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Suppose I have peanuts and you have shellfish. I don't care for peanuts (in fact, I'm allergic to them). The subjective value that I assign to them is zero (or
by paul_milovanov 9y ago
Suppose I have peanuts and you have shellfish.
I don't care for peanuts (in fact, I'm allergic to them). The subjective value that I assign to them is zero (or negative)
Same thing, you don't care for shellfish (religious reasons).
Suppose we move around existing assets -- trade peanuts for shellfish.
All of a sudden both of us have something we can use, of non-zero subjective value (the only kind of value that exists, btw).
To say that no value has been created in the transaction is quite simply to ignore the basic universal motivation for trade.
Every voluntary transaction happens only because both parties believe that they're getting the better part of the deal (I'd rather have shellfish than peanuts).
- dleslie 9y agoThat's not the sort of activity the article was taking aim at; the author's example of regulators and compliance officers was appropriate, I think. The agents may have come to act in a manner where much of the labour that each engages in is justified by the actions of the other, and so the bulk of their combined labour cancels itself out and we have little increased utility on the whole. Whereas your trade of shellfish and peanuts don't behave in this manner.
- thaumasiotes 9y agoThe quote I pulled was the guy complaining about real estate agents who do nothing but facilitate ownership transfers. The peanuts/shellfish trade is precisely analogous.