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I don't think so. As stupid as it sounds, this is something I learned playing WoW many years ago with the expansion that added glyphs. Everyone _needed_ glyph

I don't think so. As stupid as it sounds, this is something I learned playing WoW many years ago with the expansion that added glyphs. Everyone _needed_ glyphs in the sense that your character wasn't hitting it's full potential and you'd get mocked if you didn't have them. Back then I wrote my own auction house addon that would scan for glyphs below a certain price threshold, buy them, and re-list them in bulk for higher prices. It also scanned for raw materials and bought them too to help strangle the supply as much as possible. It was so easy that hitting the technical gold limit (something just over 200k IIRC) was a realistic problem to deal with. The supply was limited enough that 2-3 people could monopolize an entire server. I recognized the other 1 or 2 people doing it on my server and it's something I would describe as tacit collusion. We never talked to each other, but we didn't compete with each other either. The whole time _everyone_ complained about the price of glyphs, but there wasn't much they could do about it. If someone came in and tried to compete by undercutting you, you'd just buy out their supply and re-list it at your inflated prices. It wasn't complex. You just needed to be willing to be a bit of a scumbag. The only thing that was moderately difficult was getting enough gold to start monopolizing that part of the market. IIRC it costed 5k gold to get a flying mount and most players had to save up for that, so being able to drop 5k at the auction house gave a lot of buying power. Having a limited supply product that people _need_ means your profits are only limited by your ethics. Capitalism works really well for luxury products IMO, but less so for necessities.

blargmaster42_8 6y ago
Communist detected!
lopmotr 6y ago
It sounds like this need only existed because the product existed in a zero-sum game. If supply was increased, presumably players would need more. In non-zero-sum real life, things are different. People didn't need antibiotics before they were invented just as people don't currently need to live to 200 years old since we don't have that technology either. I can't find a clear boundary between need and want. Need seems to be just "very want". Some people end up with less than others and the world keeps turning. We don't even need seemingly essential things like water because we can survive a few days without it. Just as seriously ill people can survive a few days without treatment (which may or may not have been invented yet), and normal healthy people can survive a few days when they're already 100 years old and we don't have anti-aging tech.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  It's more complicated than "just increase the supply". We've seen this play out in the first half of 2020. 1) Retooling factories and setting up supply chains takes time. You can't just start pumping out PPEs out of a new plant in a week; it takes months to organize. 2) In an emergency, by the time the production is ramped up, the demand may be gone. Some mask manufacturers were reluctant to increase their capacity early this year, because they've been burned by this in the past: they've overproduced for SARS, only to see the demand evaporate as the pandemic subsided, and were left holding the bag.
- regularfry 6y ago
  The dictionary definition of "need" is instructive. The first definition (in Collins 2018) is "to be in want of", so in a sense you're right. However, one of the subsequent definitions is "distress or extremity", followed by "extreme poverty or destitution". "Need", then, is a want that's extreme enough to cause suffering if it's unfulfilled. In that sense, people did need antibiotics. They might not have known it, but they did. In the same way, today we need treatments that we haven't discovered yet. "Being able to survive" isn't the bar. "Not suffering for the lack" is.
0-_-0 6y ago
In your example it's not possible to increase supply in response to increased demand.
- La1n 6y ago
  It was, just not quick enough for something that people needed quickly. Similar in the case of PPE
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  It’s also impossible to rapidly increase N95 mask production in the short term due to limits on the production of intermediate materials. We probably could’ve built more factories by now, but in the initial weeks of the pandemic increasing output was literally impossible.

blargmaster42_8 6y ago

Communist detected!

lopmotr 6y ago

It sounds like this need only existed because the product existed in a zero-sum game. If supply was increased, presumably players would need more. In non-zero-sum real life, things are different. People didn't need antibiotics before they were invented just as people don't currently need to live to 200 years old since we don't have that technology either. I can't find a clear boundary between need and want. Need seems to be just "very want". Some people end up with less than others and the world keeps turning. We don't even need seemingly essential things like water because we can survive a few days without it. Just as seriously ill people can survive a few days without treatment (which may or may not have been invented yet), and normal healthy people can survive a few days when they're already 100 years old and we don't have anti-aging tech.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
It's more complicated than "just increase the supply". We've seen this play out in the first half of 2020. 1) Retooling factories and setting up supply chains takes time. You can't just start pumping out PPEs out of a new plant in a week; it takes months to organize. 2) In an emergency, by the time the production is ramped up, the demand may be gone. Some mask manufacturers were reluctant to increase their capacity early this year, because they've been burned by this in the past: they've overproduced for SARS, only to see the demand evaporate as the pandemic subsided, and were left holding the bag.
regularfry 6y ago
The dictionary definition of "need" is instructive. The first definition (in Collins 2018) is "to be in want of", so in a sense you're right. However, one of the subsequent definitions is "distress or extremity", followed by "extreme poverty or destitution". "Need", then, is a want that's extreme enough to cause suffering if it's unfulfilled. In that sense, people did need antibiotics. They might not have known it, but they did. In the same way, today we need treatments that we haven't discovered yet. "Being able to survive" isn't the bar. "Not suffering for the lack" is.

0-_-0 6y ago

In your example it's not possible to increase supply in response to increased demand.

La1n 6y ago
It was, just not quick enough for something that people needed quickly. Similar in the case of PPE
ashtonkem 6y ago
It’s also impossible to rapidly increase N95 mask production in the short term due to limits on the production of intermediate materials. We probably could’ve built more factories by now, but in the initial weeks of the pandemic increasing output was literally impossible.