Needs are the driving force behind the development of society. These are some objectively existing desires (inquiries) of people that are related to ensuring their development and life.
What is a need?
Need is a special psychological state of an individual, realized or perceived by him as “dissatisfaction”. This is the existing discrepancy between the external and internal conditions of life. The need usually encourages activity, which is aimed at eliminating this discrepancy.
Social, spiritual and material needs
So diverse are the needs that there are many of their classifications. In classical science, it is customary to distinguish 3 groups of needs: social, spiritual and material. The first place is given to the satisfaction of the material ones: in clothes, shelter, water, food. The means by which the satisfaction of needs is called material wealth. These can be essentials or luxuries, as well as services (legal advice, a doctor, car repair, etc.).
Spiritual needs are associated with the need to develop the individual as a person. They are satisfied by getting an education, reading books, acquaintance with art, owning information.
Through the participation of people in social and collective activities, socio-economic needs are realized: in trade unions, parties, public foundations, creative circles, charitable organizations.
Other classifications of needs
There are other divisions. For example, according to the types of subjects of needs, they are divided into social, collective, family and individual. Representatives of neoclassical science in economics (for example, A. Marshall, an English economist) divided them into relative and absolute, lower and higher, urgent and those that can be postponed, indirect and direct. Needs are also identified in the areas of action: communication, labor, recreation (rehabilitation, rest) and economic needs. Let's take a closer look at the last view.
Economic needs are part of human needs, for the satisfaction of which there must necessarily exist production, exchange, distribution and consumption of services and goods. It is this type of needs that is involved in the interaction between unmet needs and production.
Maslow Theory
The theory of A. Maslow, an American sociologist (his photo is presented below), gained great popularity in modern Western literature. All needs, in accordance with this classification, can be arranged in the form of a pyramid, in an ascending order from material ("lower") needs to spiritual ("higher").
The following types are distinguished:
- physiological needs (in drinking, food, etc.);
- in safety (in protection from fear, anger and pain, etc.);
- in social relations (friendly, family, religious);
- in the acquisition of social status (in approval, recognition);
- in self-expression (realization of personality abilities).
This classification can be represented in the form of a pyramid, at the top of which there will be needs for self-expression, and at the base - physiological. The lower order needs, according to Maslow, are physiological and security needs, and the higher order is social status and self-expression. Higher needs do not arise until lower ones are satisfied.
The relationship and interdependence of needs
It is possible to supplement the classification of needs by highlighting the following types: irrational and rational, concrete and abstract, unconscious and conscious, etc. But it should be remembered that any classification is rather conditional, since the economic needs of one kind or another are interdependent and interrelated. Material requests of people appear not only under the influence of the vital functions of the human body, but also to a significant extent under the influence of scientific, technical and economic development of society, social and spiritual guidelines. And specific for any social stratum and an individual person, social, intellectual and spiritual needs arise under the influence of material ones. They largely depend on the degree of satisfaction of the latter.
The historical nature and dynamism of needs
The historical nature of the economic needs of society. The ways of satisfying them and the sizes depend on what life needs and habits formed the society as a whole, social strata and individuals, that is, in what socio-historical conditions they are. The economic needs of society are dynamic. Social progress, human development, the intensity of information exchange - these are the factors under the influence of which requests change.
A continuous change in the qualitative and quantitative correlation that economic needs and benefits undergo, a steady increase in the process of evolutionary development of society, is the law of exaltation of needs. Their change occurred at a relatively slow pace, smoothly over many centuries and millennia. Today, the pace at which economic needs and benefits are growing has accelerated significantly. At the same time, there is a social uniformity of their exaltation, the emergence of an ever wider mass of the population needs of a higher order.
Economic and natural benefits
The satisfaction of economic needs, constantly growing, occurs in the process of consumption of various goods. They can be divided, in turn, into 2 large groups: economic and natural. Natural are in the very environment of human existence (sunlight, air). They do not require the costs and efforts of people for their consumption and production. Satisfying the economic needs of the good is the result of economic activity.
Features and classification of economic benefits
They should be produced before they are used. Therefore, the ultimate goal of the production activity of any society and the basis of its life is precisely the creation of such goods. Economic needs and resources, as well as various benefits, have a rather complicated classification. The benefits are divided, depending on the criterion laid down in their basis, into several groups.
- Long-term, which involve repeated use (book, car, videos, electrical appliances, etc.) and short-term, which disappear after a single use (matches, drinks, meat, bread, etc.).
- Substitutes (interchangeable) and complementary (complementary). Not only production resources and consumer goods are classified as substitutes, but also transport services (car-plane-train), leisure activities (circus-theater-cinema), etc. Speaking about complementary goods, we can cite as an example a chair and a table, a pen and paper, a car and gasoline, which, complementing each other, satisfy the economic needs of a person.
- Present benefits that are at the disposal of a particular economic entity, and future ones (their creation is only expected).
- Intangible and tangible.
- Private and public.
- Indirect and direct.
- Means of production and commodities.
Tangible and intangible goods
The development of economic needs is in the direction of increasing consumption of tangible and intangible goods. The former are the result of the functioning of one or another material production (construction, agriculture, industry, etc.). These are clothes, food, cars, buildings, household appliances, sporting goods, etc.
The second (intangible benefits) exist in the form of activities: treatment, education, public utilities, public or transport services, etc. Intangible goods differ fundamentally from material ones in that the consumption of the latter is always preceded by the process of their creation. Both in space and in time, these two processes are separated. Unlike goods, the production of services at the same time acts as their consumption, that is, there is, as a rule, no temporary gap.
Public goods
Public goods are those that are in collective, general consumption. For example, the protection of public order, national defense, street lighting, etc. Non-exclusion from consumption and indiscrimination are the hallmarks of this type of goods.
Non-selectivity means that such benefits cannot be provided to an individual so as not to satisfy the needs of other people at the same time. Inclusiveness means indivisibility, that is, consumers who have not paid for their production cannot be excluded from using them. The state, acting as a producer of these goods, providing the right to non-payers to use them, applies special methods of influence on them. Producers of private goods behave differently.
Private goods
Private - these are the benefits that come into the consumption of an individual (shoes, clothes) or a group of people (fuel, electricity, equipment). Their consumption is preceded by their purchase in the market. The buyer as a result of this purchase reimburses the costs of their creation to the manufacturer. Only when this condition is met does a private good come into the ownership of the consumer. His further fate, as a rule, is no longer of interest to the manufacturer.
Indirect and direct benefits
When characterizing the benefits, they also distinguish indirect and direct. Direct - those that directly enter into human consumption, and indirect, in contrast to them, indirectly. Economic goods are therefore classified as means of production and commodities. The latter are used for home, family, personal and other types of public consumption. Various means of labor (instruments, tools, constructions, buildings, equipment, machines) and objects of labor (energy, materials) created by people and subsequently used in their labor activities are means of production.
Now you know what are the benefits of society and economic needs. The economy today is actively developing and begins to produce ever better goods. However, this raises new needs. Probably you can not fully satisfy them. The demands of society are constantly growing, and what was a luxury for one generation is already daily for another.
