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> The actual sale of the chair to someone else is a NOOP, it’s just shuffling assets around. Nope, because the chair in the woodworker's posession is worth les
by wtbob 11y ago
> The actual sale of the chair to someone else is a NOOP, it’s just shuffling assets around.
Nope, because the chair in the woodworker's posession is worth less to him than dollars, and the dollars in the customer's posession are worth less to him than the chair. The actual sale leaves everyone better off.
The woodcutter, the truck drivers who transported the wood, the factor who bundled and graded it, the woodworker, the customer, the Internet entrepreneur who built the website the customer used to compair & contrast chairs: all are better off than if the entire Internet-chair-buying industry were artificially restrained. There are externalities regarding over-harvesting of wood, truck pollution, road construction, factor oligopolies, unsafe chair construction, Internet oligopolies and consumer-protection which need addressing as well, of course.
- braythwayt 11y agoAnd yet, in an efficient market, the woodworker charges almost exactly what the dollars are worth to the customer. And the customer pays no more than what the chair is worth to the woodworker. So they don’t “both benefit.” As to whether the industry is artificially constrained, I am not arguing for artificial constraint, so I don’t need to respond to that. My point was that making a chair creates wealth. That's true whether you make a chair for yourself, or for someone else.