… is from page 75 of Richard Epstein’s magnificent 1995 volume, Simple Rules for a Complex World:
The desire for more is one of the few features that is indispensable for human progress and advancement. The right question to ask is not why we want more. It is how are we prepared to go about getting the more that we all want.
DBx: Please, let’s have here no snooty proclamations that ‘real’ human beings don’t always prefer more to less. The “more” is not a specific thing or phenomenon (or set of phenomena). The “more” for you, a real human being, refers to whatever it is that you value. You might value only sensual gratification, in which case you want more rather than less such gratification. You might value only time spent with your family, in which case you want more rather than less such time. You might value the unchanging look and feel of your hometown’s downtown and residential areas, in which case you want more security, rather than less security, that that unchanging look and feel will be maintained.
And, of course, that which you want more of might or might not be that which I want more of. In the former case, we might nevertheless still disagree about what are the best means of obtaining more of what we both want. In the latter case, we must somehow compromise with each other (and countless other of our fellow human beings) to decide how much more you will get of what you want more of and how much more I will get of what I want more of.
…..
There’s a slight yet significant imprecision in what I wrote above. So let’s be precise: It’s never accurate to say that “you might value literally only more of X, Y, or Z.” No one values anything in such a way. We instead value ‘at the margin.’ Given your situation now, you will value some additional amount of X more than you value the increments of Y and Z that you must forego in order to obtain that additional amount of X. And when you obtain that additional amount of X, the value to you of yet more X will be less than was the value you expected to obtain from that first additional amount of X. At some point, you’ll prefer more incremental units of Y and Z than more units of X – although you very likely then still would prefer more units of X if obtaining more units X were less costly.
A final point: Being mortal, you will always have some desires – wishes – demands – goals – hopes – that are not fully fulfilled. This reality is no less true for trillionaires than it is for desperately poor persons. In this earthly vale, there will always be more of something(s) that you want. Always.
