Economic Behaviour As If Others Too Had Interests

Chapter 3 - Economics And Selfishness

45 Chapter 3 Economics And Selfishness If human beings were still living in the Garden of Eden, life would certainly be different from what it is today. Nobody would be worried about what to eat or what to wear. But something happened and so we had to leave the paradise. Since the expulsion from Eden, human beings have had to toil and labour for their welfare. The expulsion was a condemnation for us to evolve into economic animals. We cannot survive without meeting our basic needs and so since there is no Garden of Eden any more, we have to fend for those needs. Thus, Economics, which is the way people use available resources to meet their needs, is indispensable for the survival of the human race. Economics is closely linked with the human instinct for survival. In order for us to survive, we must use certain resources to meet our basic needs. Different peoples have used different ways to meet their needs and those ways have been evolving with time. For example, some have moved from being fruit gatherers and hunters to the practice of rudimentary agriculture and eventually to modernized agriculture and industry. In other words, economics has transformed human beings into innovative and hardworking creatures and therefore, it has made life excitingly interesting. Life is certainly more interesting when people work to earn their bread compared to when everything is provided for them. There is nothing as boring as living a costfree life. As they work for their needs, human beings actualize their potentials, make a lot of exciting discoveries, and commune with one another.57 However, economics has also made our life very complicated and challenging. Economics is the sphere where selfishness is actualized the most. In other words, human selfishness is more audacious in the sphere of economics than in any other sphere. This is because it is closely linked with the human instinct for survival. Every human being wants to survive and that survival is inseparably associated with the satisfaction of certain basic needs. In the process of trying to meet our needs in order to survive, we mostly think of one another as competitors rather than as companions. Resources 57 E.F Schumacher. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1973), 54. 46 do not seem to be enough for everybody’s needs and so we compete with one another for them. Each one is concerned with his needs in order to survive. Some even mistakenly think that in order for them to meet their needs, they must prevent others from meeting their interests. One person’s gain is assumed to be equivalent to another’s loss. Some people behave as if others had no right to life or had no interests or did not want to live a decent life. Such mistaken assumptions are nothing but symptoms of the selfishness that dominates the sphere of economics. Another symptom of our economic selfishness is the claim that human needs are endless. People keep multiplying their needs and using resources to meet those needs without considering how others are going to meet their basic needs. The so-called endlessness of human needs is a very serious problem in the sphere of economics. Human Needs vs. Resources In the sphere of economics, human egoism takes the extreme form of pure selfishness. Each individual thinks mainly about his own interests only. This is mainly because most people usually assume that resources are scarce and human needs are endless. There is a constant war between human needs and resources. Economics is usually defined as the science of how a given society of people uses limited resources to satisfy its people’s unlimited needs.58 This is one of our biggest cataclysms. Economics has become an impossible task, a paradox. How can something finite be matched with something infinite? It is similar to trying to fill a bottomless pot with water. Not even the waters of the Mediterranean Sea can fill such a pot. The conflict between human needs and resources will never end until we critically examine the limitedness of resources and the endlessness of human needs. What do people actually mean when they say that resources are limited? Are human needs really unlimited? Is there no correlation between human selfishness and the claim that human needs are unlimited? Let us attempt to respond to these questions, although not in a systematic way. 58 Hardwick, John Langmead and Bahdur Khan...