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Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

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Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#91

Post by claudiawerner »

nostrademons wrote: post #56
tristor wrote: post #6

This article is an interesting thought experiment, but I can't help but feel that the statements made are in such opposition to understood economic principle and call into question basic moral precepts. That doesn't mean it's wrong, it just feels alien to read. As an example of what I mean, the idea of consumption being a net-negative destructive action goes against the economic concept of velocity of money and how t…

Economics is supposed to be value-neutral: it describes the world as it exists, and doesn't attempt to pass judgment on whether any of the behaviors it describes are good or bad. There's a whole level of punditry and policy-making on top of economics that takes these concepts and says "Ok, we want full employment and equitable distribution of wealth and minimal dead-weight loss" and then tries to tweak the appropriat…

Economics is supposed to be value-neutral, but do economists question the extent to which it isn't value-neutral in its assumptions and views of the world? Similarly, science is often declared to be value-neutral, but it accepts certain philosophical ideas without really investigating them. In your example, in many hypothetical societies (not too different from our own) the very fact of hiring the Kongolese would be alien. In fact, the idea of hiring, as in, getting someone to do something for you, and to ask that they align their conatus to yours (in the modern sense) changes in the period of a lifetime.

In short, I think that the assumptions and historical background of economics (descending from political economy) have produced a way of viewing the world which is not value-neutral at all. The existence of heterodox economics (which should not be dismissed as "value" spins on "regular economics") would seem to show that the bare set of assumptions that orthodox economics makes are neither givens nor small in number. Marx, Sraffa, the neo-Ricardians and the Post-Keynesians questioned them. So I think that if science can be admitted to be ideological, we're in for a big treat when it comes to economics.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#92

Post by lordnacho »

spencerwgreene wrote: post #82

This reminds me of the section "Money Is Not Wealth" from Paul Graham's How to Make Wealth [1]: "The solution societies find, as they get more specialized, is to make the trade into a two-step process. Instead of trading violins directly for potatoes, you trade violins for, say, silver, which you can then trade again for anything else you need. The intermediate stuff-- the medium of exchange-- can be anything that's…

It's the atomic compare-and-store operation you're looking for.

violing dollar dollar potato

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#93

Post by metabagel »

airstrike wrote: post #71

> The yacht is made of wood, metal, and plastic. Building it requires many thousands of hours of effort. Workers have to find the trees, cut them down, haul the lumber across vast distances, cut it, sand it, polish it, paint it, etc., etc., etc. If you weren't commissioning the yacht, all of those materials and man-hours could be put to other, better uses. For all the good it does the Congolese people, you may as wel…

"What "other, better uses" does the author propose? What "other, better uses" does the author propose?"

Probably anything which constitutes a true necessity, such as food, clean water, shelter, sanitary conditions, etc.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#94

Post by Matumio »

airstrike wrote: post #71

> The yacht is made of wood, metal, and plastic. Building it requires many thousands of hours of effort. Workers have to find the trees, cut them down, haul the lumber across vast distances, cut it, sand it, polish it, paint it, etc., etc., etc. If you weren't commissioning the yacht, all of those materials and man-hours could be put to other, better uses. For all the good it does the Congolese people, you may as wel…

You seem to have forgotten "the window" in the argument, separating a single participant from "society" (aka the Congolese people). If you accept that you only care about "the Congolese people" then the author's conclusions make a lot of sense.

Except that they don't quite work without the window, which removes the needs of a single participant from the society to be optimized. A general conclusion like "wealth is toxic" cannot be made without explaining why the window is still in place.

I don't think it's spending that hurts society. What hurts is if a single person spends so much above average that it notably drains the number of workers still available to serve the needs of everyone else in that society.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#96

Post by metabagel »

airstrike wrote: post #71

> The yacht is made of wood, metal, and plastic. Building it requires many thousands of hours of effort. Workers have to find the trees, cut them down, haul the lumber across vast distances, cut it, sand it, polish it, paint it, etc., etc., etc. If you weren't commissioning the yacht, all of those materials and man-hours could be put to other, better uses. For all the good it does the Congolese people, you may as wel…

"I'm sure those workers who chopped down the wood or built the yacht would much prefer I pay them than a different worker, even if I want to buy the yacht just to watch it burn."

What the workers do or don't appreciate has nothing to do with the author's argument. A squad of mercenaries might appreciate you paying them to murder someone.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#97

Post by malandrew »

airstrike wrote: post #50
nostrademons wrote: post #9

It's interesting to speculate on what would happen if some of these foundational assumptions of economics didn't hold. What if money actually became more valued than what you can buy with money ? What if supply didn't create its own demand? What if people didn't try to make money to satisfy their own wants, but to one-up their neighbors in the pissing match of life? You'd see a lot of strange behavior. Instead of con…

> What if money actually became more valued than what you can buy with money? "Value" is dependent on time. You can't ignore the time-value of money. Money is the most liquid of assets and that confers it with specific features not shared by other assets. Every investment is a trade-off between liquidity, risk and return. Money maximizes liquidity and lets you optimize for just risk and return. This makes capital all…

Any the best way to one-up your neighbors is to provide social value to your neighbors. As someone else said, money is just a store of social value. That act of everyone trying to one-up each other is beneficial for the tribe.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#98

Post by airstrike »

bmer wrote: post #89
airstrike wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you create the same value to society as Bill Gates? So why do you think you deserve the same wealth?

Because they are a human being.

And every human being is entitled to the same amount of wealth? Good luck with that battle.

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#99

Post by timerol »

dublo7 wrote: post #87
tristor wrote: post #6

This article is an interesting thought experiment, but I can't help but feel that the statements made are in such opposition to understood economic principle and call into question basic moral precepts. That doesn't mean it's wrong, it just feels alien to read. As an example of what I mean, the idea of consumption being a net-negative destructive action goes against the economic concept of velocity of money and how t…

I thought that too. If getting money is good, then spending can't be all bad because you must be giving it to someone else and at minimum creating good for that person, possibly less good if it's spread the a corporation instead of directly to an individual.

I think the author's point isn't that getting money is good, but that people get money in exchange for good. Therefore, if you are receiving money, it is due to some good action you've done. If you are spending money, you are not creating good for the other person, but compensating that person for the good that they've done. (I do not fully agree with the author's point AIUI.)

Re: Wealth: The Toxic Byproduct (2013)

#100

Post by r00fus »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #35
nostrademons wrote: post #9

It's interesting to speculate on what would happen if some of these foundational assumptions of economics didn't hold. What if money actually became more valued than what you can buy with money ? What if supply didn't create its own demand? What if people didn't try to make money to satisfy their own wants, but to one-up their neighbors in the pissing match of life? You'd see a lot of strange behavior. Instead of con…

I'm not sure I would use the word "interesting" it is more likely "illuminating" :-) But word selection aside, one of the problems that money brings is that it is a concrete number, and thus susceptible to being coerced into being a "score." This is particularly true when you have people who are insecure about their value, they might get it into their heads that the person with the highest "score" has the highest val…

I wonder if taxing stated wealth (even if at a miniscule percentage) would help avoid insane/gamed valuations.
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