Very interesting. However, I think by differentiating what people "actually want" from what they do, you have made it completely inaccessible. How can we possibly find out what people actually want if it's different from both (1) what they say and (2) what they do? In other words, is there any way you can validate your thesis? I suspect you can't. You will have to fall back to what they say they want.
That's a good point too, I'll have to think about that.
The sorts of examples I was thinking of though, would be:
* Someone who wants/says they want everyone to be paid a living wage and are willing to pay somewhat more for products made by people earning such -- but still consistently buy the cheapest products, made in sweatshops.
(That one might be, in part, about a lack of trustworthy information?).
* Someone who wants/says they'd rather there be fewer McDonalds around and more healthy restaurants, but still spends lot of money at mccdonalds, and maybe not at an available healthy restaurant.
(lack of willpower?)
I think you are right about the, er, epistemilogical problems, but I think there are still some examples that make it pretty obvious that what people actually want is not always represented by their actions.
Or at least not always by their _purchase actions_. Maybe the larger point is that, contrary to certain religions, the market is not in fact a perfect aggregator of people's true desires. What is successful in the market is NOT always representative of people's true desires, for all sorts of reasons (including the obvious one that some people have more market power than others, so are better represented in 'the market' -- but that's just the very beginning of reasons).
This is insightful. Lack of information, lack of willpower (eg. laziness, addiction) and bad decision-making (for reasons such as cognitive biases, poor reasoning under uncertainty etc) can be reasons why actions may not be consistent with the real wants. I agree with your larger point.
Given this, as a business, one has a choice of focusing only on what you can get people to do (eg. cigarettes, farmville, tabloid journalism, in fact any business that exploits the above reasons) as opposed to focusing on what they truly want - even though we want people to act in a certainway. The first kind are the businesses which are generally considered "evil".
Your idea of wants differentiated from actions seems to be quite fruitful. I used to tell people "don't ask your customers, instead, observe their actions". Clearly, something more is required to make a non-evil business. Thanks for teaching me something new. :)
One possible way to validate your point is by asking people if they ever regret their actions. However, I think this isn't robust. Regretting my past action now doesn't mean that I didn't want it then.
