Needs and Wants: Why Discern?
Besides developing an admiration for the homeless volunteers who usually work the post, manning the hygeine room, a distribution center for soaps, razors, shaving cream, deodorant, socks, underwear, detergent, cologne, and all manner of toiletries, retaught me on a very micro level the macroeconomic tenent of limited resources satisfying unlimited wants. And then I began to rethink it.
"It's about satisfying needs, not wants," said Steve.
But the line between needs and wants blurs quite readily when one hands out soap. I ended up, as a general rule, fulfilling every request as best I could given the limited resources of our stock room. I followed the rule of empathy: if I was in his shoes would I feel legitimate requesting a razor with more than one blade? Growing up as the ugly american that I am (see "Ugly American" by Tom Gahl at http://svdp-alameda.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_svdp-lameda_archive.html) I handed out razors until the supply emptied.
I realized I must work within the limited constraints lest we spend all our resources in a short amount of time and thus close our doors. This is the practial problem facing most non-profits and I will continue to work within this framework.
However, granting the economists their prized assumption at least for the time being, we must at the very least recognize it on a sliding scale. For example, while the Champion Guidance Center struggles for soap and makes a picture-perfect microeconomic example of a macroeconcomic principle, a local office of PricwaterhouseCoopers has an entire department dedicated to document creation. The office supplies of a nationwide public accounting or law firm are, for all reasonable and practical purposes, unlimited.
The question is: is that right? On the sliding scale of organizations with more or less resources, it is right that the one that serves wealthy clients so as to make money has better or unlimited access to resources than the one that makes money so it can serve poor clients?
The question reminds me of a contrite yet profound visual memory of a poster in my Catholic elementary school, just outside the Kindergarten classroom: "I'm waiting for the day when schools have everything they need and the Defense Department has to hold a bake sale to pay for bombs."
The poster may at first seem too "John Lenin Dreamy" for casual cyberspace passersby but the observation that the self-interest model demands that the individual or organization has access to resources only in as much as he/she/it can sell itself may lead to more profound questioning. What is so wrong with our priorities that organizations which feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, protect the immigrants, and organize our youth must advertise in order to survive?
And why can't I give out as much soap as I damn well please?
Besides developing an admiration for the homeless volunteers who usually work the post, manning the hygeine room, a distribution center for soaps, razors, shaving cream, deodorant, socks, underwear, detergent, cologne, and all manner of toiletries, retaught me on a very micro level the macroeconomic tenent of limited resources satisfying unlimited wants. And then I began to rethink it.
"It's about satisfying needs, not wants," said Steve.
But the line between needs and wants blurs quite readily when one hands out soap. I ended up, as a general rule, fulfilling every request as best I could given the limited resources of our stock room. I followed the rule of empathy: if I was in his shoes would I feel legitimate requesting a razor with more than one blade? Growing up as the ugly american that I am (see "Ugly American" by Tom Gahl at http://svdp-alameda.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_svdp-lameda_archive.html) I handed out razors until the supply emptied.
I realized I must work within the limited constraints lest we spend all our resources in a short amount of time and thus close our doors. This is the practial problem facing most non-profits and I will continue to work within this framework.
However, granting the economists their prized assumption at least for the time being, we must at the very least recognize it on a sliding scale. For example, while the Champion Guidance Center struggles for soap and makes a picture-perfect microeconomic example of a macroeconcomic principle, a local office of PricwaterhouseCoopers has an entire department dedicated to document creation. The office supplies of a nationwide public accounting or law firm are, for all reasonable and practical purposes, unlimited.
The question is: is that right? On the sliding scale of organizations with more or less resources, it is right that the one that serves wealthy clients so as to make money has better or unlimited access to resources than the one that makes money so it can serve poor clients?
The question reminds me of a contrite yet profound visual memory of a poster in my Catholic elementary school, just outside the Kindergarten classroom: "I'm waiting for the day when schools have everything they need and the Defense Department has to hold a bake sale to pay for bombs."
The poster may at first seem too "John Lenin Dreamy" for casual cyberspace passersby but the observation that the self-interest model demands that the individual or organization has access to resources only in as much as he/she/it can sell itself may lead to more profound questioning. What is so wrong with our priorities that organizations which feed the hungry, shelter the homeless, protect the immigrants, and organize our youth must advertise in order to survive?
And why can't I give out as much soap as I damn well please?
posted by Ryan at 10:58 AM
1 Comments:
Joe, it sounds as though the year and the experiences are quickly making themselves present in your life. I like to hear it. Are those really your favorite movies or did you not change them from what I left?
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