Should human desire be allowed to dictate the course of mankind?
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LUClEN
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In a capitalist society what we can see corporations creating products and services to sell to the public to earn profit. As the list of what is necessary for life is very short these essentially almost always end up being luxury items. In order to hock their products and services these same corporations simply create products that people will want....often times using marketing and advertising to create the desire.
I think this is a dumb way to run a society though. Not the act of buying and selling products - but the act of investing most our resources in simply pandering to people's selfish desires for luxury rather than trying to accomplish other goals in areas of discovery and invention that result in more knowledge rather than more Furbies. The only thing is that by changing to nature of society to pursue other goals we would essentially just be allowing the path of mankind to be dictated by the selfish desire for the luxury of greater knowledge and wisdom and what not...
Is either way better than the other, or are both inferior to another option that I have neglected to dissect?
I think this is a dumb way to run a society though. Not the act of buying and selling products - but the act of investing most our resources in simply pandering to people's selfish desires for luxury rather than trying to accomplish other goals in areas of discovery and invention that result in more knowledge rather than more Furbies. The only thing is that by changing to nature of society to pursue other goals we would essentially just be allowing the path of mankind to be dictated by the selfish desire for the luxury of greater knowledge and wisdom and what not...
Is either way better than the other, or are both inferior to another option that I have neglected to dissect?
Comments
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I agree for the most part...
However there is no "desire for luxury", that desire is created by marketing. Some products, while unnecessary are useful, others aren't useful or necessary, I think we should designate the difference.
Ipods...? em
Cars...necessary
Xbox 360s...? em
Airplanes...necessary
Does this mean ipods and xboxs shouldn't exist? No, but they shouldn't be as prized as they are either.
A TV isn't necessarily necessary but it is useful...however constantly buying "new" TVs, with "clearer, sharper" picture is unnecessary and not particularly useful.
Aesthetics drives most buys these days, not want or need. The car/ipod "looks cool", this eyeliner will make you look "beautiful". Outside of aesthetics, planned obsolescence of items like laptops (and other items that become needs because society perceives a need for them, cars are another) drives purchasing.
You can't build trillion dollar economies based on need because humans don't need a lot to survive, the wants drive society and those wants need to be both created and manipulated. Of course all this is irrelevant if people have no way of paying for objects, whether need or want, but that's a different topic.
