Yesterday, I spent most of the time to read my economic book. It was just because I needed to prepare for an upcoming econ midterm. However, during my studying, I found some impressive information from the book. Generally, the economy always experience in scarcity. In other words, human’s material wants are unlimited, so there seems to have no way to satisfy them. This is not surprising. It is absolutely common and true in real life. However, this attitude is not right, and we should find ways to change this attitude.
Just by listening to this fact, I felt depressed. Isn’t it sad that there is no way for us to be satisfied on our current living conditions? And it is not because of others’ fault, but because of our unlimited wants. We can see this scenario often in our daily lives. For example, if a person gambles and receives a lot of money from it, that person would probably gamble again, thinking that he might win again; if a child just finishes one ice-cream, that child would probably urge and ask for one more ice-cream. As time goes by, our “unlimited wants” would become a negative harm to us. If we keep chasing for more materials, we would end up being ignorant. We would be ignorant because we never know whether we buy enough materials or not. For instance, originally, we only need one hair clip, but we want to become prettier and fashionable, we end up buying more hair clips. We lose our judgments, especially on how many necessities we really need. Isn’t it so sad that people do not know what they really need for their lives? And buying unnecessary stuff?
Everyone have unlimited wants, and I’m one of them. If that same “hair clips” scenario applies to me, I would buy 2 or more hair clips too. It is weird that there is some magic telling us to buy more and more. Because of this weird magic, some people might create many credit cards in order to buy and pay for more. As a result, some teenagers might end up with many credit cards debts and they are not able to pay for their debts. While we are wasting money to buy some unnecessary materials, we should step back and think of some poor countries. In those countries, people do not have enough money for their living and necessities. They might end up eating one meal or even one bread per day. Comparing to their situation to ours, we should be very appreciated for what we have. We should be satisfied on what we already have and not waste more money on buying unnecessary items. Instead, we could find ways to help them out, such as donating or volunteering. Having “material wants” is not bad; however, the worst part is that our “material wants” are unlimited. There is no way for us to be satisfied. But, we really need to learn to be appreciated and satisfied on what we already have.
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Yeah, you are right. People always want more and better stuff. I think that's why every company needs designer. They try to invente new products and pakage them with modern design. Even thought we should satisfy with what we already have, the unlimited wants is a force to push the enconomic and motivate those scientists to explore more.
ReplyDeleteI think that in America, we are extremely spoiled and we keep having this "shopaholic" desire to buy more than what we really need. I agree with what you said about how we need to be more appreciative and content with what we have already.
ReplyDeleteIt is very interesting how you interpret that sentence from the econ textbook. I took econ class too but I never thought about that matter when I read that line. It is true people has unlimited material needs. We need to change the attitude of wanting extra and unnecessary things. For me, I was trained by my parents to compare myself with less fortunate people every time I think about buying things that are not necessary to me. It makes me feel fortunate with what I got.
ReplyDeleteI'm also currently taking Econ 1A. Its so fascinating to me that some people live in materialistic societies and always want more whereas people in third world countries are for the most part content with their lives. While they do want to better their families, materialistic items are of little to no importance. I totally agree with you when you say that we need to be appreciative of what we have. While this is a difficult task in the society that we live in, I believe that it would result in a more peaceful society because competition for material goods would be lessened.
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