Needs, Wants, Demands,Luxuries and Scarce Natural Resources

Abstract

During the last two centuries, when mankind has been increasingly occupied with the process of industrialisation, we have come to associate the process of development with the idea of invention. Each important stride has been made in the wake of a specific discovery or new mechanical contrivance. Society has become dependent upon these apparent gifts and has turned them rapidly from new luxuries into essentials. Today, we can no longer hope to feed and clothe the population of the planet without the machinery which has evolved decade by decade. Each stage in the process of industrialisation has left people believing that at last scarcity was being left behind; that at last there would be enough of a particular commodity for certain basic needs to be satisfied effortlessly and forever. But, although mankind has frequently felt itself standing on the very brink of abundance, it has never in practice managed to abolish scarcity. We cannot say with confidence that we have a sufficient supply,forever, of anything. New wants and desires have always overtaken the expanded supply provided by the new invention.

Published originally as chapter 3 of Vision and Hindsight: The Future of Communications (London: International Institute of Communications, 1976).©I. I. C.