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according to standard economics, and all economists from right to left agree on this: money is the measure of value to society. (I changed the word "return" to

according to standard economics, and all economists from right to left agree on this: money is the measure of value to society. (I changed the word "return" to "money" because return essentially means profit and when you make a selling or purchasing decision, you receive or pay the full price, not just the profit so your decision is a money decision, not a return decision.) That doesn't mean the rest of the argument he's making (and you are believing) fails, it means you are getting confused by stuff that economists clarified a long long time ago. There are many effects that distort people's decisions such that the wrong people benefit vs the wrong people who pay, but try to fix that and then just never never let it be said that we should not pursue returns, that's pure nonsense.

Spooky23 6y ago
Money is a measure of value, but the standard for assigning value is mostly emotional. Buy anything at retail, then try to sell it. You'll always take a bath, because the retail (whether a store or Amazon) experience adds value. The same thing happens in business.
tasty_freeze 6y ago
> money is the measure of value to society The internalization of this leads rich people to conclude they are rich because the provided even more value to the world than they kept to themselves, otherwise they wouldn't have paid them so well. The richer they are the more they think they think they are benefactors and any complaints about how they acquired their wealth is just jealousy or, uh, socialism or something. Sometimes it is the case that the wealthy have contributed something of such value that the world is better off, sometimes not. A drug company taking a 40 year old out of patent drug that has a stable but fixed market can increase shareholder returns by increasing the price 5-fold if they've cornered the market on this niche drug. Did they really do anything good for society? It sure doesn't seem that way, even if they are "creating value" by jacking up the price. The kneejerk reaction of many is to say I should start a company to compete with that predatory pricing model. But that is naive because (a) there are lots of moats to cross to get there and (b) even if stuck it out, I know that the predatory company can drop the price in an instant and use their scale and place as the market leader to crush my nascent company. So nobody does it.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > The internalization of this leads rich people to conclude they are rich because the provided even more value to the world than they kept to themselves, otherwise they wouldn't have paid them so well. That's right, and that's a consequence of free markets and the astounding rise in overall standard of living in countries with free markets. > The richer they are the more they think they think they are benefactors and any complaints about how they acquired their wealth is just jealousy or, uh, socialism or something. Most of the complaints I see are based on envy. > cornered the market on this niche drug Most of that appears to be the result of FDA regulations making it very difficult for competitors.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    > That's right, and that's a consequence of free markets and the astounding rise in overall standard of living in countries with free markets. Let's talk about the end result in 2020: - the chronic diabetes pandemic: half of American adults, 100 million, are pre-diabetic or worse because of HFCS (corn syrup). By 2026 it's estimated hospital budgets will almost entirely be spent on mgmt. of diabetes patients. - the US outsourced so much of its pharma and PPE mfg. to China that is was unable to defend itself against a pandemic - we reverted to Roman times in terms of public health policy - tens of millions of Americans don't have health insurance You might hand-wave this away as complaints, but US society is rotten to the very core. Our standard of living is medieval for many.
- fragmede 6y ago
  If I'm able to force the competition to drop their predatory rates to sane levels, then even if I go out of business, I've still won. The objective was for there to be reasonable rates, not to make money. We saw this with Google Fiber, where the incumbent cable monopolies speeds hadn't kept pace with technology. As soon as ATT started offering fiber, Google Fiber "won", in a sense that consumer gigabit fiber Internet now exists.
- fsckboy 6y ago
  some people internalize ideas that lead them to commit suicide, and those type of problems afflict rich and poor people. So, having internalized wrong ideas does not cast doubt on what money is. rich people can internalize whatever they like, but the money they control allows them to effect more changes to society than the money controlled by people with less and in proportion to the amount of money, whether they are investing for the future or simply consuming today. it is inescapable what money is measuring, and the rubber meets the road as to how you measure your values in how you allocate your money resources too. you are putting a lot of adjectives on things like "predatory"; money is neutral in this regard. How much does society value health care vs food? Just how much is spent. I'm not telling you anything about what to think, I'm just telling you what money is.
pessimizer 6y ago
> according to standard economics, and all economists from right to left agree on this: money is the measure of value to society. Only for a very strict definition of "value to society" that is a tautological summing of individual relative desire that is measured in dollars. Luckily, we're not restricted to defining value that way when speaking generally. edit: coincidentally, I was recently reading an article by an ex-scientologist reflecting on the complicated process of indoctrination that keeps them in the church. A large part of it seems to be redefining common words (usually making them more specific, but sometimes intentionally creating definitions of words which explicitly denigrate their common meanings) and justifying this as a technical language (or I guess in Scientology, the "words" of a "tech"?) Next, they teach that deviation from those definitions is the source of all error, and that all doubt can be cured by going between the sentence that has caused you to doubt and the official definitions of the words in that sentence, back and forth, until you understand that the sentence is correct, and that LRH is always correct. Doing that for long enough could probably convince one that somebody buying horrible stepped on street heroin to keep from being sick is valuable to society. Isn't not being sick nice?
- WalterBright 6y ago
  > horrible stepped on street heroin Is a consequence of heroin being illegal, thus people who buy bad heroin have no recourse in the courts. Free markets rely on a court system.
  - sukilot 6y ago
    People buy horrible prescription opiates generally with no recourse to the legal system, and that's legal.
    - WalterBright 6y ago
      It's not adulterated drugs. There have been no allegations that the opiates were not the chemicals they were advertised as being.
      - 6y ago
sukilot 6y ago
Please cite a source for your claim. Economists agree they utility is the measure of value to society. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utility.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utility.asp Money is merely a proxy for utility, a token of exchange.
- fsckboy 6y ago
  I will cite your statement "money is merely a proxy for utility" because that makes utility a suitable proxy for money, and you agree to that. To expand on my original point and a statement I made elsewhere, to make it more palatable to people who want to object to it: I'm just talking about definition here; I'm not changing your ideas about greed, or distribution of wealth or sustainable wages. Adopt the definiton I gave, and then say what you want about those other things, and you'll make more sense, or understand why you're failing by your own standards.
- baddox 6y ago
  And note that market price is an indicator not of how much people value something, but rather their willingness to pay, which is obviously limited by each person’s ability to pay.

Spooky23 6y ago

Money is a measure of value, but the standard for assigning value is mostly emotional. Buy anything at retail, then try to sell it. You'll always take a bath, because the retail (whether a store or Amazon) experience adds value. The same thing happens in business.

tasty_freeze 6y ago

> money is the measure of value to society The internalization of this leads rich people to conclude they are rich because the provided even more value to the world than they kept to themselves, otherwise they wouldn't have paid them so well. The richer they are the more they think they think they are benefactors and any complaints about how they acquired their wealth is just jealousy or, uh, socialism or something. Sometimes it is the case that the wealthy have contributed something of such value that the world is better off, sometimes not. A drug company taking a 40 year old out of patent drug that has a stable but fixed market can increase shareholder returns by increasing the price 5-fold if they've cornered the market on this niche drug. Did they really do anything good for society? It sure doesn't seem that way, even if they are "creating value" by jacking up the price. The kneejerk reaction of many is to say I should start a company to compete with that predatory pricing model. But that is naive because (a) there are lots of moats to cross to get there and (b) even if stuck it out, I know that the predatory company can drop the price in an instant and use their scale and place as the market leader to crush my nascent company. So nobody does it.

WalterBright 6y ago
> The internalization of this leads rich people to conclude they are rich because the provided even more value to the world than they kept to themselves, otherwise they wouldn't have paid them so well. That's right, and that's a consequence of free markets and the astounding rise in overall standard of living in countries with free markets. > The richer they are the more they think they think they are benefactors and any complaints about how they acquired their wealth is just jealousy or, uh, socialism or something. Most of the complaints I see are based on envy. > cornered the market on this niche drug Most of that appears to be the result of FDA regulations making it very difficult for competitors.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  > That's right, and that's a consequence of free markets and the astounding rise in overall standard of living in countries with free markets. Let's talk about the end result in 2020: - the chronic diabetes pandemic: half of American adults, 100 million, are pre-diabetic or worse because of HFCS (corn syrup). By 2026 it's estimated hospital budgets will almost entirely be spent on mgmt. of diabetes patients. - the US outsourced so much of its pharma and PPE mfg. to China that is was unable to defend itself against a pandemic - we reverted to Roman times in terms of public health policy - tens of millions of Americans don't have health insurance You might hand-wave this away as complaints, but US society is rotten to the very core. Our standard of living is medieval for many.
fragmede 6y ago
If I'm able to force the competition to drop their predatory rates to sane levels, then even if I go out of business, I've still won. The objective was for there to be reasonable rates, not to make money. We saw this with Google Fiber, where the incumbent cable monopolies speeds hadn't kept pace with technology. As soon as ATT started offering fiber, Google Fiber "won", in a sense that consumer gigabit fiber Internet now exists.
fsckboy 6y ago
some people internalize ideas that lead them to commit suicide, and those type of problems afflict rich and poor people. So, having internalized wrong ideas does not cast doubt on what money is. rich people can internalize whatever they like, but the money they control allows them to effect more changes to society than the money controlled by people with less and in proportion to the amount of money, whether they are investing for the future or simply consuming today. it is inescapable what money is measuring, and the rubber meets the road as to how you measure your values in how you allocate your money resources too. you are putting a lot of adjectives on things like "predatory"; money is neutral in this regard. How much does society value health care vs food? Just how much is spent. I'm not telling you anything about what to think, I'm just telling you what money is.

pessimizer 6y ago

> according to standard economics, and all economists from right to left agree on this: money is the measure of value to society. Only for a very strict definition of "value to society" that is a tautological summing of individual relative desire that is measured in dollars. Luckily, we're not restricted to defining value that way when speaking generally. edit: coincidentally, I was recently reading an article by an ex-scientologist reflecting on the complicated process of indoctrination that keeps them in the church. A large part of it seems to be redefining common words (usually making them more specific, but sometimes intentionally creating definitions of words which explicitly denigrate their common meanings) and justifying this as a technical language (or I guess in Scientology, the "words" of a "tech"?) Next, they teach that deviation from those definitions is the source of all error, and that all doubt can be cured by going between the sentence that has caused you to doubt and the official definitions of the words in that sentence, back and forth, until you understand that the sentence is correct, and that LRH is always correct. Doing that for long enough could probably convince one that somebody buying horrible stepped on street heroin to keep from being sick is valuable to society. Isn't not being sick nice?

WalterBright 6y ago
> horrible stepped on street heroin Is a consequence of heroin being illegal, thus people who buy bad heroin have no recourse in the courts. Free markets rely on a court system.
- sukilot 6y ago
  People buy horrible prescription opiates generally with no recourse to the legal system, and that's legal.
  - WalterBright 6y ago
    It's not adulterated drugs. There have been no allegations that the opiates were not the chemicals they were advertised as being.
    - 6y ago

sukilot 6y ago

Please cite a source for your claim. Economists agree they utility is the measure of value to society. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utility.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utility.asp Money is merely a proxy for utility, a token of exchange.

fsckboy 6y ago
I will cite your statement "money is merely a proxy for utility" because that makes utility a suitable proxy for money, and you agree to that. To expand on my original point and a statement I made elsewhere, to make it more palatable to people who want to object to it: I'm just talking about definition here; I'm not changing your ideas about greed, or distribution of wealth or sustainable wages. Adopt the definiton I gave, and then say what you want about those other things, and you'll make more sense, or understand why you're failing by your own standards.
baddox 6y ago
And note that market price is an indicator not of how much people value something, but rather their willingness to pay, which is obviously limited by each person’s ability to pay.