The answer boils down to the reality that economic productivity, not survival, is what underlines the difference between wants and needs.
I don't agree. Economic productivity is not a need. It's pretty damn good, often, but it's not a need. Again, the fact that the importance placed on it varies across time and place suggests that it's socially conditioned. I'm not opposed to social conditioning, but I just don't buy the idea that because some social conditioning has led to advances in our well-being, therefore socially conditioned wants should be considered needs that can't be challenged and that justify a request for cheap airplane tickets.
Originally Posted by yulred
Were the sports psychologists and nutritionalists a necessity a 100 years ago? No. Are they a necessity today?
No.
Originally Posted by yulred
I mean, if you think about it, electricity isn't a necessity, but it does contribute to your comfort, thereby enhancing your overall productivity.
I would place electricity farther along the need spectrum than discount plane tickets. Which is why I think nationalized electric companies are wonderful. (Of course, I grew up in Quebec, so I benefited from the nationalization of electricity there.)
Originally Posted by yulred
THe same applies to visiting family. On the face of it, it may look like a frill, but in this day and age, when you're trying to get the most out of every person just to stay relevant in a world that is hypercompetitive, anything that offers even a marginal increase in productivity is a necessity.
No, it's not, because neither productivity nor marginal increases therein are necessities. I think we can agree that visiting families is a good thing, though.
Originally Posted by yulred
Personally, I dont think either you or I can figure out the actual utility of these expensive frills, but we can both rest assured that they can be critical in deciding success.
I don't know what "success" means in this context. "Expensive frill" seems to me by definition to not be a need.
Originally Posted by yulred
The government - any government - apparently feels that thats the way it 'needs' to be. If thats the way they 'want' or 'choose' it to be, they're an incredibly sadistic lot.
They choose not to change it. Probably not out of sadism, but out of an assumption that there's more political capital to be gained from issues other than the difficulty of getting a cheap vacation exactly when you want it.
I mean, your argument absolutely works for a company with a domestic market, but if you've got overseas ops, particularly in the developing world, the flying doesn't stop. Its also become difficult to predict what will pop up when.
I'm sure this is true... although presumably there's a degree of informed choice that goes into deciding where and when to develop business opportunities... "informed" in the sense of "holy crap, doing this will cost us a ton in plane tickets, but we'll make enough money to make it worth while." Which brings us far from the original debate about constantly cheap plane tix as a "need".
Originally Posted by yulred
QUestion is - do we facilitate our companies who're trying to compete abroad, or do we penalize them for existing in Canada, (for example, by constraining demand - the obvious examples being aviation and telecoms though the latter looks set for an overhaul).
I guess ideally we look at whether the benefits to all Canadians, including those who have overseas ops, outweigh the disadvantages? Then, if we're government or big big business, we decide that the benefits to well-connected and/or wealthy people matter more?
Last edited by biglinguist; May 29, 2011 at 8:31 pm
Reason: fixed quotation formatting
May 29, 2011, 8:16 pm
