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> Competition is a wastefull process, thats literally what it means- someone looses and goes under. Competition, since we’re talking about ideals, is the oppos

> Competition is a wastefull process, thats literally what it means- someone looses and goes under. Competition, since we’re talking about ideals, is the opposite of wastefulness — it allocates resources where they are most vitality needed. The wasteful uses get priced out of the market and everyone, as a whole, benefits. If you make the (non-idealized) argument that all existing processes are useful because of the fact that they exist and competition causing them to fail is wasteful then…I don’t have an answer for that because that’s just absurd. Of course, we don’t live in some ideal world so wasteful processes get protected and subsidized, useful processes get penalized and everyone thinks the all knowing AI central planner won’t just nuke all the irrational human “market actors” as an optimization step in the ideal resource allocation strategy.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago
Real economists study how competition creates waste. An common example of waste induced by competition is advertising expenditures. Competition doesn't allocate resources, price discovery does that. The whole advantage of markets over central planning is they work in non-ideal situations, where planning is not practical. You got the whole thing backwards.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  How would you learn about new products that will improve your life without advertising? There isn't price discovery without advertising. The advantage of markets is central planning has proven to be incapable of dealing with the complexities of markets. Making things worse in central planning is the problem of putting an inept person in charge. In a market system, the inept business goes out of business.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  > Competition doesn't allocate resources, price discovery does that. And price discovery is the result of people competing for scarce resources. *scarce in the sense that it isn’t free for everyone like air, there’s no price discovery before you turn on the air compressor in your garage to fill up your car tire.
Gigachad 4y ago
This only makes sense if all people have equal money to spend. In reality we end up with the rich efficiently riding jet skis and the poor wastefully eating and driving to work.
- UncleEntity 4y ago
  In this idealized argument it, like the real world, isn’t a zero sum game. If someone produces enough widgets where they can afford a jet ski then what’s the problem with that? Jet skis aren’t a product of nature, there’s probably a thousand people involved in the process of turning raw materials into a jet ski. Maybe more. People who are less poor because someone wanted to purchase a jet ski. And, because I know it’ll come up, charity also exists in this idealized argument so people aren’t dying of hunger while Scrooge McDuck does backflips into his pool of gold coins while saying “let them eat cake”.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

Real economists study how competition creates waste. An common example of waste induced by competition is advertising expenditures. Competition doesn't allocate resources, price discovery does that. The whole advantage of markets over central planning is they work in non-ideal situations, where planning is not practical. You got the whole thing backwards.

WalterBright 4y ago
How would you learn about new products that will improve your life without advertising? There isn't price discovery without advertising. The advantage of markets is central planning has proven to be incapable of dealing with the complexities of markets. Making things worse in central planning is the problem of putting an inept person in charge. In a market system, the inept business goes out of business.
UncleEntity 4y ago
> Competition doesn't allocate resources, price discovery does that. And price discovery is the result of people competing for scarce resources. *scarce in the sense that it isn’t free for everyone like air, there’s no price discovery before you turn on the air compressor in your garage to fill up your car tire.

Gigachad 4y ago

This only makes sense if all people have equal money to spend. In reality we end up with the rich efficiently riding jet skis and the poor wastefully eating and driving to work.

UncleEntity 4y ago
In this idealized argument it, like the real world, isn’t a zero sum game. If someone produces enough widgets where they can afford a jet ski then what’s the problem with that? Jet skis aren’t a product of nature, there’s probably a thousand people involved in the process of turning raw materials into a jet ski. Maybe more. People who are less poor because someone wanted to purchase a jet ski. And, because I know it’ll come up, charity also exists in this idealized argument so people aren’t dying of hunger while Scrooge McDuck does backflips into his pool of gold coins while saying “let them eat cake”.