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I'm curious to pick your brain about this. What is a better concept to describe the idea that "if a trade occurs, it is Good?" I agree STV does contain real ins
by natural219 9y ago
I'm curious to pick your brain about this. What is a better concept to describe the idea that "if a trade occurs, it is Good?" I agree STV does contain real insights about the nature of trading, but there's some ideological extrapolation that transforms obviously correct things like marginal diminishing utility to "justifying every trade as it occurs as inexorably good"
See also: http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
- SilasX 9y agoYou're actually right, I think -- I don't know of a specific (standard) term to describe that fallacy, and every time I've criticized its appearance, I've had to make up a neologism or spell it out expliclity [1]. ("Vulgar Keynesianism" is one term for it, but it's not the only school that does it so it's a fair term for the precice concept.) In any case, I was just trying to make the point that a) The turd-trade example does not help the debate about the underlying concepts -- regardless of label -- because it's uses an intuition breaking situation to build intuitions, which is no more insightful than pointing and laughing at people with bizarre preferences. b) STV is not the same as the thing the parable is criticizing. [1] Example comment I remember: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525#12243088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12242525#12243088
- natural219 9y agoMan. Thank you so much. "Vulgar Keynesianism" is indeed a very good summary of my central complaint. although it arrives at it from a totally opposite direction. Sidenote: I miss when Paul Krugman was actually good :(. http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/vulgar.html http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/vulgar.html