Urban Legends-Chapter 1 Page 15
“They Can Charge Any Price They Want”
Of all the words in the English language, one of the most dangerous is the word “need.” That word has caused more underachievement, misstatements of fact, bad analysis, and downright evil than any other word I can think of. It is the number one word in the lingua franca of those who use language to deceive others and conceal their own agenda but has been mindlessly adopted and perpetuated by the ignorant amongst us. It is a four-lettered word that is as vile as any gutter words you can imagine. Indeed, the world would be a much better place if the word and the common concept of “need” was banished from the vocabulary forever. Of all the gibberish that resulted from the Babel experience, “need” ranks near the top of the chart (if not at the top!) of mischievous words.
Why would I make such a claim? What is the genesis of our usage of this word, “need”? And why is it so dangerous? These questions will be answered in this chapter and you will join the movement for clear thinking through the abandonment of the concept of “need.”
In 1651, English political philosopher Thomas Hobbes published his magnum opus, Leviathan, wherein he described the plight of man’s life in a natural state to be “solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.”[1] He had no idea!
Twenty to thirty thousand years ago, life in what is now south central France must have been worse than Hobbes—or any of us—could ever imagine. An ice sheet expanded south, covering virtually all of northern Europe. Ice caps covered Alps and the Pyrenees mountain ranges. The forests of Europe were few and sparse. The landscape was barren, resembling the semiarid steppes of central Asia. The average temperature was 13 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit lower than today. Seasonal variation of temperatures of the type experienced today in Northern Siberia were the norm. The permafrost extended down from the north to within a few miles.[2] Rhinoceros, large bears, cats, bison, and ibex roamed the plains. Penguins lived on the coastlines. Clubs and spears were the weapons of choice. “Brutish” was putting it nicely. In this environment our forbearers eked out their existence. You and I are proof that they somehow overcame their obstacles and actually thrived against all odds.
Now, let’s jet forward to the twentieth century. A little more than half a century ago, Brandeis University psychology professor Abraham Maslow published an article wherein he introduced his famous “Heirarchy of Human Needs.”[3] Every psychology and management student knows these as 1. Physiological Needs; 2. Safety Needs; 3.Love, Affection and Belongingness Needs; 4. Esteem Needs; and finally 5. Self-Actualization Needs.[4] The first four needs generally have been classified as “deficiency needs” while the last is a “growth need.”
While Maslow took great pains in his writings to avoid a rigid absolute ranking of his needs, that subtlety has fallen by the wayside in popular and—unfortunately—in too many academic settings. A quick google on “hierarchy of needs” yields course websites that explain, “Within the deficiency needs, each lower need must be met before moving to the next higher level”[5] and “According to Maslow, an individual is ready to act upon the growth needs if and only if the deficiency needs are met.”[6] Textbook explanations of Maslow’s theory state, “In the levels of the five basic needs, the person does not feel the second need until the demands of the first have been satisfied, nor the third until the second has been satisfied, and so on.”[7]
While absolute ordering of needs seems simple to grasp, a quick gander at real-world events and history simply does not support this pseudo-theoretic expedient interpretation of Maslow.
Return now to life in France 15,000 to 30,000 years ago in the environment that was described earlier in this chapter. Messages from that past are starkly preserved in the caves at Chauvet, Cosquer, Lascaux among others.[8] The archeological evidence is extraordinary in that these people of antiquity left a record of their lives through art. While they surely did other things in those caves, the leavings of which evidently have not survived the ravages of time, the mere fact that these people engaged in the studied practice of art is both amazing and totally at odds with the notions advanced by the rigid interpretations of Maslow’s theories. Where else but at the top hierarchical position of “self-actualization” can art be classified? It certainly does not fulfill physiological or safety needs! And, given what we know of life and how people coped during that time, it certainly stretches the imagination to presume that these people had absolutely fulfilled all of their physiological and safety needs as well as the remaining deficiency needs so they could spend time painting. The rigid, all-or-none “theory” was discredited by the actions of people who lived thousands of years before the theory was advanced. Yet, in our enlightened state, we still blindly teach it.
If evidence from antiquity does not resonate with you in this argument, consider the events of today. In the name of religion and ideals, people strap bombs to themselves and gloriously (in their eyes) enter the hereafter by murdering as many “infidels” as they can take with them. What physiological and safety needs are these actions fulfilling? Indeed, how do the rigid interpreters of Maslow explain the great human historical occupation of religious-based wars, violence and intolerance? Even with a little knowledge of history and current events, anyone should have little trouble compiling a very long list of events that refute those interpreters of Maslow. A close examination of your own behavior will easily reveal that sometime you got up in the morning and left the safety of your bed to venture onto the (relatively dangerous) highway to do something that was hardly a high-level need. If you behaved in the manner commonly ascribed to Maslow, you would have never gotten out of bed!
While the simplistic and rigid interpretation of Maslow may be the kernel of his theory that people commonly remember, it is the explicit recognition of a degree of substitutability of one need for another that is the most important part of Maslow’s theory. After outlining his needs with carefully-wrought language that denies the rigidity of the hierarchy,[9] he took pains to explicitly state:
So far, our theoretical discussion may have given the impression that these five sets of needs are somehow in a step-wise, all-or-none relationships to each other. We have spoken in such terms as the following: "If one need is satisfied, then another emerges." This statement might give the false impression that a need must be satisfied 100 per cent before the next need emerges. In actual fact, most members of our society who are normal, are partially satisfied in all their basic needs and partially unsatisfied in all their basic needs at the same time. A more realistic description of the hierarchy would be in terms of decreasing percentages of satisfaction as we go up the hierarchy of prepotency.[10]
In other words, Maslow recognized that human behavior is NOT characterized by all-or-nothing choices; there is a degree of substitution between the various needs. Even more sophisticated, Maslow attempted to describe his ranking of the needs in terms of how much substitution would take place between different levels. Though he was not an economist, if Maslow had recognized that one could view individual wealth in terms of the how much all of the needs are fulfilled, he could have described how the substitution between the different levels of needs depends on wealth—a concept succinctly described in economics as a “wealth elasticity.”[11]
Perhaps the most unfortunate legacy that Maslow left us was his choice of words to describe his ideas. In an earlier chapter, I stated that the choice of one’s words colors the way ideas are interpreted. Such is the case here. The word “need” has a very strong connotation. If something is “needed,” there are no substitutes. (Indeed, perhaps it was the choice to name his theory a “hierarchy of needs” that led to the rigid incorrect interpretation.) But we know—and Maslow recognized—that there are substitutes…and that the degree of substitution is individually different. A more accurate choice of words would have been to express his theory in terms of a “hierarchy of human wants.” That would have been more accurate but would have lacked the pizzazz that “need” conveys.
If Maslow recognized that people will find substitutes for even the most basic “needs” one would be correct in questioning whether there is anything that is truly “needed.” The expected answer is that there certainly are some things that are needed. Maslow identified the most basic need as physiological, those things that are necessary to sustain life. Simple logic seemingly tells us that if this need is not satisfied, you die. And, if you are dead, there is no use worrying about any other “needs” or “wants.” But, even with this basic need, Maslow clearly stated that people make substitutions; they give up a little of their physiological needs in order to obtain other things. Recall that Maslow was careful to indicate that human choices are NOT of the all-or-nothing sort. Instead, he spoke of forsaking some physiological “needs” in order to obtain some more of other “needs.” Indeed, if you give it careful thought, you will find that the vast, vast majority of decisions that people make are of the “some of this in exchange for some of that” variety and are rarely, if ever, of the “all or nothing” genre. Nonetheless, arguments are too often based on the false assumption of an “all or nothing” outcome.
Think about it. Name something you absolutely need. Now, state exactly how much of that needed good you must have. Got it? Okay, now, can you realistically think of something else for which you would willingly give up just a small smidgeon of the good you named as needed? It may take a lot of the other good before you will give up some of what you claimed was “needed” and the other good may have to be carefully specified, but the fact is that people make these tradeoffs all the time and don’t even give it a second thought. But, once you have given up some of what you just identified as being “needed,” you have shown by your own actions that indeed, you really did not need what you identified earlier as being needed.
This is a tough concept to grasp and I have found that students have a difficult time with it until I tell them that I personally saw a number of them j-walk across a busy street on their way to class—despite the fact that there is a pedestrian overpass that they could have used. They deliberately traded some safety for the convenience of taking a more direct route. The tragedy was that one day when the street was icy, a student was hit. But, even with the knowledge that it could have happened to them, students didn’t alter their behavior. They were willing to take on the chance that they could be seriously injured—or even killed—in exchange for getting to their destination just a little quicker. It may be a slight exaggeration, but I tell them that I am deeply flattered that they are willing to put their lives on the line in order to attend my class!
Another example involves air—that stuff we breathe in order to live. Isn’t that a necessity? The knee-jerk answer is “yes.” But, let’s subject the air to the test we have just described. How much air do you “need”? In order to answer, one would have to examine the chemical components of air (oxygen, nitrogen, helium, etc.) and perhaps arrive at what you believe would be a needed amount of a certain quality (chemical mixture) of air. Given that, the conceptual experiment would be to see if you would be willing to accept some small degradation of the quality of the air you breath in exchange for something else? Again, the answer for the vast majority of people is that their actions speak volumes in showing that they would make that exchange. People flock to large cities that (in part because they are large) have poor air quality. Even in areas with relatively clean ambient air, people drive on crowded streets that are convenient but laden with more fumes and carbon monoxide. Smokers obviously trade a little nicotine gratification for elevated chances to die earlier of sundry painful and debilitating diseases.
The bottom line is that we human beings make tradeoffs all the time on the margin. (The italicized phrase is an economist’s shorthand way of stating that the tradeoff is a “little of this for a little of that” and is NOT an “all or nothing” proposition.) In other words, in human behavior, there is no such thing as an “absolute need.” Maslow recognized this but through poor choice of words has infected several generations of academics, students, and the general public with the notion that some things are needed anyway.
A very unfortunate consequence of the use of the word “need” involves its insertion into political debates. Those with agendas throw the term around with recklessness and abandon. “We ‘need’ better health care.” “We ‘need’ better schools.” “We ‘need’ affordable housing” etc., etc., ad nauseum. While any of these ideals are certainly worthy of debate, framing the issue as an absolute need deflects attention from the question of whether we are willing to pay the price that fulfilling those “needs” entails. Skilled politicians fully understand what they are doing, and cynically disregard telling the whole truth about what their “needs” will cost us. They work very hard at either deflecting inquiries about the cost, hiding the cost, or placing the cost burden outside of their district on taxpayers who cannot vote against them.
Implicit in political debates is the assumption that there is something wrong with the mixture of goods, services—even “needs”—that we have currently acquired through the interplay of millions of individuals who “vote” every day with their actions in the marketplace. Nobody ever asks the question about whether a few hundred old folks who wheel and deal on the banks of the Potomac, Thames, Seine, Danube, and elsewhere have a better take on what you “need” than you do. Once something is declared as “needed” the basic debate is over; it will just be a matter of time before its implementation is added to the taxpayer’s burden. A politician’s fundamental job is to manufacture “needs” so they can justify their existence. Every pork barrel earmark, amendment or bill is born of a “need” somewhere. Without “needs” politicians would have to be honest about their intentions and may even discover that progress could be better had if they would set their egos aside and admit that we might not really “need” many of their “ideas.”