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Who's "value to society" people's values vary that's why we have markets so people can decide what they value by deciding to buy it.

tablespoon 5y ago
> Who's "value to society" people's values vary that's why we have markets so people can decide what they value by deciding to buy it. That's a difficult question to answer generally, however it's also clearly not one that markets "solve." That's easy to see with the example of addictive drugs (which the market shows can be very profitable), unless you're willing to argue there's social value in destroying many people's lives through addiction. That's not to say that financial value and social value aren't sometimes aligned, it just that you can't assume the former implies the latter.
- bennysomething 5y ago
  The point I'm trying to make is people often use the term "value to society" like it's an answered question. We know it's not answered as that people's values vary. Centrally deciding what is useful has proven to be disastrous (see the Soviet Union and every other centrally planned economy). Free markets allow us to express our values at an individual level rather than having an authority deciding what to value.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    I know the point you're trying to make; it's ubiquitous. The point I'm making is that "free markets" won't answer the question either, and often result in things that are obviously against "value to society." One little thing I find annoying is that whenever someone points out some issue with free markets, someone always seems to reply with something that amounts to "have you considered free markets?" Whatever the problem, markets are the solution, even if the problem stems from markets themselves. The Soviet Union had serious problems, but it's a mistake to reason from that to the conclusion that markets are in some way ideal. They have their own problems, and we don't have access to an ideal system, so we have to try to deal with individual problems and make tradeoffs.
    - neutronicus 5y ago
      I also think it's wrong to assume that the example of the Soviet Union proves anything. Maybe Free Markets were the best you could do with the quantitative decision-making tools available to Stalin, and maybe central planning with modern AI/ML/Operations Research techniques would be more successful than a free-market approach. Or maybe, the Soviet Union would have done just fine if there were no United States trying to thwart it at every turn.
      - andyzweb 5y ago
        What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. - Arthur Jensen (Network, 1976)
        dash2 5y ago
        Red Plenty is a fabulous book about exactly this attempt to develop tools to plan the economy. Not a success, in the end, but it gave rise to great advances in the maths of dynamic optimization.
        bennysomething 5y ago
        Are you arguing that this worked? Their centrally planned economy was a disaster of ineffeciency compared to western price based systems.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        It worked and it didn't. In large parts the bureaucrats actually opposed linear programming methods, but really the biggest issue was data, not planning. They had no automated data collection systems to speak of. Beyond that, the Soviet economy was solidly middling as far as the world was concerned.
      - bennysomething 5y ago
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    > Free markets allow us to express our values at an individual level rather than having an authority deciding what to value. This is not correct. The authority is there, it's just less visible. Market forces are extremely unequal: a small percentage of humanity, e.g. 0.1% influence 90% of the value of the housing market in all popular cities in developed countries.
    - bennysomething 5y ago
      Where is that figure from? What does influence mean in this context?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

tablespoon 5y ago

> Who's "value to society" people's values vary that's why we have markets so people can decide what they value by deciding to buy it. That's a difficult question to answer generally, however it's also clearly not one that markets "solve." That's easy to see with the example of addictive drugs (which the market shows can be very profitable), unless you're willing to argue there's social value in destroying many people's lives through addiction. That's not to say that financial value and social value aren't sometimes aligned, it just that you can't assume the former implies the latter.

bennysomething 5y ago
The point I'm trying to make is people often use the term "value to society" like it's an answered question. We know it's not answered as that people's values vary. Centrally deciding what is useful has proven to be disastrous (see the Soviet Union and every other centrally planned economy). Free markets allow us to express our values at an individual level rather than having an authority deciding what to value.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  I know the point you're trying to make; it's ubiquitous. The point I'm making is that "free markets" won't answer the question either, and often result in things that are obviously against "value to society." One little thing I find annoying is that whenever someone points out some issue with free markets, someone always seems to reply with something that amounts to "have you considered free markets?" Whatever the problem, markets are the solution, even if the problem stems from markets themselves. The Soviet Union had serious problems, but it's a mistake to reason from that to the conclusion that markets are in some way ideal. They have their own problems, and we don't have access to an ideal system, so we have to try to deal with individual problems and make tradeoffs.
  - neutronicus 5y ago
    I also think it's wrong to assume that the example of the Soviet Union proves anything. Maybe Free Markets were the best you could do with the quantitative decision-making tools available to Stalin, and maybe central planning with modern AI/ML/Operations Research techniques would be more successful than a free-market approach. Or maybe, the Soviet Union would have done just fine if there were no United States trying to thwart it at every turn.
    - andyzweb 5y ago
      What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. - Arthur Jensen (Network, 1976)
      - dash2 5y ago
        Red Plenty is a fabulous book about exactly this attempt to develop tools to plan the economy. Not a success, in the end, but it gave rise to great advances in the maths of dynamic optimization.
      - bennysomething 5y ago
        Are you arguing that this worked? Their centrally planned economy was a disaster of ineffeciency compared to western price based systems.
        sudosysgen 5y ago
        It worked and it didn't. In large parts the bureaucrats actually opposed linear programming methods, but really the biggest issue was data, not planning. They had no automated data collection systems to speak of. Beyond that, the Soviet economy was solidly middling as far as the world was concerned.
    - bennysomething 5y ago
- goodpoint 5y ago
  > Free markets allow us to express our values at an individual level rather than having an authority deciding what to value. This is not correct. The authority is there, it's just less visible. Market forces are extremely unequal: a small percentage of humanity, e.g. 0.1% influence 90% of the value of the housing market in all popular cities in developed countries.
  - bennysomething 5y ago
    Where is that figure from? What does influence mean in this context?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]