Trying to articulate what i want to know is difficult without being too vague and ambigious, and not misinterpreting the question itself.
In an economic sense, what is it that people ultimately want?? What do they strive for?? Do they want cheaper prices and/or do they want to increase their wealth???
This is possibly a newbie question but i think its an important one.
Couldn’t you say something of the nature of people want everything, now… or people want the greatest happiness, now.
Therefore, a person wants zero prices with infinite production. Since this is obviously unatainable they trade various utility baskets until they are situationally pleased.
Well, in a world where people value work and don’t care about the ends so much, you might see real prices increase and output fall. Of material goods. In terms of psychic goods, they are producing more and more (since work is itself a good).
This sounds a little stupid but maybe you know some professors who research 20 hours a day, and don’t really care if they’re compensated for it.
Long story short, people will find more efficient ways to get what they want, but this isn’t necessarily more cash for less work. Although it often is.
This is a question that cannot be totally answered ever. No two people have the same values or value preferences, therefore we cannot detirmine what people really want “in the end”. It is a “Newbie question” to the point that I don’t think you understand people, sorry.
Most people have a general idea of what they want in the end, usually something along the lines of to be at least wealthy living fairly sucessful lives with good relationships with those they care about, this is what most strive for in the long run one way or another with some approximate variation. There are however pleanty of people who choose another path or who don’t even want in the long term
“Do they want cheaper prices and/or do they want to increase their wealth???”
What is the difference? If there are cheaper prices then they can by more goods and they become more wealthy either in terms of worldly possesions, or in terms of how much the money they have now can actually do. But what Jerimiah said is perfectly true, it is a praxeological law that man will always wish to give up the least pleasure to recieve the greatest satisfaction. That is to say, I like mah moneyz, so I want to give you as little as possible of it. I like getting mah stuffs… And I wants good stuffs! So I want to give you as little money ass possible for the largest amount of goods at the highest quality possible.
This is a general more “financial economic rule” but this being said people are not driven merely by “financial factors” there are pleanty who care infinitly more about their family lives and relationships and so forth than their financial well being as long as their getting by, but even so the vast majority of them still express this preference but as a secondary concern…
I would like to know if this answers your question
Happiness.
P.S. Which usually comes with stuff.
According to Mises, human action is a concious attempt to improve satisfaction.
People want to avoid pain and experience pleasure.
Here is a long excerpt from Bastiat’s Economic Harmonies where he addresses what man wants, what he strives for, and why:
The subject of political economy is man.
But it does not embrace the whole man. Religious sentiment, paternal and maternal affection, filial devotion, love, friendship, patriotism, charity, politeness—these belong to the moral realm, which embraces all the appealing regions of human sympathy, leaving for the sister science of political economy only the cold domain of self-interest. This fact is unfairly forgotten when we reproach political economy with lacking the charm and grace of moral philosophy. How could it be otherwise? Let us challenge the right of political economy to exist as a science, but let us not force it to pretend to be what it is not. If human transactions whose object is wealth are vast enough and complicated enough to constitute a special science, let us grant it its own special appeal, and not reduce it to talking of self-interest in the language of sentiment. I am personally convinced that recently we have done it no service by demanding from it a tone of enthusiastic sentimentality that from its lips can sound only like hollow declamation. What does it deal with? With transactions carried on between people who do not know each other, who owe each other nothing beyond simple justice, who are defending and seeking to advance their own self-interest. It deals with claims that are restricted and limited by other claims, where self-sacrifice and unselfish dedication have no place. Take up the poet’s lyre, then, to speak of these things. I would as soon see Lamartine*29 consult a table of logarithms to sing his odes.**6
This is not to say that political economy does not have its own special poetry. Whenever there is order and harmony, there is poetry. But it is to be found in the results, not in the demonstrations. It is revealed; it is not created by the demonstrator. Kepler did not set himself up as a poet; yet certainly the laws he discovered are the true poetry of the mind.
Thus, political economy regards man from one side only, and our first concern must be to study him from this point of view. For this reason we cannot avoid going back to the primary phenomena of human sensation and activity. Let me reassure the reader, however. Our stay in the cloudy regions of metaphysics will not be a long one, and we shall borrow from this science only a few simple, clear, and, if possible, incontestable ideas.
The soul (or, not to become involved in spiritual questions, man) is endowed with the faculty of sense perception. Whether sense perception resides in the body or in the soul, the fact remains that as a passive being he experiences sensations that are painful or pleasurable. As an active being he strives to banish the former and multiply the latter. The result, which affects him again as a passive being, can be called satisfaction.
From the general idea of sensation come the more definite ideas of pain, wants, desires, tastes, appetites, on the one hand; and, on the other, of pleasure, enjoyment, fulfillment, and well-being.
Between these extremes is interposed a mean, and from the general idea of activity come the more definite ideas of pain, effort, fatigue, labor, and production.
An analysis of sensation and activity shows one word common to both domains, the word pain. It is painful to experience certain sensations, and we can stop them only by an effort that we call taking pains. Thus, we are apprised that here below we have little else than the choice of two evils.
Everything in this complex of phenomena is on the personal level, the sensation that precedes the effort as well as the satisfaction that follows it.
We cannot doubt that self-interest is the mainspring of human nature. It must be clearly understood that this word is used here to designate a universal, incontestable fact, resulting from the nature of man, and not an adverse judgment, as would be the word selfishness. The moral sciences would be impossible if we perverted at the outset the terms that the subject demands.
Human effort does not always and inevitably intervene between sensation and satisfaction. Sometimes satisfaction is obtained by itself. More often effort is exerted on material objects, through the agency of forces that Nature has without cost placed at man’s disposal.
If we give the name of utility to everything that effects the satisfaction of wants, then there are two kinds of utility. One kind is given us by Providence without cost to ourselves; the other kind insists, so to speak, on being purchased through effort.
Thus, the complete cycle embraces, or can embrace, these four ideas:
Want { Gratuitous Utility } Satisfaction
{ Onerous Utility }
Man is endowed with a faculty for improvement. He compares, he looks ahead, he learns, he profits by experience. If want is a pain, and effort too entails pains, there is no reason for him not to seek to reduce the pains of the effort if he can do so without impairing the satisfaction that is its goal. This is what he accomplishes when he succeeds in replacing onerous utility by gratuitous utility, which is the constant object of his search.
Our self-interest is such that we constantly seek to increase the sum of our satisfactions in relation to our efforts; and our intelligence is such—in the cases where our attempt is successful—that we reach our goal through increasing the amount of gratuitous utility in relation to onerous utility.
Every time progress of this type is achieved, a part of our efforts is freed to be placed on the available list, so to speak; and we have the option either of enjoying more rest or of working for the satisfaction of new desires if these are keen enough to stir us to action.
Such is the source of all progress in the economic order. It is also, as we easily comprehend, the source of all miscalculations, for progress and miscalculation both have their roots in that marvelous and special gift that God has bestowed upon man: free will.
We are endowed with the faculty of comparing, of judging, of choosing, and of acting accordingly. This implies that we can arrive at a good or a bad judgment, make a good or a bad choice—a fact that it is never idle to remind men of when we speak to them of liberty.
We are not, to be sure, mistaken about our own sensations, and we discern with an infallible instinct whether they are painful or pleasurable. But how many different forms our errors of judgment can take! We can mistake the cause and pursue eagerly, as something sure to give us pleasure, what can give us only pain; or we can fail to see the relation of cause and effect and be unaware that an immediate pleasure will be followed ultimately by greater pain; or again, we can be mistaken as to the relative importance of our wants and our desires.
We can give a wrong direction to our efforts not only through ignorance, but also through the perversity of our will. “Man,” said de Bonald,*30 is an intellect served by bodily organs." Indeed! Do we have nothing else? Do we not have passions?
When we speak, then, of harmony, we do not mean that the natural arrangement of the social world is such that error and vice have been excluded. To advance such a thesis in the face of the facts would be carrying the love of system to the point of madness. For this harmony to be without any discordant note, man would have to be without free will, or else infallible. We say only this: Man’s principal social tendencies are harmonious in that, as every error leads to disillusionment and every vice to punishment, the discords tend constantly to disappear.
Clayton -