Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Economics.
November 8th, 2009 | Published in Uncategorized | 4 Comments
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is a theory of human motivation that has 5 levels of human needs. The levels are
- Physiological – Breathing, Food, Sex.
- Safety – Personal security, Financial Security, Health.
- Love / Belonging – Friendship, Intimacy, Community.
- Esteem – Self esteem, Confidence, Respect.
- Self Actualization – Morality, Creativity, Spontaneity.
Maslow’s idea was that a person has to satisfy the lower levels in the hierarchy before moving to higher levels. In simple terms, a starving man doesn’t have time or energy to worry much about morality.
While Maslow’s theory has its critics, I think it has good insight into what motivates people.
Economics
If it makes sense for a person to address lower needs on the list before addressing higher ones, perhaps it makes sense for communities and even countries to do the same thing. If people are starving, all available resources should be focused on making sure everyone has food. Only when everyone’s physiological needs have been met should economic output be devoted to meeting higher needs.
This is really just another argument for my egalitarian view of the world. The analogy is that if it doesn’t make sense for a starving man to save for a yacht, perhaps it doesn’t make sense for a community with starving people in it to be building yachts for some of its members.
November 12th, 2009 at 12:29 am (#)
Interesting thought.
One clarification: when you are talking about community spending, are you talking about government program spending funded by taxes?
I’ve always found government spending decisions to be very tricky. Governments support a lot of things. Healthcare, education, and poverty are normally at the top of the list. Why should government fund high school athletics or programmes to create audio books for visually-challenged citizens if there are shortcomings in healthcare or education, or if there are people living in poverty?
There are fairly often opinions presented in the media where an individual representing a wronged group makes a comparison between spending decision.
A recent one in British Columbia was: “My grant of $75,000/year was just canceled. I use it to operate a non-profit program to drive a van around a poor area and distribute blankets and food to people living on the street. Meanwhile, the government just spent $100,000 to print brochures for the coming winter olympics! Isn’t the government horrible!”
Somehow, I think we have to, as a society, spend on some of the little things too, but it’s hard to justify when there are direct comparisons like this.
Eric
November 12th, 2009 at 7:18 pm (#)
Eric.
You make some good points. It is very difficult to argue the relative merits of different government projects. I think this again comes down to the problem that we can’t measure value objectively.
From the perspective of addressing needs, I’d agree with the fellow with the van delivering blankets. The first priority should be to make sure everyone is fed and warm. Only once people’s basic needs are taken care of should we launch into frivolous things like funding Olympic games.
The only argument that I can see in defense of spending on things like the Olympics is that it is supposed to foster economic growth by promoting Vancouver and Canada on the international stage. If by spending the $100,000 on the Olympics, economic productivity can be increased, maybe we can buy more blankets and food in the long run. I don’t think there is any compelling evidence that events like the Olympics even manage to pay for themselves, however.
I think the problem is that there are lots of people who like things like the Olympics. If we had to wait until we solved the problem of poverty before hosting the Olympics, we would never do it.
November 13th, 2009 at 11:33 pm (#)
I’d take your last point even further – if we had to wait until we solved poverty, thousands of things the government does not would have to be post-poned.
Or, to look at it from another angle, what minimum standard of living would we want EVERYONE to have before we started spending on things like the Olympics?
Eric
November 15th, 2009 at 8:44 pm (#)
Eric.
We certainly don’t need to have everyone driving BMWs before thinking about hosting the Olympics. My feeling, though, is that problems like hunger should have a higher priority than they do.