The Demand Potential Curve

The thing about demand, is that for every human there is a limit to how far the demand goes. We'll always have constant needs and wants throughout life, that is true. But once those needs and wants are satisfied and maintained at a certain level, what need is there for pursuing those particular needs and wants any further? Demand levels off at a certain point in the society where the differences in being able to achieve one's demand potential become marginal, and one's life is only marginally, if not actually, improved upon by simply having "more" of something. There seems to be (in my estimation only) physical and psychological needs (essential requirements for survival), social needs (which are intertwined with the physical and psychological needs, but not related to the physical and psychological requirements for survival), physical and psychological wants (which aren't essential, but make life seem more pleasant), and social wants (involving non-essential, socially constructed goods and services that don't really affect the individuals' ability to survive). The total demand potential curve is the sum of all the demands that individuals can conceive of, or the total amount that a human society needs and wants.

The proof for this demand potential is in the limits of human cognition and perception.  While in the present we can experience insatiability as the grass is always greener on the other side, the simple fact that we are limited in how we perceive and are able to imbibe the world around us shows that demand is cannot be an infinitely insatiable thing.  We know this when we have a large meal and are unable to consume anymore food because our physical stomachs are limited in size to carry food.  We also know from experience that transgressing or pushing those natural boundaries (to be truly insatiable) is neither environmentally, physically, or psychologically healthy for the individual or the group and ecosystem with which they live.  Greed is considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins for a reason, because we see in our own lives how it has profound negative effects on the environment, the society, and the individuals' own psychological mindset.

One can think of this curve moving along a y-axis, which can represent both the percentage of the population able to achieve their individual demand potential (as defined by a basket of goods and services of their choosing and the biological and psychological necessities that are shared by humans), or as the percentage of the demand potential that society is able to achieve, and an x-axis which can represent time or location (which would mean a bar-graph).  A flat line can be seen above this variable curve, which represents the complete demand potential of a society.  It is the sum of the goods and services that can be had at a given time and place that the environment can support.  This changes as new goods enter the market and as new people enter into the society (in other words, as societies' needs and wants increase or decrease depending upon the level of technological development, the number of people in the society, and is bounded by the ecosystems' carrying capacities for human habitation and economic activities.

It is theoretically feasible to calculate the near-demand potential in a society, and then gauge how much of it society can achieve, and how many people are able to individually achieve it in their lifetimes in changing times and conditions for various periods of time. Anything beyond what is needed for private individuals to achieve their reasoned demand potential (their near actual, not perceived satiation point) can then be pooled for future investments and maintenance without causing any actual harm to anyone in the society.  The wealth that is beyond the actual demand potential of the individual and society is the wealth that isn't used by individuals to do anything else beyond make more money for the individual through financial tools.  Potential expansions, upgrades, and new research can help drive society towards having mostly better off lives and the potential for lives to be better in the future in a myriad of different conditions. A democratic, inclusive, and responsive government would be the best known tool for making those investments in society and projects that don't yield much safe individual profit in short enough time frames. 

When wealth that is beyond the individual's demand potential curve, it does not actually seem to be used in any way that is productive.  Rather, if the size, condition, and behavior of the current financial sector offer us any clues, that wealth that individuals have is more often than not used to simply make more wealth for the individual in the form of financial rents.  Since those individuals' demand potential for goods and services can be easily satisfied and exceeded for long periods of time, it stands to reason that that additional wealth is not actually benefiting those individuals, especially if one considers the public resentment and crumbling infrastructure that this kind of private extracting and hoarding behavior produces in the larger social unit.  See the current state of the American society after some 40+ years of Neoliberalism and policies that permit wealth to accumulate for the individual beyond their actual satiation points as an easy example of this.

Now, it should be noted that the absolute demand potential (the maximum demand of the society) can move up or down, depending on the level of technological development, the changing demands and tastes of the society, and on environmental conditions and limitations (such as natural resources).  If we're able to make new technologies that don't have caustic effects on the environment, or may have a positive effect on the environment, the potential for demand can go up.  If more people move in, the demand potential is going to go up since more people means more needs and wants to satisfy.  If a natural resource gets depleted such that we're not able to meet past demand potentials, then the demand potential goes down.

If the concept of a demand potential is able to catch on, prove to be an accurate construct, and maybe used by policymakers and researchers, it could be a very helpful tool for governments to understand how and how much to tax individuals and what goods and services require legislative priority (ie, to ensure quality and quantity).  The private sector can use this for marketing and discovering niches in markets for profiting.  What is important though is that humans recognize what the demand potential curve represents.  It is not the end of want or wants, but a means of gauging needs and wants by making them known explicitly to the individual and society.  The percentage of the demand potential that can be achieved, and the percentage of people who are able to achieve it would be more valuable tools for gauging a society's overall health, wealth, and quality of life than a figure like GDP.