Comment by bdauvergne

The category of "food" in economics is vast and absolutely includes things that humans don't need to live. Nobody dies if they can't buy clothing, except in very extreme cases, yet clothing is generally considered "essential". Meanwhile, people do die because they can't get jobs and become homeless, and you need an internet connection to get a job, but internet access is very rarely considered "essential" (although I suspect this is changing).

Besides, the usual definition of "essential" in economics is more about price elasticity, how consistent demand is, how spending on the category changes as income changes, etc. But whatever your parameters for that definition are, if you actually measure these things you'll see things that surprise you, and most of your results are going to be artifacts of how you categorize things. Lots of entertainment shows low price elasticity. Should dried beans and rice be in the same "food" category as foie gras? Is a Disney+ subscription essential to a working single mother of young children? Is heroin essential to a heroin addict? Are opiates essential to someone in chronic pain? Is alcohol essential to an alcoholic? Some would literally die if it were suddenly unavailable!

The category is murky, nobody can agree on what is or is not essential, nor even what its definition is: low price elasticity? necessary for life? necessary for a fulfilling life? able to be temporarily deferred in a crisis? All of these result in different lists.

> You sure have a weird definition of it.

As I feel like I've made quite clear: I do not have any definition of it, and neither do any of you. So let's not make policy decisions and economic predictions based on what is or is not "essential", please. People want GPUs, and you'll find lots of people who are more willing to give up their clothing and restaurant food than their GPUs.

Imagine for a second that the year was 1880. You would say that telephones aren't essential, wouldn't you? In the previous 25 centuries of recorded history we have lived without them. Nobody's going to die if they were to stop working.

And thus that the valuation of the Bell System must be based on pure hype. Right?

> Or you could recognize that "essential" has a meaning in economic/financial terms

I do not recognize that. That is the point of my argument. A large portion of economics is rich people trying to justify their own greed as being moral. Classifying goods as "essential" vs. "non-essential" is a way of telling poor people what they're allowed to have, and always has been. A good goes from "non-essential" to "essential" only when rich people are worried they'll get guillotined if the poor don't have access to it.

I'm aware that it has a definition in terms of what people are able to stop purchasing when their income goes down, or how consumption relates to income levels in general, but the former is a problematic definition for many reasons, and the latter does not actually coincide particularly well with the categories of goods people list off when they think of "essential goods". Humans in real life just don't respond to changing conditions the same way the little econs in your head do; they way you've decided they "should".

Ever heard that humans don't "behave logically"? Yeah, that's economists with overly simplified models being annoyed that (mostly) poor people don't act the way that they've decided poor people should act. See the trend?

Ask four economists write out a list of "essential goods" and you'll get five different lists. That is not how definitions work. Ask four mathematicians whether something is a Commutative Ring or not and they'll all agree. That's a definition. "Essential" does not have a definition. Its meaning shifts depending on which group the author of the Wall Street Journal op-ed you're reading wants to villainize this time.