An Economy of Desires

Desirism is a philosophy that starts with basic human desires and builds towards a definition of morality in terms of the desires of a group. Desirism is intended to be an atheistic philosophy that gives us a morality without reference to any theistic doctrines. The podcast (available on iTunes) that presents the philosophy is called ‘Morality in the Real World’ and this is important to me. I’m judging it by those two key words, ‘Real World’, i.e. this world that we’re in right now.

Recently, I’ve had a problem with the fact that its morality mechanism is relativistic. Its meta-moral code is defined thus:

Morality is the practice of using social tools such as praise, condemnation, reward, and punishment to promote in society those desires that tend to fulfill other desires (because those are the ones people generally have reason to promote), and to inhibit those desires that tend to thwart other desires (because those are the desires that people generally have reason to inhibit.

To me, this says that you should want what other people want. I think this results in moral codes whose tenets are defined purely by popularity. Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape is at least based on an external, objectively verifiable metric: human well-being. Its that ‘well-being’ that defines his moral landscape, and therefore the concepts of up/better and down/worse within that landscape. Desirism has no equivalent of ‘well-being’, so it has no landscape. Agents float in a dark, empty space of desires and are free to say, ‘that direction is up’ or ‘down is over there’. The trouble is that up and down are defined without reference to any external standard (e.g. ‘Polaris Minor is up’) so they can change at the whim of the agents. Moreover, subgroups can set up their own definition of up/down and there is no basis for saying that it’s better or worse than any other definition except by popularity and, for me, that is a seriously bad way to define morality in the Real World with all its messiness, because anyone can say, ‘Hey, it’s really popular over here, so deal with it.’

So, I’ve been looking for analogies that illustrate why I have a problem with Desirism’s jump from ‘is’ to ‘ought’ and the spaceman one is okay, but then I can across one that blows it away.

The parallels between economics and Desirism are so many and varied that I’m going to present them as a table instead of a ponderous textual exposition. Here they are:

Economics	Desirism
Government	Moral Authority, Religion, Etiquette
Demands	Desires
Goods	Actions
Currency	Strokes
Fines	Slaps
Inflation	Inauthentic, Ritualized Politeness - McDonalds-style ‘Have a nice day’
Deflation	Rudeness, Road rage
Prices	Direct Altruism
Taxes	Indirect Altruism
Booms	60s-style anything is possible without effort, responsibility or consequences
Busts	Conflicts, Wars, Environmental Disasters
Customers	People who desire things from you
Suppliers	People you desire things from
Bankruptcy	Loneliness
Lottery Win	Celebrity
Billionaire	Maven
Wealth	Freedom to act on your desires
Poverty	No freedom to act on your desires
Trading	Communication
Innovation	New Knowledge giving rise to new moral codes, e.g. discovery of vaccines led to universal vaccination
Trading Block	Groupism

And they go on and on.

Trade wars? Morality wars, e.g. The Cold War, and the Christian-Muslim strife of today.

Economic fallout, such as toxic waste and greenhouse warming? Psychological fall outs, like anti-depressant usage.

GDP? Gross Domestic Desire Fulfillment.

Human beings in The Real World are a complex mix of competition, co-operation, love, hatred, selfishness, generosity, ignorance and wisdom. Managing the economy is as much a black art as a science (and any sensible economist will agree with that), and managing an economy of desires is an even more complex task, for though economies are grounded in tangible products made from tangible resources, desires are ungrounded and limitless. There is no end or reason to the ‘I want…’ statements of desire.