Armed with a definition of happiness and its allied concepts of satisfaction and a sense of well-being, and further equipped with a model for thinking about happiness and satisfaction, we turn to Koopmans's claim that in studying the market one studies “the best ways of satisfying wants in human society.” For this purpose, we must consider the nature of wants and wanting and the concept of satisfaction. It is then possible to assess three central problems: the role of the market in creating the wants it seeks to satisfy, the nature of the concept of “utility” that economists employ to express satisfaction, and the important question of the scope of the wants that enter – and fail to enter – market transactions.

Examining the claim: the best ways of satisfying human wants

Wanting and happiness

Psychologists treat wanting as a problem of motivation, economists as a matter of demand, philosophers as a problem of values and their justification. Synthesizing and borrowing eclectically, we might say that wanting is a mental state characterized by: (1) a desired object, (2) a sense of incompleteness or deficiency in the failure to attain that object, and (3) belief that satisfaction would follow from the attainment of the object (though not necessarily a belief that the object is attainable). Wanting is not a motive, but a condition for motivation.

The market analysts’ emphasis on the satisfaction of human wants is based on the belief that unrequited wants represent pain that is relieved when these wants are satisfied.