I shall use the term needs to refer to those things that are considered essential for life and for dignity. At the individual level they comprise survival needs and self-respect needs. Survival needs are those things that are vital for the preservation of life and the survival of the race and are few - clean air, clean water, healthy food, warmth and shelter - for ourselves and our dependants. To that list should also be added readily available medicines and medical treatment that can save lives and prevent or cure disabilities. Very few people in the modern world are completely self-sufficient, so in order to obtain survival needs money is required for all but air and sometimes water, therefore money is as essential as the needs themselves. Self-respect needs are those that maintain dignity in the circumstances that prevail, and they change as the human environment changes. In the modern world they include the means to stay clean, reasonable clothing, safe and dry habitation, social participation, and again of course money in order to obtain these things. They are listed in detail in Table 2 of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Minimum Income Report.[52]
A further category of needs arises at the level of society as whole - social needs - which encompass those things that we need to maintain the infrastructure of our civilisation, counter environmental threats, ensure sustainability, and provide security. Threat examples include climate change and its many associated dangers[53], harmful pollution in all its forms, increasing scarcity of water, loss of biodiversity and deforestation. These are all linked in various ways but climate change is the one that threatens us the most. Although the vast majority of scientists who have studied climate change agree that it is very real there are still others who disagree - often in the pay of polluters.[54] My position is simple. Ignoring for now the overwhelming evidence that climate change is real and caused by human activities there are two ways in which we might be wrong:
i. Climate change is real and we ignore it - result: we unleash a living hell as more and more are forced to compete for less and less in an increasingly hostile environment, and there is a very real possibility that we become extinct[55]; and
ii. Climate change is not real but we act as though it is - result: resources are allocated where they need not be but no real harm is done. What's more we become much better placed to deal with environmental threats that materialise in the future, and if our actions are decisive then we ensure that they never materialise.
Could our best course of action be any clearer? What's more it isn't a situation where the extent of reward is related to the effort expended. It's like a war, we either win or lose. Unless the effort we expend is decisive in countering the threat we will lose the fight no matter how close we come to winning it. At stake is human survival. At stake also is survival of most or perhaps even all other forms of life, though if we don't care about our own survival then we aren't likely to care about all the rest.
It is our generation that decides whether or not to take the risk, but it is future generations that will suffer the most devastating consequences
Sustainability requires that we live within the earth's capacity to provide both living and non-living natural resources and to absorb waste produced by human activities. Sufficient non-living natural resources must be recycled to ensure that the depletion rate of known reserves allows a very comfortable margin of time - preferably hundreds of years - to cater for the development of substitutes or the improvement of recycling efficiency.
With respect to the achievement of sustainability the work of the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT)[56] in Machynlleth, Wales, deserves to be much more widely recognised. They back their sustainability campaign by the development and detailed appraisal of cost-effective sustainable technologies and methods in all relevant areas. They share their knowledge by offering a wide range of long and short courses at all levels of practical and academic detail including post-graduate degrees. When or if the world wakes up to the urgency of environmental threats CAT will be ready and able to deliver the means to counter them.
Security is needed for both internal and external threats, an adequate welfare state providing for internal threats and national defence for external threats. Defence is a regrettable necessity, but should be no more than sufficient, in conjunction with dependable allied countries, to counter terrorist threats and to ensure that potential major aggressors would lose more than they would gain by mounting an attack.
Wants refers to those things that we would like but are additional to our needs. They include luxuries that make our lives more enjoyable and comfortable; investments that (hopefully) make our lives more secure in the future; things that enhance skills, knowledge, mental and physical wellbeing; and so on.
Needs and wants are forms of wealth, and therefore neoliberalism recognises no distinction between them. However for individuals the distinction is of vital importance. The more a person's needs are unmet the less bargaining power they have.
We shall see in due course that although neoliberalism makes great claims for the efficiency and universal benevolence of the 'unfettered free market', this philosophy in fact strongly favours those in strong bargaining positions, usually the rich, and strongly disfavours those in weaker positions, especially the poor. It permits exploitation of those bargaining for their needs, and is one of the causes of the wealth gap between rich and poor people and between rich and poor countries. Milton Friedman, one of the most ardent supporters of the free market, recognised that to work properly markets must not permit coercion. Two quotations emphasise this point:
i. ....both parties to an economic transaction benefit from it, provided the transaction is bi-laterally voluntary and informed. Exchange can therefore bring about co-ordination without coercion. and
ii. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce. (Both from Friedman 1962 Chapter 1.)
The power to coerce is one of the main 'freedoms' enjoyed by the unscrupulous wealthy and supported by neoliberals, especially in modern labour markets. They seem to have forgotten what Friedman said, or perhaps they prefer to ignore it.
It is interesting to note that although inequality of bargaining power is not recognised in neoliberal economics it is implicitly recognised in English law. This is an extract from a judgement by Lord Denning in the case of Lloyd's Bank vs Bundy in the Court of Appeal in 1974:
...through all these instances there runs a single thread. They rest on inequality of bargaining power. By virtue of it, the English law gives relief to one who, without independent advice, enters into a contract upon terms which are very unfair or transfers property for a consideration which is grossly inadequate, when his bargaining power is grievously impaired by reason of his own needs or desires, or by his own ignorance or infirmity, coupled with undue influences or pressures brought to bear on him by or for the benefit of the other.[57]