On This “Need” Business

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Collectivists often say there is a “need” for something – and that coercion (i.e., government) must provide it.

As in the “need” for  . . . insert here.

What’s interesting about this, beyond the often unnoticed fact that collectivism is really a kind of deformed individualism in that every “collective” is necessarily run by individuals (Stalin, for instance) who coerce the collective, is what’s admitted to by collectivists – without irony or understanding. That being if there is, in fact, a need for something, there is incentive (money to be made, profit) to provide it, arising from from the willingness of those who feel the need for that something to pay for it.

Put another way: If there is no incentive to provide it – because people aren’t willing to pay for it – it is persuasive evidence people aren’t especially interested in it.

In other words, people – as individuals – don’t really need it.

What coercive collectivists really mean is that they, the collectivists, want whatever it is.

Often it is a thing people have demonstrated they don’t want, established by their unwillingness to pay for it when they had the choice not to. Air bags are an excellent case-in-point that helps make the point.

These were brought to market decades before they were mandated. GM and Chrysler both offered them in a number of models back in the early 1970s. They offered them to see whether people wanted to buy them. Tat is to say, felt the need for them. If they did, then they would continue to offer them and almost certainly would have expanded the offering to more models, because there was money to be earned by offering them.

This is how the market works.

But very few people felt the need was worth the cost and so they didn’t pay it – because they didn’t have to.

When air bags were withdrawn on account of lack of demand, collectivists did what collectivists do when people – individuals – do not see a “need” and decline to pay for it.

They created artificial “demand” for air bags by requiring all people to pay for them, the cost folded into the price of the car – along with the air bags they had made clear the did not want. Not enough of them, that is, to justify the car companies continuing to freely offer them, for they would lose money in that event.

But the car companies – who had originally opposed the mandates – discovered they could make a lot of money by forcing all of their customers to pay more for air bag-equipped cars, which they had to (if they wanted a new car) because there was no longer an alternative; i.e., you were no longer free to buy a car without air bags and thereby avoid spending the money for a feature you felt no need for.

That is how government works.

Everything about it is built upon the assumption that it – i.e., those individuals who are the government – know best about your “needs” and are more than willing to make sure you pay for them.

Which is precisely why there’s no check on them, as there was when the market was allowed to sort need from want.

Most people do need a car and are very willing – eager, even – to freely pay for one. It was for that reason never necessary to mandate the Model T or the Model A that replaced it. But it was – it still is – necessary to mandate the Model 3 and its ilk. Because absent that, not enough people want one of the latter to make it worth offering them, freely. Even fewer probably would want one if they had to pay for it. That is, for all of – sans the tax kickbacks and subsidies, at a price that reflects what an EV actually costs to make plus a profit sufficient to justify its manufacture in a free market.

That is why it is necessary for those who run the collective to insist that everyone “needs” an EV and to  subsidize EVs – in addition to mandating them. If the mandates and subsidies were withdrawn tomorrow, how long would it be before there were almost no EVs – excepting the handful made for those willing to pay the full price for one?

Meanwhile, needs – real ones – are actively suppressed by the same collectivists who insist on the “need” to force people who don’t want to pay for what they don’t need, which would be obvious if they were free to not pay for it.

What needs?

How about the need for cars that can go almost 700 miles on a tank that can be refueled in about five minutes that cost less than $22,000? Hundreds of thousands of people expressed the need for such cars by willing buying them, when VW was free to offer them. But the government decided people did not need affordable, very long-legged diesel-powered cars and so outregulated (as opposed to outlawed) them. This latter is perhaps the most clever thing government has created – far more so than the oily doctrine of implied consent.

When it wants to thwart a need, it merely imposes a regulation to stymie its fulfillment. Pure genius! It does not say you may not have – or do – “x.” Instead, it says you may, provided “X” complies with “Y” And “Z,” which are either to difficult or too expensive (often both) to comply with.

Voila! The need is eliminated by making it appear no one is interested.

This is why it appears everyone is interested in owning an air bag-equipped car. A car with six of them, at least. Plus all of the other things the  collectivists says you need and make sure you’re going to pay for, too.

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