Who Needs What?

“[I]t is evident … that the man, who first made himself clothes and built himself a cabin, supplied himself with things which he did not much want, since he had lived without them till then; and why should he not have been able to support in his riper years, the same kind of life, which he had supported from his infancy?”

—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Equality

“Under laissez faire, says the planner, it is not those goods which people ‘really’ need that are produced, but those goods from the sale of which the highest returns are expected. It is the objective of planning to direct production toward the satisfaction of the ‘true’ needs. But who is to decide what the ‘true’ needs are?”

—Ludwig von Mises, Human Action