Between Want and Need: What Economics Gets Wrong

Prashant Singh — Thu, 07 May 2026 10:48:39 +0000

Every morning, 733 million people wake up hungry. They have a need - urgent and real. But in the language of markets, most of them don't exist. Because markets don't respond to need. They respond to demand. And demand requires money.
Alfred Marshall defined it clearly in 1890: demand is not desire. It is desire backed by the power and willingness to pay. A starving person needs food whether they can afford it or not. But only the person who can pay creates a market signal.
This gap between need and demand is not a small detail. It is the central fact of modern economic life.
Abraham Maslow's hierarchy - validated across 123 countries and 60,000 respondents - confirms that human needs are universal. Food, safety, belonging, esteem, and purpose. Every person on earth experiences all five. But markets serve them in proportion to purchasing power, not urgency.
Research makes this painfully visible. Healthcare and food, the things people cannot live without, carry the most inelastic demand. People go into debt for insulin. They skip meals to keep the lights on. The market's harshest pressure falls on those with the least power to resist it.
And behavioral research by Kahneman and Tversky adds another layer: much of what we think we need has been constructed for us. Algorithms don't discover our preferences. They manufacture them.
Markets are not broken. They do exactly what they were designed to do - serve effective demand. The problem is that effective demand and genuine human need are rarely the same thing.
Every business decision, every investment, every policy built without understanding that gap is built on incomplete ground.

The distance between what people need and what economies provide is not a gap. It is a choice.

Why I Started Learning System Design as a Web Developer

Prashant Singh — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 07:35:23 +0000

I was reading a discussion on Reddit the other day that made me wonder whether system design is truly important for backend developers or just something emphasized in interviews. It got me thinking about how I approach my work as a developer.

💡 My Realization

When I first started as a web developer, I thought system design was for:
• Big systems that handle a lot of users
• Complicated architectures
• Preparing for big tech interviews

But the more I worked on real projects, the more I realized that system design is actually part of everyday backend development.

🔍 Where System Design Applies in Practice

System design shows up in things like:
• Designing APIs that are reliable and scalable
• Handling third-party integrations with different behaviors
• Managing performance using caching, queues, and async processing
• Building systems that are flexible and easy to extend

Even small applications benefit from good design.

⁉️ Why I Started Learning It

I realized system design is not about size-it’s about problem-solving and decision-making.
For example:
• Handling services with different response times
• Managing inconsistent data formats
• Designing systems that continue working even when parts fail

These are core engineering skills beyond just writing code.

⬆️ Relevance in Modern Development

With the rise of:
• Microservices
• Distributed systems
• AI-assisted development
The role of a developer is shifting toward:
• Designing systems
• Making informed decisions
• Managing complexity

🎯 Current Focus
I’m currently working on:
• Practical system design thinking
• Understanding architectural trade-offs
• Solving real-world backend problems

💬 Closing Thought
System design is not just an interview topic.
It’s a mindset.
I’m approaching it as a long-term investment to become a better backend engineer-not just a coder.
I’d love to hear how others are approaching system design in their journey.
hashtag#SystemDesign hashtag#BackendDevelopment hashtag#Reddit i posted it

DEV Community: Prashant Singh

Between Want and Need: What Economics Gets Wrong

Why I Started Learning System Design as a Web Developer