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But also, at the same time, the small ethical run business is more likely to survive, keeping the option open for other people to join you. Walmart will still b

But also, at the same time, the small ethical run business is more likely to survive, keeping the option open for other people to join you. Walmart will still be around doing unethical things, but some people will have an ethical place to work at or shop at.

cortesoft 4y ago
> But also, at the same time, the small ethical run business is more likely to survive This isn't really true, either, though. Even a small mom-and-pop shop won't be kept in business by a single customer choosing to shop there. Unless we are talking about a speciality shop that only has a few customers, one customer is never going to make or break a retailer. Now, of course you can argue "yeah, but if 50 other people do the same thing then the store will survive!", which is true, but again, my choice doesn't really change anything. My choice to shop there or not doesn't have any affect on the other 49 people, and if the store would survive with 50 customers, it will survive with 49. My choice doesn't matter to either store.
- yunwal 4y ago
  This is absurd to me. Of course your choice matters to the mom and pop store. Just because you can’t single-handedly keep a mom and pop hardware store, grocery store, and bookstore afloat on your income doesn’t mean they don’t benefit from your business. It’s just good ethics hygiene. And shopping at locally-owned stores always pays off in the long run. You meet interesting people who actually care about where they live and their neighbors.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    He's saying, "I'd like to support them, but dammit! They charge more." Duh.
  - rolenthedeep 4y ago
    The gain or loss of a single customer will have no effect on Walmart or the local mom and pop. The effects only add up if a significant number of people make the same decision. On the individual level, the cost of the local shop is detrimental compared to Walmart. The rational choice for any given individual is to go with the lower price. Choosing otherwise doesn't gain you anything other than that the local spot is a nicer place to visit. At the macro level, nobody wins unless everyone cooperates. At the individual level, you can only win by not cooperating. It's just the prisoner's dilemma. Happy thoughts don't really factor in here, it's not really an ethics problem, it's an economics problem.
    - AlbertCory 4y ago
      It's not the prisoner's dilemma in any way, shape, or form. It's the problem of collective action. A person wishes everyone would behave as he prefers. They have the difficult task of persuading enough others to follow their lead. No one said it would be easy or convenient. Why should it be? We can find plenty of examples of people who do exactly that, today. There are boycotts active against thousands of organizations. It doesn't take "everybody" - just a loud minority who are organized. As for "the rational choice" -- that's the myth of Economic Man, which has been thoroughly demolished by behavioral economics. People make choices all the time that do not maximize their financial return.
      - cortesoft 4y ago
        It really is a form of a prisoners dilemma, and the wikipedia page for Collective Action Problem spells out the connection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem#Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem#Pris... It's easy to see how if you take an example. Imagine there is a company selling a widget that really makes your life better, but manufacturing it really pollutes the environment. If everyone buys one of the widgets, in fact, so much pollution will occur that our lives will be MUCH worse off than if we never had the widget at all. So my (and everyone else's) preference is that no one has any widgets and we don't have the pollution. Now here is where it is a prisoner's dilemma; if no one buys a widget, the company goes out of business and there is no pollution, but I also don't end up with a widget. If everyone else doesn't buy a widget, but I do, then the company goes out of business (yay!) and there is no more pollution AND I have a widget anyway (double yay!). I get the best of both worlds - no pollution and this awesome widget. If I don't buy the widget, but everyone else does, then I still get the pollution but I don't even have a widget (the worst of both worlds). If everyone buys a widget, then we have pollution but at least I also have a widget. Just like a classical prisoner's dilemma, I am always better off defecting. If everyone else is buying a widget, I might as well buy one, too, because the pollution is happening no matter what, might as well also get the benefit of a widget. If no one else is buying a widget, then I might as well buy one because I can have the widget AND no pollution (which is better than just having no pollution). Everyone has this same incentive, which is why free markets don't solve pollution - it only is solved by regulation, forcing people to cooperate.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    Your last paragraph is just a list of reasons to ignore the game theory fact that your individual consumer choices won't make a difference either way. You say it is absurd, but there is simply no way of getting around that fact that the purely rational choice would be to shop at the place with the cheapest prices regardless of how you feel about the store you are getting those prices from, at least in terms of getting the best price and having an effect on which stores stay open. Sure, your arguments about meeting interesting people or having good ethics hygiene can be persuasive, but those are simply sidestepping the game theory rather than arguing against it. I feel similarly, actually, and my gut reaction is revulsion to this fact, too. I hate the idea that my consumer choices actually don't have any affect on what type of business succeeds or fails. I want to believe that my choices matter to the world, but logical analysis clearly shows that it doesn't. We can't deny it, we can only ask, "ok then what do we do?" My entire point is that we can't rely on the free market to fix these sorts of problems, because the free market relies on incentives, and those incentives won't solve problems like mistreating workers, polluting the environment, and any other externality of that sort. We can't simply hope that spending our dollars ethically will change anything, because it simply can't. You might think I am immoral for pointing this out, but I feel like it is the opposite. The people who WANT us to believe that 'voting with our wallets' matters are the one's who want us to NOT do anything else. They know that our consumer choices aren't going to effect any real change, but they want us to think it can so that we don't do anything that could ACTUALLY make changes, like organizing politically. They want to promote the narrative that the free market is the way you change the world for the better, when it clearly isn't. Honestly, this is the same as voting. People in power who want to maintain the status quo love to push the idea that you change the world by simply voting, but it isn't enough just to vote as an individual and hope it works out, for the same reason that an individual making a purchasing decision can't change things. This is called the Paradox of Voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_voting), because no individual vote actually matters. We can only make change by organizing and coordinating action.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  So is it game theory, or is it "the paradox of voting" (which is not a "paradox" at all)? You're mixing your metaphors. In Catch-22, Yossarian says, "I don't want to go out there and get shot at," and they say "What if everyone did that?" He says, "Then I'd be a fool not to do it." That's intended to be funny. Everyone didn't act like Yossarian in WW II for some reason, and some paid with their lives. Voting is voluntary in the US, and yet large numbers of people do vote. So you need to figure all that out.
  - cortesoft 4y ago
    It is exactly like the paradox of voting (which I linked to in another comment). You are right that it is not an actual paradox, but it IS game theory.
- Xylakant 4y ago
  I’m part of a food coop. We’re about 150 people that essentially share the costs and output for a (very) small farm. Everyone matters. Sure, we can survive the loss of one, even 5 parties. 15 parties that leave for good with no replacement? Trouble. So yes, your choice matters, surprisingly much.

cortesoft 4y ago

> But also, at the same time, the small ethical run business is more likely to survive This isn't really true, either, though. Even a small mom-and-pop shop won't be kept in business by a single customer choosing to shop there. Unless we are talking about a speciality shop that only has a few customers, one customer is never going to make or break a retailer. Now, of course you can argue "yeah, but if 50 other people do the same thing then the store will survive!", which is true, but again, my choice doesn't really change anything. My choice to shop there or not doesn't have any affect on the other 49 people, and if the store would survive with 50 customers, it will survive with 49. My choice doesn't matter to either store.

yunwal 4y ago
This is absurd to me. Of course your choice matters to the mom and pop store. Just because you can’t single-handedly keep a mom and pop hardware store, grocery store, and bookstore afloat on your income doesn’t mean they don’t benefit from your business. It’s just good ethics hygiene. And shopping at locally-owned stores always pays off in the long run. You meet interesting people who actually care about where they live and their neighbors.
- AlbertCory 4y ago
  He's saying, "I'd like to support them, but dammit! They charge more." Duh.
- rolenthedeep 4y ago
  The gain or loss of a single customer will have no effect on Walmart or the local mom and pop. The effects only add up if a significant number of people make the same decision. On the individual level, the cost of the local shop is detrimental compared to Walmart. The rational choice for any given individual is to go with the lower price. Choosing otherwise doesn't gain you anything other than that the local spot is a nicer place to visit. At the macro level, nobody wins unless everyone cooperates. At the individual level, you can only win by not cooperating. It's just the prisoner's dilemma. Happy thoughts don't really factor in here, it's not really an ethics problem, it's an economics problem.
  - AlbertCory 4y ago
    It's not the prisoner's dilemma in any way, shape, or form. It's the problem of collective action. A person wishes everyone would behave as he prefers. They have the difficult task of persuading enough others to follow their lead. No one said it would be easy or convenient. Why should it be? We can find plenty of examples of people who do exactly that, today. There are boycotts active against thousands of organizations. It doesn't take "everybody" - just a loud minority who are organized. As for "the rational choice" -- that's the myth of Economic Man, which has been thoroughly demolished by behavioral economics. People make choices all the time that do not maximize their financial return.
    - cortesoft 4y ago
      It really is a form of a prisoners dilemma, and the wikipedia page for Collective Action Problem spells out the connection: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem#Prisoner's_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem#Pris... It's easy to see how if you take an example. Imagine there is a company selling a widget that really makes your life better, but manufacturing it really pollutes the environment. If everyone buys one of the widgets, in fact, so much pollution will occur that our lives will be MUCH worse off than if we never had the widget at all. So my (and everyone else's) preference is that no one has any widgets and we don't have the pollution. Now here is where it is a prisoner's dilemma; if no one buys a widget, the company goes out of business and there is no pollution, but I also don't end up with a widget. If everyone else doesn't buy a widget, but I do, then the company goes out of business (yay!) and there is no more pollution AND I have a widget anyway (double yay!). I get the best of both worlds - no pollution and this awesome widget. If I don't buy the widget, but everyone else does, then I still get the pollution but I don't even have a widget (the worst of both worlds). If everyone buys a widget, then we have pollution but at least I also have a widget. Just like a classical prisoner's dilemma, I am always better off defecting. If everyone else is buying a widget, I might as well buy one, too, because the pollution is happening no matter what, might as well also get the benefit of a widget. If no one else is buying a widget, then I might as well buy one because I can have the widget AND no pollution (which is better than just having no pollution). Everyone has this same incentive, which is why free markets don't solve pollution - it only is solved by regulation, forcing people to cooperate.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  Your last paragraph is just a list of reasons to ignore the game theory fact that your individual consumer choices won't make a difference either way. You say it is absurd, but there is simply no way of getting around that fact that the purely rational choice would be to shop at the place with the cheapest prices regardless of how you feel about the store you are getting those prices from, at least in terms of getting the best price and having an effect on which stores stay open. Sure, your arguments about meeting interesting people or having good ethics hygiene can be persuasive, but those are simply sidestepping the game theory rather than arguing against it. I feel similarly, actually, and my gut reaction is revulsion to this fact, too. I hate the idea that my consumer choices actually don't have any affect on what type of business succeeds or fails. I want to believe that my choices matter to the world, but logical analysis clearly shows that it doesn't. We can't deny it, we can only ask, "ok then what do we do?" My entire point is that we can't rely on the free market to fix these sorts of problems, because the free market relies on incentives, and those incentives won't solve problems like mistreating workers, polluting the environment, and any other externality of that sort. We can't simply hope that spending our dollars ethically will change anything, because it simply can't. You might think I am immoral for pointing this out, but I feel like it is the opposite. The people who WANT us to believe that 'voting with our wallets' matters are the one's who want us to NOT do anything else. They know that our consumer choices aren't going to effect any real change, but they want us to think it can so that we don't do anything that could ACTUALLY make changes, like organizing politically. They want to promote the narrative that the free market is the way you change the world for the better, when it clearly isn't. Honestly, this is the same as voting. People in power who want to maintain the status quo love to push the idea that you change the world by simply voting, but it isn't enough just to vote as an individual and hope it works out, for the same reason that an individual making a purchasing decision can't change things. This is called the Paradox of Voting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_voting), because no individual vote actually matters. We can only make change by organizing and coordinating action.
AlbertCory 4y ago
So is it game theory, or is it "the paradox of voting" (which is not a "paradox" at all)? You're mixing your metaphors. In Catch-22, Yossarian says, "I don't want to go out there and get shot at," and they say "What if everyone did that?" He says, "Then I'd be a fool not to do it." That's intended to be funny. Everyone didn't act like Yossarian in WW II for some reason, and some paid with their lives. Voting is voluntary in the US, and yet large numbers of people do vote. So you need to figure all that out.
- cortesoft 4y ago
  It is exactly like the paradox of voting (which I linked to in another comment). You are right that it is not an actual paradox, but it IS game theory.
Xylakant 4y ago
I’m part of a food coop. We’re about 150 people that essentially share the costs and output for a (very) small farm. Everyone matters. Sure, we can survive the loss of one, even 5 parties. 15 parties that leave for good with no replacement? Trouble. So yes, your choice matters, surprisingly much.