, one for them' . And it's essential in maintaining the 'good order and discipline' that's so close to the military heart.
Wealth too has its privileges - the same rules apply - and, as an acronym, WHIP would pretty-much sum it up. WHIP is to empire as RHIP is to the army.
The difference between this country - even back then, some fifty-some-odd years ago, and Africa, a decade ago when I was last there, is what WHIP lets us take for granted. By 'take for granted' I mean things that we miss when they aren't there or when they aren't done properly. Things that effect our lives - food, shelter, clean water, utilities - all the ordinary everyday stuff that we do, in fact, take for granted.
More centrally to my point here, WHIP lets us (more or less) take for granted the rule of law, the highway code, the NHS, uncorrupt officialdom, MOT tests, elected politicians, Health and Safety considerations, and expected levels of both physical and psychological maintenance right across society. And lots more besides.
WHIP also engenders personal expectations in us. To some extent leaving us free to 'follow our dreams' while at the same time being safe in the knowledge that the rule of law and due process apply right across the piece. Shared by all, WHIP is the basis of the level playing field of myth.
However we might feel about these things, however unsatisfactory we might think them, they nonetheless exist and function. If you get murdered in your bed you can be pretty sure something will be done about it, that the law will have its day. It's my experience that this wasn't always the case in Africa.
Imagine the outcry if a crack equivalent to the Grand Canyon developed across the carriageway of your local bypass. Imagine the outcry if an old, unmaintained, overloaded mini-bus kills upwards of a dozen people when it plunges into it. Imagine the outcry when the first people on the scene, powerless to help, can only relieve the dead of what pitiful possessions they had. Imagine the outcry if everyone was no more than a resource.
For me, WHIP in Africa was rather like being in a mobile gated community. As well as my white face, my wealth and my European-ness being a first-line defence, WHIP carried the deeply psychological understanding that I was an individual. That I was, unlike most of my African colleagues, not fungible. And that, if anything happened to me, someone more powerful even than the local big man would be on the case and there would be trouble. And I was just an ordinary bloke. Plain John Smith.
WHIP is a different world.

I've just re-read what I wrote about WHIP.
I think I'm on to something that's at the heart of our social inequality. So watch this space. In the mean time check this out:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/14/wealth-warning-money-bad-society

It's not always the case that life is cheap. Sometimes it's the exact opposite and life's too expensive.
Check this out: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/03/18-0
Once you stop buying you are useless in America. As one blog respondent succinctly put it.