Human desires are harder to satiate than I might think? Well...I think that human desire is insatiable. Let's juxtapose a couple wonderful passages...

We call contentment or satisfaction that state of a human being which does not and cannot result in any action. Acting man is eager to substitute a more satisfactory state of affairs for a less satisfactory. His mind imagines conditions which suit him better, and his action aims at bringing about this desired state. The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness. A man perfectly content with the state of his affairs would have no incentive to change things. He would have neither wishes nor desires; he would be perfectly happy. He would not act; he would simply live free from care. - Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

...and...

If we now turn to consider the immediate self-interest of the consumer, we shall find that it is in perfect harmony with the general interest, i.e., with what the well-being of mankind requires. When the buyer goes to the market, he wants to find it abundantly supplied. He wants the seasons to be propitious for all the crops; more and more wonderful inventions to bring a greater number of products and satisfactions within his reach; time and labor to be saved; distances to be wiped out; the spirit of peace and justice to permit lessening the burden of taxes; and tariff walls of every sort to fall. In all these respects, the immediate self-interest of the consumer follows a line parallel to that of the public interest. He may extend his secret wishes to fantastic or absurd lengths; yet they will not cease to be in conformity with the interests of his fellow man. He may wish that food and shelter, roof and hearth, education and morality, security and peace, strength and health, all be his without effort, without toil, and without limit, like the dust of the roads, the water of the stream, the air that surrounds us, and the sunlight that bathes us; and yet the realization of these wishes would in no way conflict with the good of society. - Frédéric Bastiat, Abundance and Scarcity

Human desire is limitless. The challenge is to figure out how to help people understand that we sabotage progress when we prevent each and every individual from having the freedom to prioritize their desires. And prioritizing desires doesn't mean making a list... it means sacrificing accordingly. This effectively communicates to others what's really important to us. Without this essential information... how can other people make informed decisions about how to put society's limited resources to more valuable uses?

Right now we can't choose where our taxes go. Instead, we elect a small group of people to represent humanity's powerful desires for a better world. The point of understanding concepts such as "scarcity" and "opportunity cost" is to effectively evaluate the efficacy of our current system. If it's beneficial to block your valuations from the public sector... then why isn't it beneficial to block your valuations from the private sector? Why do your unique private priorities matter but your unique public priorities do not? How can your freedom to sacrifice a fancy dinner for 10 books be more important than your freedom to sacrifice the drug war for cancer research?

I've given this article a thumbs up. Does this effectively communicate how much I value it? Does the number of thumbs up that this article has received effectively communicate how much we value it? Does it really matter how much everybody on this forum values this article? Does it really matter how much we'd be willing to sacrifice/forego/give-up for this article?

The point that I'm trying to make is that these economic tools aren't fancy paperweights. Whether our institutions are the forums that we participate in... or the governments that we pay taxes to... these economic tools serve a fundamentally important purpose of helping us to better understand our institutions. In the absence of this better understanding it's less likely that we'll greatly improve our institutions. No institution is perfect... and neither are the tools that we need to understand them.