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Utilitarianism is bankrupt moral philosophy, so you won't get a utilitarian justification from me. Unless you just mean "utilitarian" to mean "useful" or "effi
by javert 13y ago
Utilitarianism is bankrupt moral philosophy, so you won't get a utilitarian justification from me.
Unless you just mean "utilitarian" to mean "useful" or "efficient."
I really don't have the patience to go deep into philosophy and economics in HN comments, so I'm not going to try to do that. The most I aim for normally is just to call out irrationality that can easily and convincingly be called out.
That said, I'll go into it a little bit.
I'm not saying that it's good for certain people to know less than others. I'm saying that it's inherent in human society.
The whole point of a stock market, to take a simple example, is so that a company can raise money based on certain people's belief that the company will do well. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are wrong. They want to take the risk. The whole situation comes from information asymmetry.
If that weren't the case, all investments would be no-brainers, and everything would be totally different.
That said, the market rewards people for acting rationally on the information they have. That's not the purpose of the market, exactly, but it's a good thing.
And it does not imply victimhood. Knowing less doesn't make you a victim of someone who knows more.
Overall, people acting rationally on information they know is fundamental to the economy.
This is a huge topic, so I'm not sure if these points are that relevant to whatever you are thinking, but there you have it.
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Utilitarianism is bankrupt moral philosophy, so you won't get a utilitarian justification from me. > Unless you just mean "utilitarian" to mean "useful" or "efficient." Economic efficiency and the value proposition of utilitarianism are defined identically, so, yes, I'm saying "utilitarian" to mean "efficient". > I really don't have the patience to go deep into philosophy and economics in HN comments Then you probably shouldn't make value claims about properties of economic arrangements. > I'm not saying that it's good for certain people to know less than others. I'm saying that it's inherent in human society. You seem, then, to have completely abandoned the "positive property" claim that I asked you to support. > The whole point of a stock market, to take a simple example, is so that a company can raise money based on certain people's belief that the company will do well. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are wrong. They want to take the risk. The whole situation comes from information asymmetry. No, it doesn't. Sure, the point of a stock market is to allow firms to raise money. But information asymmetry isn't essential to it. Some difference between the market participants is necessary for exchanges to occur in the market, but difference in preferences (i.e., different utility functions) is sufficient (this can manifest in, e.g., different sensitivies to risk and different preferences for current vs. future goods) to support a market without asymmetric access to information.