In a prior post, I shared Economist Adam Smith’s point that wealth consists of goods and services ― the food, shelter, clothing, medicines, vehicles, appliances, and technology available to buy. According to this view, a people who produces more or better things grows wealthier.
Will there ever come a day, then, when we’ve achieved sufficient wealth and can stabilize production? Will we ever reach the point at which our needs are fully met?
Usually when we speak of needs we mean the requirements of human survival. We “need” food, say, because without it we would perish. When the risk of death is imminent, the given need is immediate and clear. A nation not chronically in this situation, therefore, can judge its level of production to be sufficient. On this meaning of “survival,” its needs are fully met.
But in a very important other sense, human survival is never secure, indeed is always precarious, no matter how great the available wealth or level of production. For example, the threat of disease is ever-present and can always be better fought. So too the threats of accident, catastrophe, and violence. One can never be too healthy, too skilled, too knowledgeable, or too well-defended; not an individual, not a nation. Applying this standard of “survival,” we might say that our needs are truly infinite.
And, because those needs are infinite, more and better production will always be of value.
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