The grand designs of social visionaries often run aground on the quirkiness of human wants.
One beautiful spring Friday afternoon, I was running errands. Stepping out of the hardware store, I was nearly run down by a young couple leaving the adjacent liquor store. His head barely protruded over the three cases of beer piled in his arms, his chin keeping the top one from sliding off. She had large, bulging grocery bags in each arm that clinked as she walked. The two were obviously anticipating a good weekend, smiling happily at each other, talking animatedly. They were, in a word, ebullient.
Shaking my head at their idea of a good time, I went to my next errand. Twenty minutes later, I was leaving my favorite welding supply house with a full tank of oxygen for my cutting torch, 5 pounds of fresh E-7018 welding rods and two new wheels for my angle grinder. I felt great, anticipating a weekend welding. I was, well, ebullient.
Many might think the young couple and I both have weird ideas of a fun weekend. But both of us made choices to improve our happiness that Friday afternoon. If you have a mind-numbing job, a mood-altering binge may be relaxing. If you spend hours in front of a class or a computer screen, building something with your hands can be cathartic.
The point is that people get satisfaction from such a wide range of things that it is impossible for a planner to decide just what goods and services make society best off.
Nineteenth-century social theorists had grand ideas. British philosopher Jeremy Bentham argued that society’s goal should be to achieve “the greatest good for the greatest number.”
Karl Marx argued that communism would allow a situation of “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” In other words, every person would produce according with their talents, and each person would receive products to meet their needs, regardless of what they produced.
These slogans became famous, but are essentially meaningless in everyday real life.
Bentham’s idea foundered because of the impossibility of quantifying what is “good.” How much does a weekend welding improve happiness versus a Friday night alcohol spree versus infant vaccinations versus a new aircraft carrier? We all have subjective opinions on the relative value of such different things, but there is no objective way of measuring.
Marx assumed that communist societies would be so productive that they could easily accommodate varying abilities and needs. In fact, their output was terribly low because they had no mechanism for using people where they were most productive. Nor did they determine exactly what people needed or wanted. Croatian feminist Slavenka Drakulic excoriated Yugoslav communism because in 40 years it could not even produce a tampon.
Markets are imperfect, but they function better in meeting people’s needs and wants than any alternative tried so far.
© 2007 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.