The
phenomenon of the expansion of needs
In fact, the Greek philosopher Platon
had observed this more of two thousand years ago and for it he said that
“poverty is not caused by the decrease of wealth, but rather for the
multiplication of desires”. So, one can be miser in between opulence, a poor man
in luxury; because while the poor person’s hunger can be been satisfied with by
bread, the rich person’s hunger is insatiable and, what is worse, grows up as
more it tries to satiate it. The rich person that seeks to be happy consuming
everyday more and more goods tends for it to create for himself more needs and,
therefore, to feel more dissatisfaction. In order to illustrate this with an
analogy we could say that he is like a thirsty man that seeks to calm his thirst
drinking salt water or that he is like a hamster that tries to get ahead of the
wheel that he himself is triggering with his own forces.
But it is important to have in mind
that the above not only is valid for the individuals but also for the groups
and nations because, as to the famous North American economist John Kenneth
Galbraith explained in his book The Affluent Society (1958), “in the measure
that a society become more opulent, needs keep on being created more and more
all by the same process that satisfies them” (1). In this sense, the market has
passed from be a mechanism for the satisfaction of the needs to become in a producer
of needs.
Only economists (specially
neoclassics) ignore this uncontrovertible reality because they are afraid to
verify the falseness of their religion when looks refuted the sacred dogma of
the consumer’s sovereignty. But it is enough with to observe how the market of
cellular phones has evolved to come to realize how the reality has refuted this
theorem completely. Initially cellular phones were acquired by important
executives of large firms with needs of communication. A short time after they
became cheaper and began to offer services like hour, alarm, text messages and
notebook, all relatively reasonable. Next they began to offer services of
enjoyment such like radio, games, player of images, camera of photos, video
player, internet, bluetooth, touch screens and so on. Thus, the innovation
began to sophisticate themselves more and more create us many “superfluous
needs” as to know the luck in the horoscope daily, to have personalized
pornography, to receive advices of how to kiss, to have sex, to be infidel and
a lot of things more.
Thus, the cell went from being a mere
object of use to become a powerful weapon to exploit the "needs" of
individuals by subjecting them to a terrible dependence on fashion and
technology and making them live in a constant state of anxiety and tension as
they no longer consume to be satisfied but rather to escape from
dissatisfaction. It seems that rather than the production of companies serve
consumer needs are the needs of consumers those that serve the production of
companies, as if they were wagons of a frenetic train moved from side to side
by fashion, technological change and the desire for profits.
References:
You can contact the author of this article in: “Dante Abelardo Urbina Padilla” (Facebook) and dante.urbina1@gmail.com (email)
