The problem is that real time applications work very poorly in a statistical best-effort packet switched network. There are only two ways to deal with this.
1. Priorities
Priorities? Who exactly demands "real time"? Certainly not the P2P users (and a vast majority of other Internet users engaged in things such as Web browsing, email, etc). Even online gamers do not demand this (as games evolved to deal with lag). So in other words a relatively small, "special", privileged group of users (and the corporations who service these users) have the right to demand that the entire network re-arranges its traffic patterns just to their liking and that all other users must suffer drastic performance issues because... well.. these "real time" users are just so... special. No?
Whether you believe in IP is irrelevant to the law of the country of where you live. As a defence it won't hold up in court.
"Whether you believe in Allah is irrelevant to the Sharia law of the country of where you live. As a defense it won't hold up in the Religious court."
There, fixed it for you. Since the evidence for existence of Allah is pretty much on the same level as that for the so-called "Intellectual Property" (i.e. the concept of 'ownership' of large integer numbers and the like) and the relationship between such belief and laws passed based on it is strikingly similar, the statement you made is pretty much equivalent to the one below: arbitrary bullshit based on whatever nonsense happens to deliver power and money to whatever "law makers" and their associates happen to be at the top at the time, logic, science and reason be damned.
You copyright the actual tangible information. Attempting to abstract the law into mathematics is pointless. They are not compatible.
Define "information" in terms not mathematically equivalent to binary data.
If you manage this, that would mean that all the computing technology is in fact impossible (as computers would not be able to process information), that no music or moving images can be digitally stored and that "information" cannot be encoded in form of electrical impulses, among other things.
What you want to happen here is one of the oldest cons in the history of civilization: that of a crook who claims that what he peddles is "divinely defined" and so no mere science can possibly explain such a "miracle" and thus he cannot be judged by the rules of such mundane things as logic. Which of course does not stop the crook from sponsoring "laws" to help his thuggery along to a profitable end. It was so with religious fanatics of old and so it is now with the purveyors of the whole field of "Intellectual Property" and related scams, of which your statement is a perfect example.
But there are still differences. If you're opening 10 streamed stateful connections versus 1, you'll still on average generate more overall traffic; if there's a momentary lag on the connection to one place, you're still generating traffic through to others.
So you are saying that because a single source of packets can have slowdowns that means that 20 such sources cannot? That the 20 sources are uploading at the maximum speed just to you? From their crippled 1/20th uplink/downlink ratio DSL modems versus that one OC48 mega-corporate source? Clarify.
This doesn't get into the upload issue, of course. To go back to the original 'there's no difference between downloading a 600MB ISO over HTTP versus BitTorrent' objection up-thread, when downloading the ISO over HTTP, you have very little traffic upstream. BitTorrent, you have a lot upstream, which also introduces additional overall load on the network.
The overall data transfer volume remains virtually the same. In one case the source of 1000 copies of that ISO9660 image is the mega-corporation and in the other they are distributed across 1000 DSL modems. In both cases the total volume of transfer is 1000x600MB as the final number of downloaded copies is the same. The only difference is in the connection topology and the protocol overhead which amounts to less then measly 1% of the traffic.
And that there are significant differences at the network layer between a 600MB ISO downloaded over HTTP and over P2P.
How so? The whole point of packet-switching networks is that they are neutral to what contents is being transfered over them and from where.
In fact the issue has nothing whatsoever to do with connections and traffic. It is all about control. P2P systems are decentralized solutions which do not lend themselves to control (and thus profiting from and ability to censor their contents) by one corporate entity or another. A single source of downloads returns the communication architecture to the traditional single-point-of-control "broadcast" system which affords its owners full control over what is being "broadcast" and to whom and at what price. This simply is just yet another front in the "intellectual property" war for domination of the future of the human race.
Also note that in the decentralized P2P system no one party has to shell out the big bucks for the OC48 line and no ISP is able to extort extra fees for "priority traffic" from one such entity.
There are a number of reasons why the second is actually more 'expensive' than the first for the network. Even when you throttle it in terms of throughput, there's still the expense needed of opening multiple connections at once to talk to all the peers, etc.
Total bullshit. The "expense" of multiple connections is incurred by the peer OS and possibly by a stateful firewall right before it. NO ISP level gear is supposed to track connections and no routers require it for their function (routing is per packet, not per connection), unless of course you are engaged in wholesale wiretapping and packet inspection.
Therefore unless the reason is the ISPs inability to spy on all contents of all packets in all connections of all their customers, there is NO difference on ISPs routers between one user sending/receiving 1000 gazillion packets to/from a single destination or 10 packets to/from 100 gazillion destinations simultaneously.
I feel pleasure at seeing someone more successful than I, as long as that success seems warranted.
And herein lies the rub. What "seems warranted" varies wildly depending on what measuring stick you use. For example, is it possible for a teenage vacuum-head "pop star" to warrant worth 10000 greater then the best neurosurgeon or the discoverer of some properties of proteins which result in making the cure for cancer possible?
What measurement do you use to make multi-billion economic empires - and with them the control of lives of hundreds of thousands of employees - be granted to a spoiled brat who never worked a day in her whole life?
I could go on.
As I got older, I realized, from first hand experience, that in our "society" there is in essence next to no wide-spread correlation between "success" and it being "warranted", no matter what measuring stick you use. Randomness, hereditary aristocracy and a very, very, very strong preference for Machiavellian sociopathic jerks adept at con-artistry seem be the main "features" of the landscape of distribution of "success" around us today.
... a person whose principles and strength of character are lacking.
You:
He's a pragmatist, not an idealist.
It apparently escaped you that these are pretty much one and the same thing.
An idealist, for example, is a politician who would try to stick to his beliefs even when sniper's bullets are whizzing next to his head. A "pragmatist" is a politician who will take all the lobbyist money he can get his paws on (after all this is the "reality" of politics, surely?), promise everyone "centrist compromises". "bridging the gap", "reaching across the isles" etc to get elected and then do everything that his most powerful and rich friends ever wanted.
In short "pragmatist" is the Polite Society's code word for "spineless, unprincipled opportunist".
That's the dumbest term I've heard since people calling single enemies "mobs" in online games
That's MOBs for you, not "mobs". It is an ancient MUD game engine acronym which stands for "Mobile OBject". One of those archaic game lingo terms which still survives but the origins of which most of the young whipper-snappers do not have clue about.
I can tell what monxtr is trying to do. He's groping for some alternate style of economic analysis that can improve on the existing attempts. That's not a bad idea, in itself. The existing "models" are blatantly inadequate, so of course it would be nice to have better ones. One that includes some more explicit psychological component, as monxtr is evidently attempting to espouse, also sounds like a fairly good idea, but for one thing: psychology is about as hand-wavy as economics. Combining the two adds more fluff, not less. Further, it's a bad idea is to try to coopt existing vocabulary, redefining it for your own purposes. That way lies incoherence and meaningless arguments that go nowhere.
I think that monxtr's motivations are somewhat different. While many people look upon Capitalism as an imperfect, deeply flawed but unfortunately the best workable solution we have to resolving the conflict between individual animalistic urges of the populace and the overall need for the society to move forward, some have come to see it as a religion because they've confused the fact that Capitalism revolves around individual greed with an endorsement and justification of that greed. And such a Religion of Capitalism frees them from all these worrisome social responsibilities and nagging concerns of what remains of their conscience. But one of the fundamental cornerstones of a religion is that it has to provide for some miraculous effects supposedly resulting from following its tenets. And this is where this spontaneously created with each trade "value" comes in. Trying to redefine the idea of trade in this way changes no observable effects of trade itself but enables the acolytes to claim that trade, and by extension greed, are inherently "good". You probably noticed how he insisted on trade being essentially the only possible foundation of civilization. This is a core part of such a religious belief system where all things "good" must be seen as directly, or indirectly, resulting from whatever it is that one is trying to justify of one own character.
monxtr is of course not the first one trying this, I've run into his kind many times before. One could even quip that what monxtr is engaged in is one of the oldest pursuits of mankind: an attempt to justify one's selfish greed to everyone, including oneself. It has been done by kings (who claimed to rule in the name of whatever god was popular at the moment) and it was done by men of wealth all the way to today's CEOs who espouse "social Darwinism" (or more accurately Spencerism) whereby supposedly "the best members" of mankind are "rewarded" by gigantic wealth for being "meritorious" to society. On how this is supposed to work with vast inherited estates they remain mum.
So adding additional fluff and losing coherence by redefining commonly used labels was not high on monxtr's list of concerns, as these (and many more others) are all cheap sacrifices when compared to being able to make him feel good about himself.
I suppose you could say that the value of "VD" suddenly drops from +$0.01 to -$0.99 when the price changes, but that doesn't seem like a useful way to think about it. My valuation of that cake hasn't changed at all, so why should the variable representing my valuation change?
Because it represents your valuation relative to the market price. It says "This cake is $0.99 too expensive for me". A very common real-life situation.
Everyone knows that the price you pay for something at the store is higher than what the store paid for it. That's why the store is in business. They may not know exactly how much the store is making from it, but they know it's making some profit - and certainly more than one penny.
Again, one of the main flaws in the Religion of Capitalism is the underlying assumption that market players are rational. Yes, people do "know" that profit is necessary to the operation of this system but that does not stop their reptilian brains from overriding that knowledge. As long as this profit remains abstract and nebulous they are able to accept it. Make it plain and obvious and their instincts will kick in full force. People also "know" that cooperation when done voluntarily and with deliberation is more efficient (from the point of view of resource utilization and well being of its participants) then dog-eat-dog competition, but their reptilian brains introduce a counter-productive factor called "greed" (a part of much earlier evolutionary genetic heritage dealing with environmental optimization of the gene pool in animal populations) which renders the most effective scheme useless and requires a whole different approach which allows that animalistic mindset to be redirected into something resembling common good (which is why Capitalism, however gravely flawed, beats Communism in practice). It is just the way people are. Irrational. One has to only look at global news for a daily dose of irrefutable proof of this. Capitalism survives (sort of) precisely because greed seems to be stronger in many people then their other insanities. It even trumps religion for the most part. But that very force can be turned against the system, as in the example above of the two friends with cakes (which is why I chose it).
A bit of futuristic predictions here: when people will become capable of connecting their brains to very high capacity networks directly so that their very psyche and memory can interact with them, sooner or later some of them will get an idea to "merge" parts of their minds with one another thus resulting in something approaching shared consciousness and thus end up with a way to form permanent consensus updated in real time. Then watch out Capitalism.
The other interesting possibility is also this: when all the mechanisms our brains become known to science, someone will get another idea: to genetically modify people so that instead of individual greed, satisfaction of which makes them feel happy, their "greed" will become that for betterment of all around them, satisfaction of which would make them happy, while also finding those who feel the old "individual" greed as repulsive. Entertainment will ensue after that.
You've defined away its usefulness by looking at this strange "VD" value, a delta over the market price which must be constantly updated when the market price changes. Yes, an infinitesimal "VD" value isn't very handy; I'd say that's just another reason you should be looking at the "V" value instead.
By demonstrating that when a market transaction is actually performed under conditions of sufficient supply of cash the VD is infinitely approaching zero, I also demonstrated that under the same conditions V infinitely approaches P. Ergo for practical purposes one only needs to concern himself with P only. This is yet another way of showing that all discussions about V are in effect pointless from the point of view of economics. V is by itse
No, there's no adding. The subjective value of that cake is the most you'd be willing to give up in order to get it, independent of how much it's being sold for (the price). It may be more or less than the price at which you can actually buy the cake. If the price is lower than the value you place on it, then you'll buy it, otherwise you won
This is merely a different way of representing the same thing. One can have the price P and that subjective "value" V and they will form a relation of V - P = VD, where VD is the "difference", positive or negative. But one can also write V = P + VD, which is equally true, but which gives V as a result of P and VD, instead of VD being computed as a difference of V and P. I chose the latter method to better illustrate the unquantifiable nature of VD, and thus by extension of V.
Why is an individual buying a cake for $1.50 and selling it for $1.51 any worse than a store buying it for $0.75 and selling it for $1.50?
Because of human nature. Remember we had set up the experiment specifically so that the other trading party was aware of the cost of the cake. That is also why all retailers guard their cost figures jealously as to not let customers become aware of them as, rightfully or not, the customers expect the "fair" value of "profit" to be zero.
Then I conclude that the value of that cake to you is between 0 and 1 cents above the price you paid.
Which could, for all intents and purposes, be a value infinitely approaching the price paid. Greater then the price paid (technically) but by an infinitely small amount (such things are possible in mathematics) and utterly useless for any market valuations.
The bank puts down it's valuation, which may or may not correspond to your valuation. Don't like that particular bank's valuation of your hamster, go find another bank that may value your hamster higher than the first bank.
This only goes to show that you've never filled any application for anything involving finances. Not only the valuation of your assets is supposed to be a "fair market value", but you are also liable for criminal fraud if it is not. It must be nice to be so sheltered and spoiled as to not realize these basic facts of life. And it is the applicant not the bank who is responsible for performing an accurate assessment of his own assets.
This type of thing is a common occurrence in the automobile insurance industry. Get in a car wreck and the insurance company may write a check that does not correspond to your valuation of your car before it was wrecked.
Which of course has to do with depreciation and is irrelevant to the bank application (unless you are calculating depreciation to get the "fair market value").
Valuing your hamster at $2 billion is no more or no less a priori absurd than valuing a Picasso painting at $15 million. It all completely depends on independent subjective valuations.
So its settled at $2 billion for the rodent on the application! And that dude in the cardboard-box is indeed the richest man on Earth as of course his net worth valuation is based on the same principle!
The specific things which are exchanged are quantifiable. If one banana is exchanged for one apple that's perfectly quantifiable even though there is no fiat currency involved in the exchange. But it is irrefutable that the TOTAL valuation of 'A' for Person 1 and Person 2 are *different* if 'A' is exchanged.
Which, again, for the millionth time, is not quantifiable, ergo not subject to scientific analysis. Since that "value" for the Person 1 can be less then a penny and at the same time for the Person 2 it can exceed the worth of the entire Universe. You will never know. And thus it is irrelevant and the only observable, measurable value happens to be that of strict equivalence to other goods and labor and is called the "market value" or "price".
Weather futures already exist and already are traded. They exist for rainfall quantity in specific months. They exist for average temperature for specific areas in specific months.
That is not the same as valuation of individual clouds, which is what would correspond to valuation of individual whims of individual people. That is why I specifically stated so, precisely to exclude cumulative statistics which average over vast numbers of atmospheric phenomena.
The desires can and are valued by definition of trade. A won't be traded for B if B is valued less than A by Person One and A is valued less than B by Person Two (Person One owns A, Person Two owns B). You should be able to easily comprehend this case. You should also easily be able to comprehend the case that A will be traded for B if B is valued more than A by Person One and A is valued more than B by Person Two. The exchange will make both Person One and Person Two better off wealthier. Mutual profit wealth is created from this exchange.
Which is still, for the millionth and one time, just as unquantifiable and unmeasurable as it was two paragraphs back and in the previous post and in the post above that and above that and... and which will be still so in posts future irrespective of how many times you repeat this.
You are confused on the case where both Person One and Person Two are *indifferent* between A and B, where both Person One and Person Two value A and B exactly the same. They *won't* trade in this case. Why won't they trade in this case? Because, as we covered earlier, i
What makes you think we can't know it by definition? Just because it's subjective doesn't mean it's inscrutable. Your preference for ice cream flavors is subjective, but if I put 31 flavors in front of you and let you pick, I'll get a pretty good idea of which one you like best.
Well, not really. I might prefer one flavor over the others but only after I had coffee. I might like one flavor and then get sick of it 10 minutes later. I might pick a "wrong" flavor based on misleading labeling or color. Etc and so on. All you can determine in this experiment that I would pick some flavor some of the time for reasons fickle and fleeting.
Such is the problem with trying to measure any subjective feelings. And note that you've merely attempted the simplest possible, multiple-choice test. There is no practical method available (outside of a fantastical thought/emotion reading machine + 100% accurate computer model of consciousness) which would allow you to actually measure a degree of a subjective feeling, which is precisely what the quantification of the subjective trade "value" you described would require.
Er... so your complaint boils down to "subjective value is useless because we can only measure it to the nearest cent"? Don't we have the same problem with any other definition of value, since prices are always rounded to the nearest cent?
LOL. What was described is not "measuring to the nearest cent" but the fact that one cent is apparently a measurement far, far in excess of the total amount of this elusive "value" of preferences. I would posit that 1000th or 1000000th of a cent would also be so under the conditions I mentioned. Indeed, any amount at all would be in excess of this "value", as it is simply not measurable in terms of dollars or cents or fractions of thereof.
In contrast, the traditional trade values are measured in numbers ranging from a fraction of a cent per traded item to billions of dollars per item and only under some circumstances (in industries and markets where the prices are traditionally rounded to the nearest penny) this loss of precision occurs.
If you'll buy a cake for $1.50 but you won't buy it for $1.51, we can conclude your subjective value of that cake is greater than $1.50 (where you'd rather have the cake) and less than $1.51 (where you'd rather have the money). That's as much precision as you're going to get from any other kind of measurement.
Except the "value" of the cake here is composed of two elements (according to your reasoning): the empirically observable "market value", equivalent to the price, i.e. $1.50 and the esoteric "preference value" of my "preference of one cake over the other" which is added to the "market value" to form your "total subjective value". Should the total exceed $1.51 the purchase is made. Should it exceed $1.500000001 the purchase is made. But as I described earlier it won't. The very suggestion of a price greater than $1.50 (the purchase price of the cake) by any amount would result in an emotional reaction and accusations of ripoff from the owner of the other cake. So the "preference value" you spoke of is so small (in this particular case) as to be wholly unmeasurable.
In other scenarios where a trade does occur this nebulous "value" would then supposedly be again in excess of the "market value" (i.e. price) by some unspecified amount (different for each trader) making them believe that they are both better off. But any attempt at measurement of this value would require another transaction, which would only occur if the "value" was still in excess of the new "market value" of this "test" transaction and so on, ad infinitum. That is why I say that this subjective "value" is unmeasurable by definition.
I believe capitalism does a damn fine job of allocating resources efficiently
That depends on what your definition of "efficiency" is.
Capitalism's main positive feature is that it is performs parallelized search function in the space of "technological progress" while avoiding local minimas. But it does so at the price of a tremendous waste of resources. Or have you not heard of the mountains of plastic bags, discarded packaging and other discarded plastic junk clogging city dumps and pretty much covering the middle of the Atlantic? Some "efficiency".
What is the utopian economic vision you have in mind? If capitalist economics sucks, then what is the "right" model, in your mind? Please enlighten us.
That of course depends on what your acceptable parameters for such a system are. If we are to talk science fiction for example, theoretically a shared-consciousness hive capable of dynamically moderating the mental independence of its members might do the trick: unified consciousness removes the problem of tyranny/governance/dissent while maximizing allocation of resources to specific selected tasks, the moderated independence allows for the parallel search function, etc and so on.
But of course such a system has little to do with our present concept of "pursuit of happiness" and a whole gamut of other issues well outside of economic theory. I bring it up to illustrate that focusing on "maximum efficiency" (of whatever aspect of the system) by itself can have somewhat unexpected consequences.
You can and do value your hamster subjectively. That does not mean others value your hamster equally to your subjective valuation. They have their own independent non constant subjective valuations. In trade, two people value the same thing differently. One values it more, one values it less. If nobody is willing to trade $2 billion for your hamster, then tough luck. If you value your hamster at $2 billion then you would be willing to trade it for $2 billion, which would by definition mean you valued the $2 billion more than your hamster. But if nobody else values your hamster at $2 billion, nobody else is going to trade $2 billion for your hamster. No TRADE will occur. That is independent of your subjective valuation. But you also aren't (at least for the moment, as evidenced by any willing and able offers for a trade) not going to trade your hamster away for less than $2 billion.
Great, great, but cut to the chase: what do I put down on that bank application in the "net worth" field, since me and the banker disagree somewhat about the value of that hamster by.. oh... about $2 billion? Do explain.
Price *changes*. How do you explain that?
Prices fluctuate due to many factors such as availability of labor and resources, etc, also amongst them personal preferences of buyers and sellers. Some of these factors are quantifiable, and thus subject to economic analysis, and some are not, and thus not subject to such analysis. Your "value" falls into the latter category. The fact that trade is driven by people's desires does not mean that the desires themselves can be part of economic analysis. Trade in many goods is also influenced by weather patterns and yet no one sane would attempt to modify economic models to account for the "value" of movements of individual clouds in the sky.
His market net worth is whatever people are willing to exchange for his stuff (what he could *theoretically* obtain in exchange for his stuff). If he does in fact engage in the action of exchange of all his stuff for some different stuff, then he will be wealthier than before at the moment of that exchange, as will the other party that takes possession of his stuff, by definition of preferring the state of wealth of stuff received after the trade to the state of wealth of stuff given away which he owned before the trade.
Huge balance sheet net worth write downs just occurred for housing loan instrument portfolios in the banking industry. So was that prior balance sheet net worth of illiquid assets worth what they thought, what they hoped it was, a week prior to the write down. Of course not. You cannot know what your stuff is worth until someone is able and willing to make an offer.
So market net worth is determined by offers of exchange (or lesser quality *guesses* as what "reasonable" offers would likely fetch). Exchanges are prices. If bananas trade for apples at a 1:1 ratio in a school lunchroom, the price of apples is 1 banana *AND* the price of bananas is 1 apple. If apples and bananas trade for $1, the price of apples and bananas is $1 *AND* the price of dollars is 1 apple or 1 banana. Strict barter exists still even in a "monetary" economy.
Allrighty then: Me and a buddy of mine are going to exchange my hamster for an IOU from him (maturing 20 years from now as to give him the chance to get the money) for $2 billion, following which I will buy back the critter for $2 billion and 10 cents. Trade has occurred, ergo the critter is now worth $2 billion (plus warm and fuzzy additional "value" so dear to you), no? Heck, just to make you happy, we will trade the sucker 10 times, each time I will strive to make myself want to get him back more, just before I will want to sell him even more, following which I will really, really need him back and so forth. I can already feel the "value" expanding. Oh and that loan application? I will put you down as a guarantor.
But economically speaking, if we assume the two people are rational actors who are more concerned with getting delicious cake than playing nice, there's nothing unusual. If you want something I have, and I try to make a profit instead of giving it to you for free, that's just the market at work.
There's nothing inherently more "unfair" about me selling you that $1.00 cake for $1.01 than there was about the store selling it for $1.00 in the first place - after all, they bought it for less than a dollar and sold it at a profit.
Part of the fundamental problem with all of these economic models is that they assume that market players are rational actors, ignoring abundant evidence to the contrary. That is why I brought up that example (amongst other reasons). In such situations the odds of people behaving "rationally" (from the perspective of the market) are far lower than those of them acting emotionally and thus "contrary to their interest" in market terms.
No, it's quite useful. If you want to buy or sell anything, it helps to know how much it's worth to the other guy.
We were talking about the unquantifiable "subjective value" which only exists in the other guy's head not the "market value" as measured in money. We cannot know that "subjective value" by definition, thus what you said makes no sense. This "value" is useless for the task you mentioned, i.e. estimating market worth (measured in monetary terms). Any attempts at "testing" of this value by engaging in trade would, by definition, come short as some (an unquantifiable amount) of that "value" must remain to form the "incentive" for trade. The thing is utterly pointless.
It's not a dichotomy. Balance sheets are about buying power, not subjective value, but that doesn't mean subjective value is a worthless measurement. Economics != accounting.
Err... so how one does measure that subjective value? If it cannot be measured means that no formulas can be used to describe its relationship to other economic values, then how are you are going to construct any model with any sort of explanatory or predictive power? And if you cannot, what you propose is no different from reading tea-leaves or chicken entrails. My objections to the other guys entire line of reasoning pivot on this very point: a distinction between science, based on testable, quantifiable phenomena and... untestable and unmeasurable (by definition) religious belief which requires none such.
You are trying to impose your personal subjective valuations, or the market's (sans that individual) subjective valuation.
I always knew that these silly bankers and tax-men were imposing their "personal subjective valuations" on the poor us! The chutzpa they have! To use these wholly subjective balance sheets and income statements on us! And totally subjective money! Bastards! I wanna have my hamster valued at $2 billion for the purpose of my loan collateral! Hey it could sell for that much - after all everything is "subjective" and so I could talk some billionaire into it, no? You go tell them!
Of course, he does not have what the rest of the market considers "net worth valued more, in economic terms, than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined".
So the rest of the sane world disagrees in unison with your "objective" assessment. You alone stand heroically against this evil globe-spanning conspiracy with your banner of "My Value Is Bigger Then Your Value!"
So what? Pet rocks were at what time valued.
They also had this thing called "price". Ever hear of it?
Value is not constant. Value is not universally objective. Charity exists. The only reason Bill Gates created the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is because he prefers that Foundation to using that same money for a private space exploration company, for instance, or swimming in a pile of it in his mansion like Scrooge McDuck, for another instance.
Which brings us back to our soon-to-be-raptured Cardboard Castle Joe. Is he or is he not entitled to put his Ticket To Paradise on his balance sheet? What is his net worth? Stop evading. Give a coherent answer.
Just because a religious loon donates all his material possessions to another is an extreme case does not invalidate economic theory. Economic theory in fact explains those actions.
You did claim, persistently, complete universality of your definition of "value" even going as far as claiming that it is the very foundation of industrial civilization as we know it. Thus one example to the contrary, no matter how extreme, ruins your entire argument. That is why you are ducking it so desperately.
I won't even bother to answer your other circular-reasoning ramblings until you address this and the other issue, which I noticed you managed to conveniently "forget" to answer: who and where publishes mainstream economic indicators which incorporate your definition of "value". GDP, growth figures, industry output, anything at all.
It was clarified for you. No need to be an extra ass on top of being an idiot.
In addition to your bizzarro-world definition of "market value" you now introduce a new bizarro-world definition of "clarified" which stands for "I got caught being illogical and cannot get out of it so I will pretend that I explained stuff, throw around some expletives and hope no one notices!".
A thing doesn't have an inherent value. Value is defined subjectively - there's nothing controversial about saying that, and it's not some made-up definition he pulled out of nowhere. What you're talking about, the quantifiable dollar amount we can place on an object, isn't "value", it's price. (Which is usually the same as cost, but cost can be subjective too.)
Its simply a matter of labels and definitions. In various economic literature I've read over the years this concept was labeled in many different ways, sometimes as "monetary value", sometimes as "market value" etc. as opposed to "subjective value" which is what you describe. The main point being however that anything but "price" or "market value" is simply outside our abilities to quantify and thus of no use in gaging the state of the economy. If the term "value" (in economic context) were to be defined as you indicate, then this "value" would be irrelevant to any market analysis, although it might be of interest to philosophers, and thus relegated to footnotes and appendices of all economic papers instead of the center stage of various measurements.
To illustrate further, suppose that the store closed when we left. Your only options are to trade your cake plus one cent to me, or find a different store and pay a whole dollar for a second cake, or keep the penny and eat the cake you have. Which do you choose? If you choose to trade with me, then that must mean you're getting more than one cent of value out of the trade.
Which as I pointed out would not have happened if both parties were typical people as one is clearly attempting to rip the other off, even if for one penny. All the people I know would have become very angry since they would be fully aware of the price we both paid for the cakes and would find the idea extremely offensive and would rather destroy their whole $10 of cake as a weapon just to express that anger or at the very least they would have eaten it (even if they preferred the other) after some loud "fuck you"s. Which only goes to show that such "value" is wholly useless for the purposes of economic analysis. These musings about "subjective value" in the context of economics would make sense if you were describing robots the brains of which could be expected to operate in the same exact fashion under the exact same conditions.
As for the lunatic who has $2 to his name and yet is completely happy... you're right, it would be foolish to compare people's wealth in terms of happiness (or subjective value), rather than in terms of buying power. The lunatic can buy two junior bacon cheeseburgers, even though he may not want them; Bill Gates is wealthier because he can buy billions of junior bacon cheeseburgers.
... and...
Finally, subjective value isn't unquantifiable. You can measure it by offering trades and seeing which ones are accepted. If the cake store burns down, and the only one left in town is selling them for $5, but you're still willing to buy them, that means you value cakes at >= $5.00 (and you must've thought you were getting a great deal before).
... contradict each other. Either the subjective value "isn't unquantifiable" in which case the religious loon can claim his paradise on his balance sheet, or it is not quantifiable in which case the only thing which counts in economic measurements is monetary value. Which is it?
I changed the order of these points to put the most comedic demonstration of the lunatic implications of your stance at the top.
Preference is *value*, plain and simple. Equivalence is *indifference*. Preference is basic economics valuation. "To prefer" means to value *MORE*.
Of course at the moment of exchange the religious loon would be better off, otherwise he would choose not to give all his money and property to his messiah. It's his free voluntary choice.
This is pretty much a show stopper right here. So, according to you, the religious loon has, right at the conclusion of his transaction, his net worth valued more, in economic terms, then Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined (as that is what the loon believes)?
If what you say is true then the Forbes magazine needs to redo its lists post-haste! Clearly they've got the wrong sort of people on it! Just to think of it, that dude I see at the corner sometimes must be our city's richest man! Who knew?!
Then again, if not, then what is the exact net worth of the cardboard dwelling fellow just after his transaction was completed, in which he so shrewdly outwitted his partner to obtain "heavenly unlimited wealth" in exchange for a mere house, car and the contents of some bank accounts? What exactly is the economic value of this transaction as clearly, according to you, merely measuring it by such mundane things as money is woefully insufficient?
So now you are applying your own cognitive failings to "the whole world"? More anthropomorphicism.
Since such economic "theories" exist nowhere outside your particular, somewhat fringe circle, it is only fair to apply this reasoning to nearly the whole world where people, for reasons that seem to escape you, insist on sticking to the traditional ways of measuring value in economics. Anthropomorphism has nothing to do with it.
My explanation scientifically explains *why* trade occurs.
No it does not. You've merely conflated two wholly separate concepts: the monetary value of goods in trade exchanges and a subjective preferences of traders and then keep on insisting on renaming this new concoction as "value" to replace the traditional concept used by economists. While personal preferences of traders are what drives trade, the term "value", in economics, is only applicable to the actual transactions themselves where exact equivalence between both sides of trade is a given.
Your explanation of an equal exchange of value is a nonsensical absurdity which leads to your further errors and delusions.
I never "explained" anything of the sort. I merely point out that one cannot scientifically measure anything outside of monetary values of goods (even if that) and thus anything outside that quantification is by definition unscientific and totally unreliable in formulation of any theories of trade. That is why the term "value", as applied in economics to trade, does not include anything beyond monetary measurements. Which is the very root of your confusion. And incidentally which is also the reason why religious cardboard-box-dwellers are not at the top of the Forbes list.
Value is not intrinsically objective in things. If it were, every person would value the exact same things equally and no trade would occur, contradicting observed actions of trade exchange. This is why value is extrinsically subjective, determined subjectively by humans for whatever any and all reasons.
And the result of such valuations of course being the only quantifiable result: monetary value of trade. Thus irrespective of what is going on in people's heads (none of which can be estimated with any degree of accuracy) the only scientific measurement available is that monetary value. None other exist which can be subjected to rigorous analysis. Your redefined economic "value" is useless for
You are a simpleton if you need it expressly spelled out for you that trade involves two different individuals with distinctly different *VALUE* preferences. I shouldn't even bother replying to the rest of your drivel, after your original demonstrably wrong claim that trade involves an exchange of equal values. I'll take it you *finally* grasp the concept.
Ad hominem attacks will get you nowhere.
Furthermore, what you are trying to say becomes pointless if you are simply incapable of expressing it in coherent terms. It is not the whole world's problem that no one is able to get what you are trying to explain, it is your inability to express it in a way that makes any sense whatsoever that is at fault.
Also the "concept", after multiple attempts at getting you to explain it, finally appears to be simply your insistence on redefining commonly accepted terms used to describe economic activities. In economics, physical goods and labor (measured in units of currency) are the only items available for methodical analysis. Any fluctuations in people's desires which cannot be expressed in these terms are irrelevant to any discourse on economics and belong in the same realm as discussions on the meaning of the universe.
What the hell are you talking about? All things are extrinsically subjectively valued, money included.
Here we go again. "extrinsically" is a word which, without any further context, simply makes no sense in that sentence. "Extrinsically" in relation to what? The traders? The marketplace? The transactions?
People don't swap money for just any old other thing and vice versa. They trade money for specific other things solely because they value those specific other things *more* than the amount of money they trade away and vice versa for the other trading partner.
Which, again, is unquantifiable and as such not subject to scientific analysis.
But you've devolved into an infantile ideological tirade, so whatever.
"Ideological"? That word. You keep using it. I does not mean what you think it means.
Attempts to adhere to the scientific method are not "ideological" (well maybe from a perspective of a complete kook or a religious lunatic).
Oh, "true"? That's it? That directly contradicts your original, now admittedly, false claim.
Not at all. The trade, in economic terms, is for items of equal economic value, as I repeatedly explained. That "value" is measured in either goods, labor or currency. That is the only kind of "value" which is applicable to economic analysis. The redefined by you term "value" is a subjective set of preferences which is not what any scientific analysis can deal with as it is wholly unmeasurable and unquantifiable. So when I say that trade is for items of equal value, the word "value" in this context is the one commonly accepted on this planet in the sphere of economics. When you use "value" you refer to a nebulous idea of personal preferences, a definition which is only used by you and your fellow acolytes of whatever lunacy this is. If one accepts your definition, then indeed the "value" of items traded alters from the perspective of each side of the trade. But that is not how it is measured in economics.
That difference is precisely why free trade and the division of labor create wealth, dummy. Ergo, that *is* economic analysis.
None of the above has of course anything to do with division of labor, which is an emergent property of certain (but not all) marketplaces wholly unrelated to the properties of trade itself and instead related to allocation of resources.
Calling me names will change none of that.
Listen, MORON. Trading in the first place also "consumes energy and time". If the money was equally valued to the cake neither would trade fo
No, there are two equations because there are two different individual actors in any trade. Person One Prefers A to B. Person Two Prefers B to A. A is greater than B for Person One, and B is greater than A for Person Two.
That is not what your incoherent statement said.
There is no such thing as objective value. Value is subjective. Value changes. This is why prices change.
You are continuously confusing (or attempting to somehow conflate) some nebulous, unquantifiable "value" and quite quantifiable, objectively measurable (in currency) market price.
If you trade money for lemon cake you prefer the lemon cake to the money, and simultaneously the baker prefers money to the lemon cake.
True, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with some wildly defined "value" you are attempting to introduce into this. Such "value" is wholly unmeasurable in any trade related terms. Example: I have a lemon cake, and a buddy of mine has an apple one. We both bought them at the same store at the same price. While walking away we decide that we each like the other guy's cake better, so we decide to trade. All is fine and dandy until I ask "I will give you my cake in exchange for yours plus one penny.". The trade would be immediately off and more then likely my buddy would decide to place his cake on my face for being such a capitalist pig, thus instantaneously recalculating his "value" of the cake as being less the "value" of punishing such greed while at the same time estimating the "value" of the difference in his cake preferences as less then the smallest possible currency unit used in everyday trade.
In other words that "value" you keep ranting about is more vaporous then vapor. And wholly unsuitable for purposes of any economic analysis.
It is strictly proven that all exchange is *not* an exchange of equal value, but of *differing* value. Trade occurs because two different people value the exact same thing differently. Trade would not otherwise occur, ever.
True, but that difference is not measurable in monetary terms, ergo it has no place in any economic analysis.
If money had equal value to the lemon cake, why wouldn't you and the baker stand at the counter in an infinite circular time loop trading the same money for the same lemon cake back and forth?
Because the action of trading itself consumes energy and time, thus diminishing our resources with each trade.
This is also why macroeconomics and monetary theory is in fundamental error. It is proved that the equation of trade cannot contain an "equals" sign, but is a combination of two different inverse equations A greater than B and B greater than A. This shows mathematically that real value profit is created from trade. Both Person 1 and Person 2 are wealthier after the trade than they are before the trade even though the exact same goods exist after the trade as exist before the trade.
I think I know why you are so hopelessly confused. You misunderstand simple economic terms: "profit" does not apply to some nebulous, subjective "values" in someone's head, it is defined strictly in monetary terms. Therefore what you call "profit" isn't. The same applies to "wealth", which again, is quantified strictly in monetary terms. Otherwise the happy religious lunatic I mentioned earlier would be the "wealthiest" person on the planet (in his view the "value" of his belief is astronomical), while having at the same time net monetary worth of $2.
This is precisely why trade occurs, why society exists, and why the division of labor exists.
Again, total confusion. Not all forms of exchange are "trade" (exchange of artistic expressions or speech are not trade) and division of labor is not a pre-requisite for a society, nor its automatic implication. A group o
They are directly related because subsidies cause the corporations to own the last mile rather than service the last mile.
So without the subsidies they would not have ended up owning the last mile, which would instead be owned by... the Tooth Fairy? Since the "evil gubmnt" is clearly "not qualified" for such free-market-meddling tasks...
This is precisely why trade only occurs because a strict mathematical greater than sign applies to the value of that being received and a strictly mathematical lesser than sign applies to the value of that which is being given away in trade.
This sentence makes no sense. Greater-than and less-than are binary operators. You've just used two such operators in one equation with only two values in total. Two binary operators need at least three values to form a valid formula.
Trade occurs because both sides *prefer* what the other side has. And value is individually *subjective* and not constant. And of course nobody would voluntarily make herself worse off from any trade.
That does not imply any total "gain" in "value". It merely implies a difference in kind. I.e. of two identically priced cakes, made with identically priced ingredients and with identical labor I might prefer the lemon-flavored one over the peach-flavored one. Yet they are both of identical objective value from the point of view of the marketplace, both selling at the same price. That is because my personal preference in flavor does not in any way add to the total "value" of such goods.
Trade occurs because both sides *prefer* what the other side has. And value is individually *subjective* and not constant.
Which would relegate this "value" to the realm of psychic mediums and witch-doctors and well outside of any economic models as it is wholly unquantifiable and unobservable.
That's why my self taught economic analysis method always begins by examining the action of trade exchange. It clears away the garbage that clouds analysis.
Which gets you of course nothing as that subjective "gain" is utterly useless for any analytical purpose.
Then by definition of will government interference is completely superfluous and only causing wasted energy and wasted resources to allegedly duplicate that will.
Not at all. A bulletin board is also a representation of the "will" of its posters and it "duplicates" the thoughts they carry in their heads yet it does perform a function normally not attainable to these individuals otherwise. It has to do with communication and focus of that normally diffuse "will" to specific tasks. In essence Governments act as a focus and a proxy for that will, which otherwise is not practical to execute individually.
But of course government only forces someone to do something they are not voluntarily willing to do, a clear violation of the alleged duplication of specific individual wills.
Logical fallacy. The "will" of the community does not necessarily need to be in alignment with the will of particular individuals with in it, given any difference of opinion at all between the community members. The only way in which the will of the community would be so aligned would be if everyone shared the same consciousness. Nearly all political theories deal with this difference and with ways of mitigating it, the Democratic Republic being only one of the many attempts at addressing this.
All individual action whatsoever only occurs because the actor desires to go to a state of lesser dissatisfaction from a state of greater dissatisfaction.
Incorrect. Many actions of individuals are random, many consciously counter productive for the actor (altruism) etc and so on. Your "model" is only applicable to robots (and even
Excuse me, but it is an obvious non-sequitur to conclude that because natural monopolies exist, for which free market solutions are either not optimal or not possible, that free market is broken.
Free market is not "broken" (whatever that means). It is simply an imperfect, flawed economic system (one of possible many) which is applicable only to a particular subset of human activities, under specific conditions. My objections are not to the concept itself but to rampant and frankly quite maniacal attempts by various ideologues to apply it to pretty much everything with religious zeal, irrespective of its fitness to the task.
Nobody is forcing you to purchase cable television service. If you don't like the price or don't want the service then don't buy it (I don't). It really is that simple.
This silly "reasoning" can be extended to luxury food, then semi-luxury food, then all drinks other than tap water, then all clothes other then a converted potato sack, all shelter other than a cardboard box etc and so on.
The point being of course that if one removes all competition in one area and allows a complete monopoly to take charge then there is no reason not to allow the same process everywhere else, is there?
As for barriers to entry they are usually temporary and not as durable as people think.
Since in this particular case they involve geography, I think they will be with us for a while. Furthermore, allowing a monopoly to exist merely for a generation or two (a "temporary" affair from the point of view of history) is equivalent to allowing it to exist for the entire life span of some people, which for them, subjectively, is indistinguishable from "forever".
How did Google come out of a college research project to become a billion dollar corporation?
Apples and oranges. There are very little in a way of physical (or even technological) barriers to entry for Google's competitors. As time progresses that might change (with Google's expansion into mobile phones etc - causing hardware based lock in) but it is still on a wholly different scale when compared to communities being dug full of holes like by a rabid pack of prairie dogs which is what would happen in the case of unrestricted cable laying in most cities.
They were not the first search engine company and their competitors at the time had a stranglehold on the marketplace, but Google survived to surpass them because they brought a superior product to market. Markets can work if people are willing to let them.
Again, Internet is a place with one of the lowest (if not THE lowest) barriers to entry for any activity. Most barriers to Internet based businesses exist outside of it, in the "brick and mortar" world. You are again comparing apples to oranges.
Seems to work in the UK. BT operates nearly all the copper wire and local telephone exchanges in the country, and charges consumer ISPs to use them.
BT is a Crown Corporation, is it not?
Is that kind of regulation actually unconstitutional in the US, or are the powers that be just unwilling to do it?
The powers that be are in the pockets of big business, but more importantly the whole environment is orders of magnitude more litigious. Any such regulations would have resulted in decades long, protracted legal battles with multi-million dollar price tags for the governments involved.
Sorry, government interference *subsidized* the construction of cable fiber optic infrastructure.
Which has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. Subsidies are wholly unrelated to the problem of physical limitations of last-mile cabling.
Your "free market" criticism is thus null and void.
Non-sequitur.
You also might want to check out the Austrian School of Economics being at the top of the food chain these days. Granted, other schools, such as Harvard, Stanford, London School, MIT, are a distant third tier from the Chicago School.
Yes, the "school" which rejects empirical evidence in favor of ideologically motivated "deductions". A fringe lunacy even amongst other fundamentalist capitalist lunacies.
Try not to fall in a trap of blasting loaded words like "capitalism" and instead focus on the economic and epistemological reality of observed actions of exchange.
Oops. That would not be in line with the Austrian School's main premise that observation and empirical evidence takes a second seat to the priesthood's "deductions". Even you cannot keep these fruit-cakes straight.
As someone who took classes from 5 Nobel Prize winning economists at the University of Chicago, there are certainly some flaws and valid methodological criticisms which can apply
Nobel Prize in economics is like the Buttville Chicken Farmers' Award for the longest piss from the roof of Orville's farm. Except that the pissing farmhands cannot cause anywhere near the misery, suffering and death these Nobel "winners" did. Macroeconomics, as a whole, is an exercise in pseudo-scientific shamanism of the highest order. None, I repeat, none of the so-called "models" developed by any of these "schools" have been demonstrated to have even the slightest of predictive powers or most tenuous relationships to reality. Which of course never stops these frauds from pompous posturing and lecturing sanctimoniously.
The last time these Nobel "winners" have tried to apply their oh-so-superior understanding of economics to something practical we ended up with a wee little oopsie called the "Long Term Capital Management" hedge fund. Look it up.
But you haven't demonstrated any of them. And you yourself have never once walked into a single grocery store and traded money for food that did not by definition immediately simultaneously make you and the grocery store better off.
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of telco monopolies.
All voluntary trade whatsoever only occurs because that which is received in exchange is valued MORE than that which is given away in exchange.
LOL. That is one of the Holy Dogmas of the Capitalist Religion. In practice people trade hoping to receive value equal to that what was paid. Sometimes receiving far less. The extra "value" in excess of the trade itself is supposed to be a systemic property and as such never enters the mind of individual traders. And so the trade would have occurred irrespective of its presence.
If this was not necessarily always an irrefutable epistemological, scientific, economic law, then trade would never occur and the division of labor wouldn't exist.
This bit of illogical, rabid zealotry is pretty much self defeating. The trade always did and would occur if value of what you pay for is merely equal to what you get.
You also make a fatal economic and epistemological assumption mistake in arbitrarily without substantiated basis assign benevolent angelic motivations to individuals arbitrarily labeled "government actors" while assigning bad devilish motivations to individuals arbitrarily labeled "business and corporation actors".
Slashdot Mirror
Priorities? Who exactly demands "real time"? Certainly not the P2P users (and a vast majority of other Internet users engaged in things such as Web browsing, email, etc). Even online gamers do not demand this (as games evolved to deal with lag). So in other words a relatively small, "special", privileged group of users (and the corporations who service these users) have the right to demand that the entire network re-arranges its traffic patterns just to their liking and that all other users must suffer drastic performance issues because ... well .. these "real time" users are just so ... special. No?
"Whether you believe in Allah is irrelevant to the Sharia law of the country of where you live. As a defense it won't hold up in the Religious court."
There, fixed it for you. Since the evidence for existence of Allah is pretty much on the same level as that for the so-called "Intellectual Property" (i.e. the concept of 'ownership' of large integer numbers and the like) and the relationship between such belief and laws passed based on it is strikingly similar, the statement you made is pretty much equivalent to the one below: arbitrary bullshit based on whatever nonsense happens to deliver power and money to whatever "law makers" and their associates happen to be at the top at the time, logic, science and reason be damned.
Define "information" in terms not mathematically equivalent to binary data.
If you manage this, that would mean that all the computing technology is in fact impossible (as computers would not be able to process information), that no music or moving images can be digitally stored and that "information" cannot be encoded in form of electrical impulses, among other things.
What you want to happen here is one of the oldest cons in the history of civilization: that of a crook who claims that what he peddles is "divinely defined" and so no mere science can possibly explain such a "miracle" and thus he cannot be judged by the rules of such mundane things as logic. Which of course does not stop the crook from sponsoring "laws" to help his thuggery along to a profitable end. It was so with religious fanatics of old and so it is now with the purveyors of the whole field of "Intellectual Property" and related scams, of which your statement is a perfect example.
So you are saying that because a single source of packets can have slowdowns that means that 20 such sources cannot? That the 20 sources are uploading at the maximum speed just to you? From their crippled 1/20th uplink/downlink ratio DSL modems versus that one OC48 mega-corporate source? Clarify.
The overall data transfer volume remains virtually the same. In one case the source of 1000 copies of that ISO9660 image is the mega-corporation and in the other they are distributed across 1000 DSL modems. In both cases the total volume of transfer is 1000x600MB as the final number of downloaded copies is the same. The only difference is in the connection topology and the protocol overhead which amounts to less then measly 1% of the traffic.
How so? The whole point of packet-switching networks is that they are neutral to what contents is being transfered over them and from where.
In fact the issue has nothing whatsoever to do with connections and traffic. It is all about control. P2P systems are decentralized solutions which do not lend themselves to control (and thus profiting from and ability to censor their contents) by one corporate entity or another. A single source of downloads returns the communication architecture to the traditional single-point-of-control "broadcast" system which affords its owners full control over what is being "broadcast" and to whom and at what price. This simply is just yet another front in the "intellectual property" war for domination of the future of the human race.
Also note that in the decentralized P2P system no one party has to shell out the big bucks for the OC48 line and no ISP is able to extort extra fees for "priority traffic" from one such entity.
Total bullshit. The "expense" of multiple connections is incurred by the peer OS and possibly by a stateful firewall right before it. NO ISP level gear is supposed to track connections and no routers require it for their function (routing is per packet, not per connection), unless of course you are engaged in wholesale wiretapping and packet inspection.
Therefore unless the reason is the ISPs inability to spy on all contents of all packets in all connections of all their customers, there is NO difference on ISPs routers between one user sending/receiving 1000 gazillion packets to/from a single destination or 10 packets to/from 100 gazillion destinations simultaneously.
And herein lies the rub. What "seems warranted" varies wildly depending on what measuring stick you use. For example, is it possible for a teenage vacuum-head "pop star" to warrant worth 10000 greater then the best neurosurgeon or the discoverer of some properties of proteins which result in making the cure for cancer possible?
What measurement do you use to make multi-billion economic empires - and with them the control of lives of hundreds of thousands of employees - be granted to a spoiled brat who never worked a day in her whole life?
I could go on.
As I got older, I realized, from first hand experience, that in our "society" there is in essence next to no wide-spread correlation between "success" and it being "warranted", no matter what measuring stick you use. Randomness, hereditary aristocracy and a very, very, very strong preference for Machiavellian sociopathic jerks adept at con-artistry seem be the main "features" of the landscape of distribution of "success" around us today.
The poster you are replying to:
You:
It apparently escaped you that these are pretty much one and the same thing.
An idealist, for example, is a politician who would try to stick to his beliefs even when sniper's bullets are whizzing next to his head. A "pragmatist" is a politician who will take all the lobbyist money he can get his paws on (after all this is the "reality" of politics, surely?), promise everyone "centrist compromises". "bridging the gap", "reaching across the isles" etc to get elected and then do everything that his most powerful and rich friends ever wanted.
In short "pragmatist" is the Polite Society's code word for "spineless, unprincipled opportunist".
That's MOBs for you, not "mobs". It is an ancient MUD game engine acronym which stands for "Mobile OBject". One of those archaic game lingo terms which still survives but the origins of which most of the young whipper-snappers do not have clue about.
Now about that lawn of mine ...
I think that monxtr's motivations are somewhat different. While many people look upon Capitalism as an imperfect, deeply flawed but unfortunately the best workable solution we have to resolving the conflict between individual animalistic urges of the populace and the overall need for the society to move forward, some have come to see it as a religion because they've confused the fact that Capitalism revolves around individual greed with an endorsement and justification of that greed. And such a Religion of Capitalism frees them from all these worrisome social responsibilities and nagging concerns of what remains of their conscience. But one of the fundamental cornerstones of a religion is that it has to provide for some miraculous effects supposedly resulting from following its tenets. And this is where this spontaneously created with each trade "value" comes in. Trying to redefine the idea of trade in this way changes no observable effects of trade itself but enables the acolytes to claim that trade, and by extension greed, are inherently "good". You probably noticed how he insisted on trade being essentially the only possible foundation of civilization. This is a core part of such a religious belief system where all things "good" must be seen as directly, or indirectly, resulting from whatever it is that one is trying to justify of one own character.
monxtr is of course not the first one trying this, I've run into his kind many times before. One could even quip that what monxtr is engaged in is one of the oldest pursuits of mankind: an attempt to justify one's selfish greed to everyone, including oneself. It has been done by kings (who claimed to rule in the name of whatever god was popular at the moment) and it was done by men of wealth all the way to today's CEOs who espouse "social Darwinism" (or more accurately Spencerism) whereby supposedly "the best members" of mankind are "rewarded" by gigantic wealth for being "meritorious" to society. On how this is supposed to work with vast inherited estates they remain mum.
So adding additional fluff and losing coherence by redefining commonly used labels was not high on monxtr's list of concerns, as these (and many more others) are all cheap sacrifices when compared to being able to make him feel good about himself.
Because it represents your valuation relative to the market price. It says "This cake is $0.99 too expensive for me". A very common real-life situation.
Again, one of the main flaws in the Religion of Capitalism is the underlying assumption that market players are rational. Yes, people do "know" that profit is necessary to the operation of this system but that does not stop their reptilian brains from overriding that knowledge. As long as this profit remains abstract and nebulous they are able to accept it. Make it plain and obvious and their instincts will kick in full force. People also "know" that cooperation when done voluntarily and with deliberation is more efficient (from the point of view of resource utilization and well being of its participants) then dog-eat-dog competition, but their reptilian brains introduce a counter-productive factor called "greed" (a part of much earlier evolutionary genetic heritage dealing with environmental optimization of the gene pool in animal populations) which renders the most effective scheme useless and requires a whole different approach which allows that animalistic mindset to be redirected into something resembling common good (which is why Capitalism, however gravely flawed, beats Communism in practice). It is just the way people are. Irrational. One has to only look at global news for a daily dose of irrefutable proof of this. Capitalism survives (sort of) precisely because greed seems to be stronger in many people then their other insanities. It even trumps religion for the most part. But that very force can be turned against the system, as in the example above of the two friends with cakes (which is why I chose it).
A bit of futuristic predictions here: when people will become capable of connecting their brains to very high capacity networks directly so that their very psyche and memory can interact with them, sooner or later some of them will get an idea to "merge" parts of their minds with one another thus resulting in something approaching shared consciousness and thus end up with a way to form permanent consensus updated in real time. Then watch out Capitalism.
The other interesting possibility is also this: when all the mechanisms our brains become known to science, someone will get another idea: to genetically modify people so that instead of individual greed, satisfaction of which makes them feel happy, their "greed" will become that for betterment of all around them, satisfaction of which would make them happy, while also finding those who feel the old "individual" greed as repulsive. Entertainment will ensue after that.
By demonstrating that when a market transaction is actually performed under conditions of sufficient supply of cash the VD is infinitely approaching zero, I also demonstrated that under the same conditions V infinitely approaches P. Ergo for practical purposes one only needs to concern himself with P only. This is yet another way of showing that all discussions about V are in effect pointless from the point of view of economics. V is by itse
This is merely a different way of representing the same thing. One can have the price P and that subjective "value" V and they will form a relation of V - P = VD, where VD is the "difference", positive or negative. But one can also write V = P + VD, which is equally true, but which gives V as a result of P and VD, instead of VD being computed as a difference of V and P. I chose the latter method to better illustrate the unquantifiable nature of VD, and thus by extension of V.
Because of human nature. Remember we had set up the experiment specifically so that the other trading party was aware of the cost of the cake. That is also why all retailers guard their cost figures jealously as to not let customers become aware of them as, rightfully or not, the customers expect the "fair" value of "profit" to be zero.
Which could, for all intents and purposes, be a value infinitely approaching the price paid. Greater then the price paid (technically) but by an infinitely small amount (such things are possible in mathematics) and utterly useless for any market valuations.
This only goes to show that you've never filled any application for anything involving finances. Not only the valuation of your assets is supposed to be a "fair market value", but you are also liable for criminal fraud if it is not. It must be nice to be so sheltered and spoiled as to not realize these basic facts of life. And it is the applicant not the bank who is responsible for performing an accurate assessment of his own assets.
Which of course has to do with depreciation and is irrelevant to the bank application (unless you are calculating depreciation to get the "fair market value").
So its settled at $2 billion for the rodent on the application! And that dude in the cardboard-box is indeed the richest man on Earth as of course his net worth valuation is based on the same principle!
Which, again, for the millionth time, is not quantifiable, ergo not subject to scientific analysis. Since that "value" for the Person 1 can be less then a penny and at the same time for the Person 2 it can exceed the worth of the entire Universe. You will never know. And thus it is irrelevant and the only observable, measurable value happens to be that of strict equivalence to other goods and labor and is called the "market value" or "price".
That is not the same as valuation of individual clouds, which is what would correspond to valuation of individual whims of individual people. That is why I specifically stated so, precisely to exclude cumulative statistics which average over vast numbers of atmospheric phenomena.
Which is still, for the millionth and one time, just as unquantifiable and unmeasurable as it was two paragraphs back and in the previous post and in the post above that and above that and ... and which will be still so in posts future irrespective of how many times you repeat this.
Well, not really. I might prefer one flavor over the others but only after I had coffee. I might like one flavor and then get sick of it 10 minutes later. I might pick a "wrong" flavor based on misleading labeling or color. Etc and so on. All you can determine in this experiment that I would pick some flavor some of the time for reasons fickle and fleeting.
Such is the problem with trying to measure any subjective feelings. And note that you've merely attempted the simplest possible, multiple-choice test. There is no practical method available (outside of a fantastical thought/emotion reading machine + 100% accurate computer model of consciousness) which would allow you to actually measure a degree of a subjective feeling, which is precisely what the quantification of the subjective trade "value" you described would require.
LOL. What was described is not "measuring to the nearest cent" but the fact that one cent is apparently a measurement far, far in excess of the total amount of this elusive "value" of preferences. I would posit that 1000th or 1000000th of a cent would also be so under the conditions I mentioned. Indeed, any amount at all would be in excess of this "value", as it is simply not measurable in terms of dollars or cents or fractions of thereof.
In contrast, the traditional trade values are measured in numbers ranging from a fraction of a cent per traded item to billions of dollars per item and only under some circumstances (in industries and markets where the prices are traditionally rounded to the nearest penny) this loss of precision occurs.
Except the "value" of the cake here is composed of two elements (according to your reasoning): the empirically observable "market value", equivalent to the price, i.e. $1.50 and the esoteric "preference value" of my "preference of one cake over the other" which is added to the "market value" to form your "total subjective value". Should the total exceed $1.51 the purchase is made. Should it exceed $1.500000001 the purchase is made. But as I described earlier it won't. The very suggestion of a price greater than $1.50 (the purchase price of the cake) by any amount would result in an emotional reaction and accusations of ripoff from the owner of the other cake. So the "preference value" you spoke of is so small (in this particular case) as to be wholly unmeasurable.
In other scenarios where a trade does occur this nebulous "value" would then supposedly be again in excess of the "market value" (i.e. price) by some unspecified amount (different for each trader) making them believe that they are both better off. But any attempt at measurement of this value would require another transaction, which would only occur if the "value" was still in excess of the new "market value" of this "test" transaction and so on, ad infinitum. That is why I say that this subjective "value" is unmeasurable by definition.
That depends on what your definition of "efficiency" is.
Capitalism's main positive feature is that it is performs parallelized search function in the space of "technological progress" while avoiding local minimas. But it does so at the price of a tremendous waste of resources. Or have you not heard of the mountains of plastic bags, discarded packaging and other discarded plastic junk clogging city dumps and pretty much covering the middle of the Atlantic? Some "efficiency".
That of course depends on what your acceptable parameters for such a system are. If we are to talk science fiction for example, theoretically a shared-consciousness hive capable of dynamically moderating the mental independence of its members might do the trick: unified consciousness removes the problem of tyranny/governance/dissent while maximizing allocation of resources to specific selected tasks, the moderated independence allows for the parallel search function, etc and so on.
But of course such a system has little to do with our present concept of "pursuit of happiness" and a whole gamut of other issues well outside of economic theory. I bring it up to illustrate that focusing on "maximum efficiency" (of whatever aspect of the system) by itself can have somewhat unexpected consequences.
Great, great, but cut to the chase: what do I put down on that bank application in the "net worth" field, since me and the banker disagree somewhat about the value of that hamster by .. oh ... about $2 billion? Do explain.
Prices fluctuate due to many factors such as availability of labor and resources, etc, also amongst them personal preferences of buyers and sellers. Some of these factors are quantifiable, and thus subject to economic analysis, and some are not, and thus not subject to such analysis. Your "value" falls into the latter category. The fact that trade is driven by people's desires does not mean that the desires themselves can be part of economic analysis. Trade in many goods is also influenced by weather patterns and yet no one sane would attempt to modify economic models to account for the "value" of movements of individual clouds in the sky.
Allrighty then: Me and a buddy of mine are going to exchange my hamster for an IOU from him (maturing 20 years from now as to give him the chance to get the money) for $2 billion, following which I will buy back the critter for $2 billion and 10 cents. Trade has occurred, ergo the critter is now worth $2 billion (plus warm and fuzzy additional "value" so dear to you), no? Heck, just to make you happy, we will trade the sucker 10 times, each time I will strive to make myself want to get him back more, just before I will want to sell him even more, following which I will really, really need him back and so forth. I can already feel the "value" expanding. Oh and that loan application? I will put you down as a guarantor.
Part of the fundamental problem with all of these economic models is that they assume that market players are rational actors, ignoring abundant evidence to the contrary. That is why I brought up that example (amongst other reasons). In such situations the odds of people behaving "rationally" (from the perspective of the market) are far lower than those of them acting emotionally and thus "contrary to their interest" in market terms.
We were talking about the unquantifiable "subjective value" which only exists in the other guy's head not the "market value" as measured in money. We cannot know that "subjective value" by definition, thus what you said makes no sense. This "value" is useless for the task you mentioned, i.e. estimating market worth (measured in monetary terms). Any attempts at "testing" of this value by engaging in trade would, by definition, come short as some (an unquantifiable amount) of that "value" must remain to form the "incentive" for trade. The thing is utterly pointless.
Err ... so how one does measure that subjective value? If it cannot be measured means that no formulas can be used to describe its relationship to other economic values, then how are you are going to construct any model with any sort of explanatory or predictive power? And if you cannot, what you propose is no different from reading tea-leaves or chicken entrails. My objections to the other guys entire line of reasoning pivot on this very point: a distinction between science, based on testable, quantifiable phenomena and ... untestable and unmeasurable (by definition) religious belief which requires none such.
I always knew that these silly bankers and tax-men were imposing their "personal subjective valuations" on the poor us! The chutzpa they have! To use these wholly subjective balance sheets and income statements on us! And totally subjective money! Bastards! I wanna have my hamster valued at $2 billion for the purpose of my loan collateral! Hey it could sell for that much - after all everything is "subjective" and so I could talk some billionaire into it, no? You go tell them!
So the rest of the sane world disagrees in unison with your "objective" assessment. You alone stand heroically against this evil globe-spanning conspiracy with your banner of "My Value Is Bigger Then Your Value!"
They also had this thing called "price". Ever hear of it?
Which brings us back to our soon-to-be-raptured Cardboard Castle Joe. Is he or is he not entitled to put his Ticket To Paradise on his balance sheet? What is his net worth? Stop evading. Give a coherent answer.
You did claim, persistently, complete universality of your definition of "value" even going as far as claiming that it is the very foundation of industrial civilization as we know it. Thus one example to the contrary, no matter how extreme, ruins your entire argument. That is why you are ducking it so desperately.
I won't even bother to answer your other circular-reasoning ramblings until you address this and the other issue, which I noticed you managed to conveniently "forget" to answer: who and where publishes mainstream economic indicators which incorporate your definition of "value". GDP, growth figures, industry output, anything at all.
In addition to your bizzarro-world definition of "market value" you now introduce a new bizarro-world definition of "clarified" which stands for "I got caught being illogical and cannot get out of it so I will pretend that I explained stuff, throw around some expletives and hope no one notices!".
Its simply a matter of labels and definitions. In various economic literature I've read over the years this concept was labeled in many different ways, sometimes as "monetary value", sometimes as "market value" etc. as opposed to "subjective value" which is what you describe. The main point being however that anything but "price" or "market value" is simply outside our abilities to quantify and thus of no use in gaging the state of the economy. If the term "value" (in economic context) were to be defined as you indicate, then this "value" would be irrelevant to any market analysis, although it might be of interest to philosophers, and thus relegated to footnotes and appendices of all economic papers instead of the center stage of various measurements.
Which as I pointed out would not have happened if both parties were typical people as one is clearly attempting to rip the other off, even if for one penny. All the people I know would have become very angry since they would be fully aware of the price we both paid for the cakes and would find the idea extremely offensive and would rather destroy their whole $10 of cake as a weapon just to express that anger or at the very least they would have eaten it (even if they preferred the other) after some loud "fuck you"s. Which only goes to show that such "value" is wholly useless for the purposes of economic analysis. These musings about "subjective value" in the context of economics would make sense if you were describing robots the brains of which could be expected to operate in the same exact fashion under the exact same conditions.
... contradict each other. Either the subjective value "isn't unquantifiable" in which case the religious loon can claim his paradise on his balance sheet, or it is not quantifiable in which case the only thing which counts in economic measurements is monetary value. Which is it?
I changed the order of these points to put the most comedic demonstration of the lunatic implications of your stance at the top.
This is pretty much a show stopper right here. So, according to you, the religious loon has, right at the conclusion of his transaction, his net worth valued more, in economic terms, then Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined (as that is what the loon believes)?
If what you say is true then the Forbes magazine needs to redo its lists post-haste! Clearly they've got the wrong sort of people on it! Just to think of it, that dude I see at the corner sometimes must be our city's richest man! Who knew?!
Then again, if not, then what is the exact net worth of the cardboard dwelling fellow just after his transaction was completed, in which he so shrewdly outwitted his partner to obtain "heavenly unlimited wealth" in exchange for a mere house, car and the contents of some bank accounts? What exactly is the economic value of this transaction as clearly, according to you, merely measuring it by such mundane things as money is woefully insufficient?
Since such economic "theories" exist nowhere outside your particular, somewhat fringe circle, it is only fair to apply this reasoning to nearly the whole world where people, for reasons that seem to escape you, insist on sticking to the traditional ways of measuring value in economics. Anthropomorphism has nothing to do with it.
No it does not. You've merely conflated two wholly separate concepts: the monetary value of goods in trade exchanges and a subjective preferences of traders and then keep on insisting on renaming this new concoction as "value" to replace the traditional concept used by economists. While personal preferences of traders are what drives trade, the term "value", in economics, is only applicable to the actual transactions themselves where exact equivalence between both sides of trade is a given.
I never "explained" anything of the sort. I merely point out that one cannot scientifically measure anything outside of monetary values of goods (even if that) and thus anything outside that quantification is by definition unscientific and totally unreliable in formulation of any theories of trade. That is why the term "value", as applied in economics to trade, does not include anything beyond monetary measurements. Which is the very root of your confusion. And incidentally which is also the reason why religious cardboard-box-dwellers are not at the top of the Forbes list.
And the result of such valuations of course being the only quantifiable result: monetary value of trade. Thus irrespective of what is going on in people's heads (none of which can be estimated with any degree of accuracy) the only scientific measurement available is that monetary value. None other exist which can be subjected to rigorous analysis. Your redefined economic "value" is useless for
Ad hominem attacks will get you nowhere.
Furthermore, what you are trying to say becomes pointless if you are simply incapable of expressing it in coherent terms. It is not the whole world's problem that no one is able to get what you are trying to explain, it is your inability to express it in a way that makes any sense whatsoever that is at fault.
Also the "concept", after multiple attempts at getting you to explain it, finally appears to be simply your insistence on redefining commonly accepted terms used to describe economic activities. In economics, physical goods and labor (measured in units of currency) are the only items available for methodical analysis. Any fluctuations in people's desires which cannot be expressed in these terms are irrelevant to any discourse on economics and belong in the same realm as discussions on the meaning of the universe.
Here we go again. "extrinsically" is a word which, without any further context, simply makes no sense in that sentence. "Extrinsically" in relation to what? The traders? The marketplace? The transactions?
Which, again, is unquantifiable and as such not subject to scientific analysis.
"Ideological"? That word. You keep using it. I does not mean what you think it means.
Attempts to adhere to the scientific method are not "ideological" (well maybe from a perspective of a complete kook or a religious lunatic).
Not at all. The trade, in economic terms, is for items of equal economic value, as I repeatedly explained. That "value" is measured in either goods, labor or currency. That is the only kind of "value" which is applicable to economic analysis. The redefined by you term "value" is a subjective set of preferences which is not what any scientific analysis can deal with as it is wholly unmeasurable and unquantifiable. So when I say that trade is for items of equal value, the word "value" in this context is the one commonly accepted on this planet in the sphere of economics. When you use "value" you refer to a nebulous idea of personal preferences, a definition which is only used by you and your fellow acolytes of whatever lunacy this is. If one accepts your definition, then indeed the "value" of items traded alters from the perspective of each side of the trade. But that is not how it is measured in economics.
None of the above has of course anything to do with division of labor, which is an emergent property of certain (but not all) marketplaces wholly unrelated to the properties of trade itself and instead related to allocation of resources.
Calling me names will change none of that.
That is not what your incoherent statement said.
You are continuously confusing (or attempting to somehow conflate) some nebulous, unquantifiable "value" and quite quantifiable, objectively measurable (in currency) market price.
True, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with some wildly defined "value" you are attempting to introduce into this. Such "value" is wholly unmeasurable in any trade related terms. Example: I have a lemon cake, and a buddy of mine has an apple one. We both bought them at the same store at the same price. While walking away we decide that we each like the other guy's cake better, so we decide to trade. All is fine and dandy until I ask "I will give you my cake in exchange for yours plus one penny.". The trade would be immediately off and more then likely my buddy would decide to place his cake on my face for being such a capitalist pig, thus instantaneously recalculating his "value" of the cake as being less the "value" of punishing such greed while at the same time estimating the "value" of the difference in his cake preferences as less then the smallest possible currency unit used in everyday trade.
In other words that "value" you keep ranting about is more vaporous then vapor. And wholly unsuitable for purposes of any economic analysis.
True, but that difference is not measurable in monetary terms, ergo it has no place in any economic analysis.
Because the action of trading itself consumes energy and time, thus diminishing our resources with each trade.
I think I know why you are so hopelessly confused. You misunderstand simple economic terms: "profit" does not apply to some nebulous, subjective "values" in someone's head, it is defined strictly in monetary terms. Therefore what you call "profit" isn't. The same applies to "wealth", which again, is quantified strictly in monetary terms. Otherwise the happy religious lunatic I mentioned earlier would be the "wealthiest" person on the planet (in his view the "value" of his belief is astronomical), while having at the same time net monetary worth of $2.
Again, total confusion. Not all forms of exchange are "trade" (exchange of artistic expressions or speech are not trade) and division of labor is not a pre-requisite for a society, nor its automatic implication. A group o
So without the subsidies they would not have ended up owning the last mile, which would instead be owned by ... the Tooth Fairy? Since the "evil gubmnt" is clearly "not qualified" for such free-market-meddling tasks ...
This sentence makes no sense. Greater-than and less-than are binary operators. You've just used two such operators in one equation with only two values in total. Two binary operators need at least three values to form a valid formula.
That does not imply any total "gain" in "value". It merely implies a difference in kind. I.e. of two identically priced cakes, made with identically priced ingredients and with identical labor I might prefer the lemon-flavored one over the peach-flavored one. Yet they are both of identical objective value from the point of view of the marketplace, both selling at the same price. That is because my personal preference in flavor does not in any way add to the total "value" of such goods.
Which would relegate this "value" to the realm of psychic mediums and witch-doctors and well outside of any economic models as it is wholly unquantifiable and unobservable.
Which gets you of course nothing as that subjective "gain" is utterly useless for any analytical purpose.
Not at all. A bulletin board is also a representation of the "will" of its posters and it "duplicates" the thoughts they carry in their heads yet it does perform a function normally not attainable to these individuals otherwise. It has to do with communication and focus of that normally diffuse "will" to specific tasks. In essence Governments act as a focus and a proxy for that will, which otherwise is not practical to execute individually.
Logical fallacy. The "will" of the community does not necessarily need to be in alignment with the will of particular individuals with in it, given any difference of opinion at all between the community members. The only way in which the will of the community would be so aligned would be if everyone shared the same consciousness. Nearly all political theories deal with this difference and with ways of mitigating it, the Democratic Republic being only one of the many attempts at addressing this.
Incorrect. Many actions of individuals are random, many consciously counter productive for the actor (altruism) etc and so on. Your "model" is only applicable to robots (and even
Free market is not "broken" (whatever that means). It is simply an imperfect, flawed economic system (one of possible many) which is applicable only to a particular subset of human activities, under specific conditions. My objections are not to the concept itself but to rampant and frankly quite maniacal attempts by various ideologues to apply it to pretty much everything with religious zeal, irrespective of its fitness to the task.
This silly "reasoning" can be extended to luxury food, then semi-luxury food, then all drinks other than tap water, then all clothes other then a converted potato sack, all shelter other than a cardboard box etc and so on.
The point being of course that if one removes all competition in one area and allows a complete monopoly to take charge then there is no reason not to allow the same process everywhere else, is there?
Since in this particular case they involve geography, I think they will be with us for a while. Furthermore, allowing a monopoly to exist merely for a generation or two (a "temporary" affair from the point of view of history) is equivalent to allowing it to exist for the entire life span of some people, which for them, subjectively, is indistinguishable from "forever".
Apples and oranges. There are very little in a way of physical (or even technological) barriers to entry for Google's competitors. As time progresses that might change (with Google's expansion into mobile phones etc - causing hardware based lock in) but it is still on a wholly different scale when compared to communities being dug full of holes like by a rabid pack of prairie dogs which is what would happen in the case of unrestricted cable laying in most cities.
Again, Internet is a place with one of the lowest (if not THE lowest) barriers to entry for any activity. Most barriers to Internet based businesses exist outside of it, in the "brick and mortar" world. You are again comparing apples to oranges.
BT is a Crown Corporation, is it not?
The powers that be are in the pockets of big business, but more importantly the whole environment is orders of magnitude more litigious. Any such regulations would have resulted in decades long, protracted legal battles with multi-million dollar price tags for the governments involved.
Which has no bearing on the matter whatsoever. Subsidies are wholly unrelated to the problem of physical limitations of last-mile cabling.
Non-sequitur.
Yes, the "school" which rejects empirical evidence in favor of ideologically motivated "deductions". A fringe lunacy even amongst other fundamentalist capitalist lunacies.
Oops. That would not be in line with the Austrian School's main premise that observation and empirical evidence takes a second seat to the priesthood's "deductions". Even you cannot keep these fruit-cakes straight.
Nobel Prize in economics is like the Buttville Chicken Farmers' Award for the longest piss from the roof of Orville's farm. Except that the pissing farmhands cannot cause anywhere near the misery, suffering and death these Nobel "winners" did. Macroeconomics, as a whole, is an exercise in pseudo-scientific shamanism of the highest order. None, I repeat, none of the so-called "models" developed by any of these "schools" have been demonstrated to have even the slightest of predictive powers or most tenuous relationships to reality. Which of course never stops these frauds from pompous posturing and lecturing sanctimoniously.
The last time these Nobel "winners" have tried to apply their oh-so-superior understanding of economics to something practical we ended up with a wee little oopsie called the "Long Term Capital Management" hedge fund. Look it up.
Which has nothing whatsoever to do with the issue of telco monopolies.
LOL. That is one of the Holy Dogmas of the Capitalist Religion. In practice people trade hoping to receive value equal to that what was paid. Sometimes receiving far less. The extra "value" in excess of the trade itself is supposed to be a systemic property and as such never enters the mind of individual traders. And so the trade would have occurred irrespective of its presence.
This bit of illogical, rabid zealotry is pretty much self defeating. The trade always did and would occur if value of what you pay for is merely equal to what you get.
Say what?! Government is (at least in theor