Want

The idea of want can be examined from many perspectives. In secular societies want might be considered similar to the emotion desire, which can be studied scientifically through the disciplines of psychology or sociology. Want might also be examined in economics as a necessary ingredient in sustaining and perpetuating capitalist societies that are organised around principles like consumerism. Alternatively want can be studied in a non-secular, spiritual, moralistic or religious way, particularly by Buddhism but also Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

For the neuropsychological concept, see Incentive salience. For other uses, see Want (disambiguation) and Wanting (disambiguation).

In economics, a want is something that is desired. It is said that every person has unlimited wants, but limited resources (economics is based on the assumption that only limited resources are available to us). Thus, people cannot have everything they want and must look for the most affordable alternatives.

Wants are often distinguished from needs. A need is something that is necessary for survival (such as food and shelter), whereas a want is simply something that a person would like to have.[1] Some economists have rejected this distinction and maintain that all of these are simply wants, with varying levels of importance. By this viewpoint, wants and needs can be understood as examples of the overall concept of demand.

Non-secular perspectives

While in modern secular societies "want" is considered a purely economic, social-scientific or objectively psychological reality of human existence, many religious or spiritual traditions prescribe or advise with lessons on want and wanting, which might alternatively be termed "desire". Buddhism is perhaps the most common example of a religious tradition that offers wisdom and advice about the concept of want and wanting or "desire". The second of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism is that desire or wanting is a cause for most of the suffering experienced in life. When we want and desire, we create suffering that can never be alleviated, because as detailed in secular economics wants are "unlimited", and hence unfulfilled wants can cause suffering, in unlimited amount.[2] Challenges to this dilemma might include anti-consumerism or Buddhist economics.

In Christianity, particularly Protestantism, want should be kept to a minimum, and a simple life of hard and decent work should be maintained, as described in the Protestant work ethic. From an economic-sociological point of view this might be understood as more value and energy being placed upon production instead of consumption.

gollark: Obviously SSD vs HDD is a big jump, but SATA is still fast enough for most consumer uses.
gollark: I've seen 4K displays and don't really care. My laptop screen is 120Hz and it is not significantly different from my 60Hz monitor, except for slightly better colours but this isn't very related. I recently got a mid-range-ish phone instead of the cheapest-available ones I usually would and it's somewhat nicer (better haptics and sensors mostly), but premium ones seem to have very diminishing returns from the ones I've interacted with. I've tried a few mechanical keyboards and they don't seem significantly nicer (one was even *worse* for me due to excessively tall keys/high key travel). I also have an NVMe disk and it does not feel very different to the SATA SSDs I had before.
gollark: See, even if it *was* good, you probably just get used to it and then demand higher standards forever.
gollark: Wrongness is correlated, probably.
gollark: Oh, also NVMe disks.

See also

References
  1. The Economics Website Retrieved February 5, 2009.
  2. "Basics of Buddhism". pbs.org. Retrieved 10 April 2015.
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