3 ms·

Whether or not well-being is as easy to measur, your assumptions about free-market as a stand-in for well-being does not have a solid foundation. > in a free m

Whether or not well-being is as easy to measur, your assumptions about free-market as a stand-in for well-being does not have a solid foundation. > in a free market people presumably make rational choices and spend their money in a way that maximizes their well-being. There is no particular reason to presume this is true, and many reasons to presume it is not. Psychology is littered with well-demonstrated examples of humans acting against self-interest. 1) People are consistently willing to incur personal cost for the benefit of a perceived community, and are even willing to incur personal cost to punish those working against it. Community recognition is not required to observe this behavior. 2) People are quite susceptible to marketing. The history of the American tobacco industry is a great example. The assumption that self-interested rational entities leads to a healthy or productive society has been similarly discredited. The Honduran Free Trade zones and Eddie Lampert's catastrophic reorganization of Sears are great counterexamples.

hcurtiss 4y ago
Fair enough. But I think most people are skeptical the government is in a better position to determine what makes them happiest. Government edicts/propaganda may, in fact, do the opposite merely by virtue of being edicts/propaganda.
- amelius 4y ago
  Perhaps we should take a good look at countries where people are happiest, and at how their governments are run.
  - mpalczewski 4y ago
    only applies when countries have similar demographics. e.g. most countries are a magnitude smaller than the US(except for China, India). Most countries have a much more homogeneous population(e.g. China, India). Best comparison I can think of is EU vs US, and if you can show that Europeans are happier, then that calls for a very limited central government that is not elected, and states can model themselves after European countries. Scale and demographics are important.
    - amelius 4y ago
      Sounds like you are a supporter of limited government involvement.
      - mpalczewski 4y ago
        That post wasn't meant in that way. I'm a supporter of decentralization, a strong local government and a weak federal government (city/county > state > federal), but I wanted to demonstrate how difficult it is to compare different countries. Which was evidently worthy of a downvote :shrug:.
lisper 4y ago
> Psychology is littered with well-demonstrated examples of humans acting against self-interest. That is often claimed, but it is far from clear that it is actually true. The problem is that in order to make this assessment at all, someone has to decide what a person's self-interest actually is. There is no universal objective measure of self-interest because different people want different things (this is the reason trade works at all). > People are consistently willing to incur personal cost for the benefit of a perceived community, and are even willing to incur personal cost to punish those working against it. Community recognition is not required to observe this behavior. Sure. But how is this working against self-interest? I for one like being part of a strong, cohesive community. But I also recognize that building community requires effort, and that effort incurs a cost. So who are you to say that the cost I personally bear to shoulder my share of that burden is "acting against my self-interest"? > People are quite susceptible to marketing One man's marketing is another man's education. > The history of the American tobacco industry is a great example. Sure, but that was, in retrospect, an example of the tobacco industry just flat-out lying to people. If you want to argue that society benefits from having some mechanism to discourage willful deception I certainly won't argue with that. But even a case as clear-cut as tobacco still has grey areas. People still smoke despite the fact that the risks are now well known. If someone knows the risks and still chooses to take them on because they'd rather have a nicotine buzz than a long buzz-free life, who are you and I to tell them that they are wrong? Because once you take that step it's a very slippery slope from there to not allowing anyone to take any risks at all.

hcurtiss 4y ago

Fair enough. But I think most people are skeptical the government is in a better position to determine what makes them happiest. Government edicts/propaganda may, in fact, do the opposite merely by virtue of being edicts/propaganda.

amelius 4y ago
Perhaps we should take a good look at countries where people are happiest, and at how their governments are run.
- mpalczewski 4y ago
  only applies when countries have similar demographics. e.g. most countries are a magnitude smaller than the US(except for China, India). Most countries have a much more homogeneous population(e.g. China, India). Best comparison I can think of is EU vs US, and if you can show that Europeans are happier, then that calls for a very limited central government that is not elected, and states can model themselves after European countries. Scale and demographics are important.
  - amelius 4y ago
    Sounds like you are a supporter of limited government involvement.
    - mpalczewski 4y ago
      That post wasn't meant in that way. I'm a supporter of decentralization, a strong local government and a weak federal government (city/county > state > federal), but I wanted to demonstrate how difficult it is to compare different countries. Which was evidently worthy of a downvote :shrug:.

lisper 4y ago

> Psychology is littered with well-demonstrated examples of humans acting against self-interest. That is often claimed, but it is far from clear that it is actually true. The problem is that in order to make this assessment at all, someone has to decide what a person's self-interest actually is. There is no universal objective measure of self-interest because different people want different things (this is the reason trade works at all). > People are consistently willing to incur personal cost for the benefit of a perceived community, and are even willing to incur personal cost to punish those working against it. Community recognition is not required to observe this behavior. Sure. But how is this working against self-interest? I for one like being part of a strong, cohesive community. But I also recognize that building community requires effort, and that effort incurs a cost. So who are you to say that the cost I personally bear to shoulder my share of that burden is "acting against my self-interest"? > People are quite susceptible to marketing One man's marketing is another man's education. > The history of the American tobacco industry is a great example. Sure, but that was, in retrospect, an example of the tobacco industry just flat-out lying to people. If you want to argue that society benefits from having some mechanism to discourage willful deception I certainly won't argue with that. But even a case as clear-cut as tobacco still has grey areas. People still smoke despite the fact that the risks are now well known. If someone knows the risks and still chooses to take them on because they'd rather have a nicotine buzz than a long buzz-free life, who are you and I to tell them that they are wrong? Because once you take that step it's a very slippery slope from there to not allowing anyone to take any risks at all.