Yesterday my friend bought a whopping 1lac/100,000 rupees/2000$ laptop with some of the state of the art config, we were laughing at him calling a spendthrift brat as the spec was nothing but added luxury. But i am sure in near future none of us will think twice before buying the same config at lower price and the reason that will come out from the same people is now its a necessity ,no more a luxury. Did something weird happen to us? Why suddenly luxury became necessity? The reason is "affordability".Now we can afford it .
Lemme put another perspective here, when exactly did cellphone become necessity from luxury or the same question can be put against INTERNET. If luxuries really get converted into necessity what were the conducive factors which propelled these so called luxuries into domain of necessities?A cellular phone might be a necessity for you but might not be for an african tribal person. Is it always good to convert luxuries into necessities or is it harmful? Isnt it this upsurge of luxuries into necessities which motivated Americans into depths or prodigality which has culminated into this global slump? if the upsurge was an illusion who created it ? But on the other hand it was this consumption spree of prodigal Americans which kept some of the developing nations economy booming. People say India is insulated from recession...the reason cant be a tight regulated market only .. to some extent it may be but the main reason ,to be precise, is a voracious middle class consumer of which are still keeping the economy aloft.
"Everything above basic necessity is a luxury" . This basic definition is flawed since it fails to baseline where necessity stops and luxury starts. As previously mentioned ,with our increased affordablity our necessity increases.Then let us try to baseline it. What exactly defines our basic necessity : FOOD,WATER,HOUSE,CLOTHES. go back to stone age ,man had all these three and then zap back to 21st century. The necessities have remained same i.e FOOD,WATER,HOUSE,CLOTHES but somehow the domains have increased exponentially and neither did it happen overnight, nor did someone force us to do it. This was part of our economic evolution. Food evolved from raw meat from a kill to a canned food in a shopping mall another,example of our growing necessity domain.Some where in between this span of time, luxury got affordable and got converted into necessity while luxury kept exapanding into upper domain draggin necessity behind it. So today's luxury will evolve into tomorrows necessity coz this is how the economy has evolved and will continue to do so.
As i have already reasoned out, with growing domain of necessity, the consumption increases and increased economic affluence adds fuel to it.People might argue necessity is an illusion created by affluence that causes luxury seem necessity ,to them my argument would be .. after some time why this illusion becomes a reality? Why Levis when on discount becomes necessity?Now the burning question is should we allow the domain of necessity to expand? What if idealistically speaking every person got satisfied with all the basic needs. To quote a very old school quote "Necessity is the mother of invention". So in this equation if i keep necessity constant then invention also gets constant so predominantly we get stuck somewhere in time and become a history. But then this exansion causes economic bubbles which when burst cause economic misfortunes, what we call as Lehman Brothers etc.Some moderates might argue for the proposal of keeping it regulated for a controlled growth of civilization.The bigger question is do we we have the luxury of regulating the expansion of necessity?
Consumption at each financial level, viz middle class, upper class etc. is the reason for the constant economic evolution.U stop consumption u go into depression.This whole economic fabric is dependent on rampant consumption .The best we can do slow it down for a certain period of time like the present one as a correction measure. We cant stop the affluent middle class of developing countries from the luxuries of life which they now deem as necessity. A quick question here: Dont you need a camera and a mp3 player in your cell now whereas 5yrs back u thought cell to be a luxury.we all are part of that rising middle class which is looking upto the affordable luxury as a necessity and will continue to do so coz thus we drive innovation.In fact Market always kills products which satisfies customers and doesn't allow it to look up for new products. Any marketing guy will always will aim at increasing consumption and there's no best way than to make items of luxury , items of need .In my opinion luxury-affluence-necessity-rampant consumption-recession-luxury-affluence-necessity- is a cycle u cant get out of it nor can you stop it. It has its own corrective measures and its own propellants.What best we can do is keep yearning for better be it standard of living or depth of knowledge. We have to keep the fire of necessity burning and not dowse it down in the name of idealistic view of plain living. If you really want to get back to plain living, give it a shot, try skipping your cellphone coz communication was never a basic necessity .
