With the initial delve into the definition of one’s needs out of the way one may now take an equivalent consideration of the nature of one’s wants. Wants are generally considered to stretch to infinity and cannot be matched. It is almost the direct opposite of one’s needs but exists upon the same side of the scale (it is only in the realm of loans that a person can negatively own (owe) something). Wants are typically perceived to be primarily constrained by the fact that the World provides relatively limited resources. Hence we have the classic supply versus demand situation where demand far outstrips supply… but is it really that simple?
After all, not all billionaires adopt an overly extravagant life-style even though they could quite well afford to do so for a while. Coming back to the categorisation and definition of wants we find that such becomes a much more straight forward process through extrapolating the work already done in defining needs - there are relative wants and absolute wants.
Absolute wants, as already mentioned, are infinite in nature. Unlike in the case of absolute needs the human body is no longer a constraining factor - why keep deducting essential resources from an individual when the individual is no more? While consuming too many chocolates or bottles of wine could certainly kill an individual, the possession of a continent of warehouses full of both will not do the self harm and so are fair game for the purpose of defining one’s absolute wants.
Relative wants are far more interesting an area to consider. This is not because one’s absolute wants are less rich than one’s relative wants but rather because one’s relative wants are far more achievable and provide only a little less personal satisfaction. When defining relative needs it was under the criteria that in deducting resources from aspects of the individual the individual did not suffer to an unacceptable degree. Put more simply it sought to find that point where individuals start to become much less happier than with the next level higher of non-scarcity.
Therefore in seeking one’s relative wants one would seek to find that point where the next level of abundance causes relatively little increased happiness. Economists would call this the law of diminishing returns - where each additional unit of a product consumed produces less satisfaction than the previous unit.
So taking the above and compacting it we now should have an idea of the meaning of absolute needs, relative needs, relative wants and absolute wants. Theoretically, right between relative needs and relative wants should lie the line of equilibrium - the point where one is neither of situational predisposition to feel shortage or significant satisfaction.
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