Branko Milanovic thinks human needs are infinite and that both Keynes and Marx where wrong to think otherwise.
Even best among the economists, like Ricardo and Keynes (in “The economic prospects of our grandchildren”) thought that human needs are limited. We should know better today: the needs are unlimited and because we cannot forecast the exact movements in technology, we cannot forecast what particular form such new needs will take. But we know that our needs are not finite.
I beg to differ (see comment on the above link):
Human needs are finite - capitalism’s needs are infinite. Your argumentation is based on infinite capitalism. Today we should know better.
This caused Pechmerle to counter:
Human needs are not finite. This is partly a semantic issue - the definition of “need.” Perhaps if we spoke of “wants” instead, you would recognize that BM’s comment is true. Ten years ago I couldn’t have got - and didn’t know it would (or perhaps even then did) exist - classical radio over the internet. Now that it does, readily, exist I am listening to a classical broadcast from France while typing this comment. I love this capability, and bought a stereo receiver that has the wifi utility built in. There are many wants like this, and as BM postulates there will surely be many new ones we have not yet foreseen. In my grandparents generation, radio broadcasts were at first non-existent, and then later something they consumed every single day.
My response to this was:
Wants are not needs. Wants are socially constructed. Most wants are unneeded.Why else would we ’need’ the marketing business?
Kevin Kelly adds in an interview with Noah Smith:
Our technologies are ultimately not contrary to life, but are in fact an extension of life, enabling it to develop yet more options and possibilities at a faster rate. Increasing options and possibilities is also known as progress, so in the end, what the technium brings us humans is progress.
Technium is Kelly-speak for ’the interacting web of technologies'.
So if technium is part of life, then ‘human’ needs will be infinite. This seems to be the way Branko also is thinking.
But are technologies part of life?
And are progress the same as increasing options?
An isolated theoretical discussion of these isssues may be is a little far-fetched. What is the relevance of those questions?
Both Marx and Keynes had a vision of sufficiency as the final outcome of progress. In the end human needs are finite and we have learned to live a life with what we have and be happy with that.
This is of course contrary to capitalism’s inherent need for accumulation. History has constructed an economic system based on survival by growth. If you don’t grow your business you will go down.
In the last century, however, an environmental opposision to this worldview emerged - the sustainability debate. Sorman and Giampietro (2013) gives this nice summary:
“In the 1970s Ehrlich and Holdren proposed the
$$I = P A T$$
relation, where I - Impact on the environment; P - Population; A - Affluence; T - Technology.
This relation indicates that the stress on both environment and natural resources is due to a simultaneous increase of human population (number of people - an extensive variable) and the affluence of society (the level of consumption per capita - an intensive variable). The increase in the two terms - P and A cannot be compensated by increases in efficiency - T - that is, better technology.
The analysis of Ehrlich and Holdern developed a furious debate, which, in the 1970s, divided the scientists concerned with sustainability amid the two sides:
(i) The cornucopians - believers in the perpetual growth. For those, regardless of whatever increase in P (population size) and A (affluence); this will always be compensated by an increase in efficiency T (better technology/silver bullets); and
(ii) The prophets of doom - those saying that in a finite planet perpetual growth is not possible, no matter what technology will be invented. For them, all the three terms on the right side of the equation (PAT) should be changed simultaneously, in an integrated way, to maintain the activity of humankind within the carrying capacity of our planet. We can recall here the famous quote of Kenneth E. Boulding saying that: “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist”.”
After Limits to Growth in the 1970 the debate went out of steam as the cornucopians seemed to have won during the neo-liberal era. Now however the debate is back due to the relentless progress of climate change - may be there are limits after all?
Of course, the declared techo-optimists are still fighting - today under the name of Green New Deal or Green Transition - capitalism is the solution to the problems capitalism has created - growth can go on - human needs are infinite.
The degrowth camp fights back from the position of sufficiency happiness and planetary boundaries to capitalisms expansion - growth has to stop - human needs are finite.