Hans Mayer, Bedürfnis (1924)

Hans Mayer’s encyclopedia entry explains needs as the psychological foundation of economic action and subjective value. Its five sections move from definitions and classifications through Gossen’s law of satiation, scales of needs, and provision for future needs to the ultimate basis of economic importance. The argument progressively qualifies its starting point: economic choice cannot be explained simply by the strength of immediately felt desires. It requires reflective judgments about the welfare consequences of satisfying competing needs, under conditions of scarcity.

Mayer gives “need” a wider meaning than everyday usage: even weak desires and imagined necessities can motivate economic action. Following Čuhel, he distinguishes desires for increased welfare, desires to use external means, and desires to obtain or retain control over those means. Scarcity makes the latter two economic; no need is inherently economic independently of the availability of its means of satisfaction. Nevertheless, explanation must return to the underlying welfare desires if it is to account for an individual’s allocation of resources as a whole. Mayer also separates subjective need from objectively expressible requirements:

Bedarf ist die Menge der erforderlichen verschiedenartigen Befriedigungsmittel der Bedürfnisse.

English translation: Requirements are the quantity of the various means necessary to satisfy needs.

Practical economic activity meets these requirements; theory explains their determination and the allocation of goods among them. Accordingly, Mayer classifies needs by their distinguishable means of satisfaction rather than by elusive qualities of feeling. Their temporal forms—temporary, periodically recurring, or continuous—also matter for economic provision.

The second section develops diminishing satisfaction. Within a single period of need, successive units of the same means of satisfaction yield progressively smaller welfare increments until satiation. Mayer applies this principle to intellectual as well as bodily needs, while insisting on the conditions of unchanged means and a common period of satisfaction.

Diese Gesetzmäßigkeit besteht unabhängig von dem Willen der Wirtschaftssubjekte, sie ist gegeben mit den Eigentümlichkeiten des menschlichen Organismus, für die Oekonomie ist sie eine Erfahrungstatsache, deren weitere Begründung der Physiologie zu überlassen ist.

English translation: This regularity exists independently of the will of economic agents; it is given with the characteristics of the human organism, and for economics it is an empirical fact whose further explanation must be left to physiology.

Its theoretical consequence is marginal utility: the value of a unit depends on the importance of the satisfaction lost without it, and therefore on the available stock. Mayer credits Gossen with the decisive application to value, situating Menger, Walras, and Jevons as independent rediscoverers and Wieser and Böhm-Bawerk as further developers.

The third section distinguishes the ranking of entire kinds of need from comparisons among their partial satisfactions. Individuals’ rankings reflect disposition, culture, education, and habit; a universally valid descriptive hierarchy is therefore unavailable, although needs essential to life and health have a distinctive priority. Allocation nevertheless turns on particular increments:

Für die Bewertung und Verwendung der Güter kommt es nicht auf die Wichtigkeit der Bedürfnisarten (als Ganzes), sondern auf das Intensitätsverhältnis der Teilbedürfnisse der verschiedenen Bedürfnisarten an.

English translation: For the valuation and use of goods, what matters is not the importance of the kinds of need (as wholes), but the relative intensity of the partial needs belonging to the different kinds of need.

This distinction resolves the apparent contradiction between the importance of food and the high exchange value of diamonds. It also explains how productive resources should be distributed among competing uses: each portion should secure the greatest available addition to total satisfaction. Yet Mayer rejects the inference that optimal allocation necessarily produces exactly equal satisfaction intensities across all needs. Some scales descend continuously; others move in steps because their means of satisfaction are technically indivisible. Housing exemplifies the latter. Models assuming unlimited divisibility can therefore yield elegant but empirically unusable results.

The fourth section treats anticipation as constitutive of economic planning. Production takes time, and ordinary provision relies on experience of recurring future needs. Mayer rejects a systematic undervaluation of future needs merely because they are imagined rather than presently felt. Familiar needs become associated with definite quantities of required goods, while painful shortages correct mistaken provision. He allows possible underestimation in a remote, uncertain future, for which people generally preserve wealth and income rather than formulate detailed consumption plans.

The final section asks whether desire intensity explains importance or merely registers it. Immediate impulses cannot suffice: reflection may suppress a strong desire because of harmful consequences or favor a weaker one because of lasting benefits.

Das Urteil über die Wichtigkeit einer Bedürfnisbefriedigung ist daher bei den reflektierten Begehren, welche allein für die Wirtschaft in Betracht kommen, das Primäre, die Intensität des auf die Mittel der Befriedigung gerichteten Begehrens das Sekundäre.

English translation: In reflected desires, which alone are relevant to economic activity, the judgment concerning the importance of satisfying a need is therefore primary, and the intensity of the desire directed toward the means of satisfaction is secondary.

Expected welfare gain ultimately grounds that judgment, with both intensity and duration entering the comparison. Mayer defends this explanatory hedonism against identification with selfishness or materialism: pleasure includes altruistic satisfaction and fidelity to ethical principles. Economics does not prescribe happiness’s content. The entry closes by stressing interdependence: satisfactions can complement, reinforce, or replace one another, so a good’s valuation often depends on consumption of other goods as well as its own quantity. Its significance lies in joining marginal-utility explanation to reflective planning, technical indivisibility, and interconnected needs.