5 ms·

You were making sense for a bit, then kind of went off the rails? For instance, forced labor, pollution, etc. are factored into price. Or more specifically, th

by lazide 2y ago

You were making sense for a bit, then kind of went off the rails? For instance, forced labor, pollution, etc. are factored into price. Or more specifically, the customers willingness to care about these things is factored into the price, on the buy side. And someone’s willingness and ability to do them (or hide them) is priced on the sell side. Same with the customers willingness to gamble on quality (aka random no name branding), and a sellers willingness to deal with legal and reputational blowback. People just don’t want to say it. At the end of the day, as long as no one is going to shame them or punish them, most people will happily fund super polluting slave labor and gamble on quality for a cheap price. Hell, as has been made clear over and over again, people will happily risk serious legal consequences and even murder people to supply/consume illegal goods that get them high, at a price. And that price is a lot lower than most people want to think about. And this is where the EMH bears actual fruit - because the ultimate test is people’s willingness to part with their cash for a good. And both sides of the transaction are always trying to figure out ways to shift the line where they both meet in their favor. It’s not about what they say, what they profess to believe, what is acceptable to admit, what is legal (per-se), etc. unless it actually matters. Which is rarely as often as we’d all like to believe.

SamoyedFurFluff 2y ago
> For instance, forced labor, pollution, etc. are factored into price. Or more specifically, the customers willingness to care about these things is factored into the price, on the buy side. And someone’s willingness and ability to do them is priced on the sell side. I don’t agree with this. Pollution primarily affects people who cannot afford to pay to not affected by pollution. The people who buy the most polluting products are not the people who are directly exposed to the most pollution. This isn’t as simple as “oh people just don’t feel bad enough to not buy cheap things”, the people who cannot afford to avoid the consequences of societally bad decisions are suffering way beyond their consumption! The poor live most exposed to effects of climate change (fires, floods, etc) because they cannot afford to avoid it, not because they somehow calculated that they don’t feel bad enough about it. The wealthy are not forced to have their house flooded in accordance to the number of cars they own, for example.
- lazide 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - filleokus 2y ago
    Agree more with you than GP. Revealed preference is a thing, virtue signalling and performative behaviour is rampant. However, you can have a situation in a hypothetical economy where the VAST majority cares deeply about an issue and actually put the wallet where their mouth is. But the aggregate spending is different simply due to an enormous inequality in wealth. The integral of "revealed preference" across the population is not the same as a popular vote after all. I guess some people would argue this is the case in western economies, that we "have no choice" due to powers at be, but I don't agree with this view. But it's conceivable that in some economies this is, or at least could be, the case.
    - lazide 2y ago
      Ah, but we’re talking markets. Not votes. Though, politics is power, and power is about money. Or is that sex? I forget. Power definitely does impact markets, as it applies counter pressures on what matters or not, sometimes to the point of making it impossible* for a trade to actually occur. But always shifting what actually matters or not in some direction, and hence influencing prices. Power unexercised is power that de-facto does not exist in the moment, eh? So if the voters aren’t making something illegal (and ensuring enforcement) they aren’t exercising their power to influence that market, and hence that power does not yet exist. And so typically prices will merely reflect the risk premium of the potential. Not have it as fact. And if the rich folk are transacting in these markets, and are using their power to hide and/or obfuscate that they are doing so, to avoid any public influence, that is power that definitely does exist right now.. And markets will reflect that, on the balance, or a trade won’t occur. When trades do occur, EMH gradually forces things towards efficiency. And the more players there are, and the more transactions occur, the more efficiency is inevitable. Barring things like monopolies, regulatory action, etc. * though as the war on drugs (and the persistence of smuggling from antiquity through to the modern day) makes quite apparent, it is actually very difficult to stop all trade when there is a large market ‘potential’ that exists. Trade ‘finds a way’.
mapt 2y ago
We will fund super polluting slave labor if the difference to the manufacturers is $1.25 vs $1.65 per unit in costs, but the manufacturers charge us $5 for the unethical unit and $20 for the ethical unit. That's not to say we wouldn't spend $5.40 for entirely ethical production; We are not granted that choice. In a wildly unregulated market with little oversight, establishing the chain to demonstrate ethical viability is expensive, and only people who have a lot of income and spare time can afford to even be worried about this. Right now, ethical production in many areas of world trade is dominated by a fringe marketting strategy to price-segregate customers, because nobody has even tried to regulate a better outcome. Expecting people to spend many hours studying every single thing they consume for signs of malfeasance, especially when most of the data they would require is a trade secret or things which manufacturers are actively incentivized to lie about, is crazy. This information black hole provides a second limit to effective pricing.
- datavirtue 2y ago
  The higher priced goods are going to move slower. The $20 price tag reflects the higher quality packaging (to reinforce the message that THIS is better quality) and targeting of higher spending customers, the higher price to the retailer, and the amount of time it has to sit on the shelf. Turnover is king as all retailers and manufacturers are sensitive to holding products. Warehousing has a steep cost.
  - mapt 2y ago
    * European double-pane sash windows: Effectively banned by various regulations * American double-pane sash windows on hardware store shelf: $100 * European triple-pane tilt turn windows, on hardware store shelf: $200 * American triple-pane tilt turn windows, 'call for quote': $900 ... * No Salt Added Snacks in the health food section for 10% of people: $4 * Lots of Salt Added Snacks in the main section for 30% of people: $2 * The 60% of people who would prefer a moderate amount of salt for $2: Not a part of the Nash Equilibrium There are all sorts of areas where the market offers suboptimal choices because consumer pricing, availability, product segmentation, and market segmentation is a game that is somewhat orthogonal to the range of consumers' ideal outcomes. Sometimes, regulation significantly improves those outcomes in a way that prices cannot. Banning slave labor is one example where it would be a significant benefit for a trivial cost, but the market absolutely isn't structured to pay that cost using higher prices. Externalities not paid by consumer or manufacturer is one category of those benefits to examine, but there are many more.

by lazide 2y ago

SamoyedFurFluff 2y ago

> For instance, forced labor, pollution, etc. are factored into price. Or more specifically, the customers willingness to care about these things is factored into the price, on the buy side. And someone’s willingness and ability to do them is priced on the sell side. I don’t agree with this. Pollution primarily affects people who cannot afford to pay to not affected by pollution. The people who buy the most polluting products are not the people who are directly exposed to the most pollution. This isn’t as simple as “oh people just don’t feel bad enough to not buy cheap things”, the people who cannot afford to avoid the consequences of societally bad decisions are suffering way beyond their consumption! The poor live most exposed to effects of climate change (fires, floods, etc) because they cannot afford to avoid it, not because they somehow calculated that they don’t feel bad enough about it. The wealthy are not forced to have their house flooded in accordance to the number of cars they own, for example.

lazide 2y ago
[flagged]
- filleokus 2y ago
  Agree more with you than GP. Revealed preference is a thing, virtue signalling and performative behaviour is rampant. However, you can have a situation in a hypothetical economy where the VAST majority cares deeply about an issue and actually put the wallet where their mouth is. But the aggregate spending is different simply due to an enormous inequality in wealth. The integral of "revealed preference" across the population is not the same as a popular vote after all. I guess some people would argue this is the case in western economies, that we "have no choice" due to powers at be, but I don't agree with this view. But it's conceivable that in some economies this is, or at least could be, the case.
  - lazide 2y ago
    Ah, but we’re talking markets. Not votes. Though, politics is power, and power is about money. Or is that sex? I forget. Power definitely does impact markets, as it applies counter pressures on what matters or not, sometimes to the point of making it impossible* for a trade to actually occur. But always shifting what actually matters or not in some direction, and hence influencing prices. Power unexercised is power that de-facto does not exist in the moment, eh? So if the voters aren’t making something illegal (and ensuring enforcement) they aren’t exercising their power to influence that market, and hence that power does not yet exist. And so typically prices will merely reflect the risk premium of the potential. Not have it as fact. And if the rich folk are transacting in these markets, and are using their power to hide and/or obfuscate that they are doing so, to avoid any public influence, that is power that definitely does exist right now.. And markets will reflect that, on the balance, or a trade won’t occur. When trades do occur, EMH gradually forces things towards efficiency. And the more players there are, and the more transactions occur, the more efficiency is inevitable. Barring things like monopolies, regulatory action, etc. * though as the war on drugs (and the persistence of smuggling from antiquity through to the modern day) makes quite apparent, it is actually very difficult to stop all trade when there is a large market ‘potential’ that exists. Trade ‘finds a way’.

mapt 2y ago

We will fund super polluting slave labor if the difference to the manufacturers is $1.25 vs $1.65 per unit in costs, but the manufacturers charge us $5 for the unethical unit and $20 for the ethical unit. That's not to say we wouldn't spend $5.40 for entirely ethical production; We are not granted that choice. In a wildly unregulated market with little oversight, establishing the chain to demonstrate ethical viability is expensive, and only people who have a lot of income and spare time can afford to even be worried about this. Right now, ethical production in many areas of world trade is dominated by a fringe marketting strategy to price-segregate customers, because nobody has even tried to regulate a better outcome. Expecting people to spend many hours studying every single thing they consume for signs of malfeasance, especially when most of the data they would require is a trade secret or things which manufacturers are actively incentivized to lie about, is crazy. This information black hole provides a second limit to effective pricing.

datavirtue 2y ago
The higher priced goods are going to move slower. The $20 price tag reflects the higher quality packaging (to reinforce the message that THIS is better quality) and targeting of higher spending customers, the higher price to the retailer, and the amount of time it has to sit on the shelf. Turnover is king as all retailers and manufacturers are sensitive to holding products. Warehousing has a steep cost.
- mapt 2y ago
  * European double-pane sash windows: Effectively banned by various regulations * American double-pane sash windows on hardware store shelf: $100 * European triple-pane tilt turn windows, on hardware store shelf: $200 * American triple-pane tilt turn windows, 'call for quote': $900 ... * No Salt Added Snacks in the health food section for 10% of people: $4 * Lots of Salt Added Snacks in the main section for 30% of people: $2 * The 60% of people who would prefer a moderate amount of salt for $2: Not a part of the Nash Equilibrium There are all sorts of areas where the market offers suboptimal choices because consumer pricing, availability, product segmentation, and market segmentation is a game that is somewhat orthogonal to the range of consumers' ideal outcomes. Sometimes, regulation significantly improves those outcomes in a way that prices cannot. Banning slave labor is one example where it would be a significant benefit for a trivial cost, but the market absolutely isn't structured to pay that cost using higher prices. Externalities not paid by consumer or manufacturer is one category of those benefits to examine, but there are many more.