6 ms·

Every single human being ever in the history of time and space places infinite value on water (up to the quantity necessary to remain hydrated.) You're not all

Every single human being ever in the history of time and space places infinite value on water (up to the quantity necessary to remain hydrated.) You're not allocating based on how much they're willing to spend, because anyone would be willing to spend anything to stay alive. You're allocating based on wealth. It may seem natural to the HN anarchist-libertarian crowd that someone's wealth is a prefect proxy for the extent to which he deserves to be alive and "very strange" to think otherwise. Personally, people with that attitude are about as close to "evil" as it's possible to get outside of a movie villain.

dnautics 12y ago
Your first sentence is inherently contradictory and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of value (or possibly, a misunderstanding of the concept of infinite).
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Or you're not getting that he's saying that there's a discontinuity in the utility function.
  - dnautics 12y ago
    there's no such thing as continuous utility, all value judgements are a weighted discrete graphs of relative preferences.
    - pessimizer 12y ago
      And this one goes to infinity at zero. When comparing the utility of a can of tuna to a castle made out of diamonds and staffed by trained unicorns, for a starving person the utility of the can of tuna is higher.
      - dnautics 12y ago
        Clearly you are afflicted by not understanding the concept of 'infinity'.
        pessimizer 12y ago
        Clearly you don't understand talking about infinity with approximations. Should I have added a liquid sapphire swimming pool attended by angels?
        dnautics 12y ago
        OK. The disconnect here is that I think there are things more valuable than my life, and you are selfish, and think there is nothing more valuable than yours.
- superuser2 12y ago
  You are going to die of thirst in the next few hours. There is one merchant selling bottled water. There is no price at which you say, "fuck that, I'll live without it." You won't. You'll die. So you pay whatever they're asking, up to and including everything you have. If you had more, you would pay more. That's what I mean by infinite value.
  - dnautics 12y ago
    Actually, there are prices, where I will say "fuck that, i'll live without it". Easy example (but I would probably hold out for less): Would you trade torturing person X for water? (assuming assurances that they would be otherwise unharmed if I died of thirst)
  - pdonis 12y ago
    Or you'll try to bargain with the merchant, explaining that you're dying of thirst. Or you'll try to take the water by force, since the merchant is obviously being unreasonable. Or... In other words, your scenario does not just assume that you are dying of thirst. It also assumes that the merchant is evil, so evil that he will take everything you own in exchange for a single bottle of water when you are dying of thirst. Most humans are not like that. Why should you just happen to run across one that is at the precise moment when you are dying of thirst and he is the only merchant around? That's way too improbable to worry about.
    - superuser2 12y ago
      > Or you'll try to bargain with the merchant, explaining that you're dying of thirst In which case, he'll move on and sell it to the next guy. > Or you'll try to take the water by force, since the merchant is obviously being unreasonable. Okay, maybe, if you aren't outmatched. > It also assumes that the merchant is evil, so evil that he will take everything you own in exchange for a single bottle of water when you are dying of thirst This sort of proves my point. People understand that this kind of behavior is wrong, so they don't do it. I was replying to someone saying it's puzzling that people consider this behavior wrong.
aetherson 12y ago
And yet, food prices, despite not being set by law, are not infinitely high. Nor indeed are they terribly high. Perhaps there's something you're missing here.
- pessimizer 12y ago
  Or knowing that you haven't introduced any information that you could have possibly expected this person not to know, maybe you're missing something here. When starving people participate in auctions with people who are not starving, even when both sides have equal wealth, the results may accord better with superuser2's prediction than yours.
  - aetherson 12y ago
    Really? So, let's say there's a sandwich. You aren't particularly hungry. I'm starving. We both have net assets of say, $125,000. What exactly are you predicting? That you, not starving, will bid the price of the sandwich up to infinite levels because it's worth $125,000 to you to make me starve?
- makomk 12y ago
  For most people in Western countries, most of the time, the market more or less succeeds in ensuring that food's available at a reasonable price (generally with quite a bit of help from the government). If there's not enough food being grown or retailers are charging too much, new farmers and new retailers eventually drive the price down through competition. This works because demand for food is predictable, fungible, and relatively constant. Now imagine a natural disaster is expected and suddenly everyone needs to stock up on water and food. Retailers can basically inflate prices to whatever they like and people will pay, because they desperately need that water and food and it's not like a new retailer is going to set up shop and dramatically undercut them before the disaster hits. There are certain business practices that cannot be solved by the market, and price gouging during disasters is one of them.
  - viscanti 12y ago
pdonis 12y ago
> (up to the quantity necessary to remain hydrated.) You do realize that this qualifier (which is entirely correct and necessary) completely undermines the rest of your argument, right?
- nhaehnle 12y ago
  Please explain how superuser2's argument is undermined by that.
  - pdonis 12y ago
    Because even the wealthiest person in the world only needs a finite, limited quantity of water (or any other necessary substance, like food) to stay alive. So wealthy people simply have no incentive to bid up the prices of necessities so high that nobody else can afford them. If they did, Bill Gates and the other top ten wealthiest people would own all the groceries and water in the world. If one is really worried about certain people simply not being able to afford necessities during times of scarcity, like natural disasters, forcing prices to remain fixed won't solve that, because if prices remain fixed, people have no incentive not to buy things they don't really need (for example, water that they won't need to drink until after the natural disaster is over). So forcing prices to remain fixed just means goods get allocated by who can get to the store first, rather than who is willing to pay the most. What one would need to do is allow prices to increase, but subsidize purchases of necessities for people who truly can't afford them in a crisis. (Or one could set up a charity that bought the goods, paying the higher price if needed using donations for funding, to ensure they would be available to the indigent.)
    - nhaehnle 12y ago
      What if the total amount of water available in a region is just slightly above the minimum required in that region? In this case, rich people will not stop buying water at the absolute minimum necessary - after all, people (a) like to be more comfortable than just the absolute minimum necessary, and (b) are not very good at estimating what the absolute minimum necessary is. So your argument is wrong: rich people will bid up prices significantly to be able to go through the crisis with less discomfort. [0] As a consequence, it is quite likely that poor people will have to suffer a loss of almost all of their (already few) assets just to survive. That's not a very moral outcome. Besides, you seem to be operating under a false dichotomy. The choice isn't between (a) letting market forces run wild and (b) fixing prices while otherwise pretending as if nothing bad has happened. The choice is between (a) letting market forces run wild and (b) fixing prices while in the meantime implementing explicit rationing and making sure the underlying infrastructure problems are resolved as quickly as possible. Option (b) is what most down-to-earth, clear-thinking humans will come up with in a matter of minutes. It is also the better course of action. [0] In addition to this, consider that an argument that you made yourself can be used against you: Given the uncertainty of the crisis situation, it is quite plausible that rich people will make panic hoarding purchases of more than they need until the crisis is over, thereby bidding prices up even further.

dnautics 12y ago

Your first sentence is inherently contradictory and betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of value (or possibly, a misunderstanding of the concept of infinite).

pessimizer 12y ago
Or you're not getting that he's saying that there's a discontinuity in the utility function.
- dnautics 12y ago
  there's no such thing as continuous utility, all value judgements are a weighted discrete graphs of relative preferences.
  - pessimizer 12y ago
    And this one goes to infinity at zero. When comparing the utility of a can of tuna to a castle made out of diamonds and staffed by trained unicorns, for a starving person the utility of the can of tuna is higher.
    - dnautics 12y ago
      Clearly you are afflicted by not understanding the concept of 'infinity'.
      - pessimizer 12y ago
        Clearly you don't understand talking about infinity with approximations. Should I have added a liquid sapphire swimming pool attended by angels?
        dnautics 12y ago
        OK. The disconnect here is that I think there are things more valuable than my life, and you are selfish, and think there is nothing more valuable than yours.
superuser2 12y ago
You are going to die of thirst in the next few hours. There is one merchant selling bottled water. There is no price at which you say, "fuck that, I'll live without it." You won't. You'll die. So you pay whatever they're asking, up to and including everything you have. If you had more, you would pay more. That's what I mean by infinite value.
- dnautics 12y ago
  Actually, there are prices, where I will say "fuck that, i'll live without it". Easy example (but I would probably hold out for less): Would you trade torturing person X for water? (assuming assurances that they would be otherwise unharmed if I died of thirst)
- pdonis 12y ago
  Or you'll try to bargain with the merchant, explaining that you're dying of thirst. Or you'll try to take the water by force, since the merchant is obviously being unreasonable. Or... In other words, your scenario does not just assume that you are dying of thirst. It also assumes that the merchant is evil, so evil that he will take everything you own in exchange for a single bottle of water when you are dying of thirst. Most humans are not like that. Why should you just happen to run across one that is at the precise moment when you are dying of thirst and he is the only merchant around? That's way too improbable to worry about.
  - superuser2 12y ago
    > Or you'll try to bargain with the merchant, explaining that you're dying of thirst In which case, he'll move on and sell it to the next guy. > Or you'll try to take the water by force, since the merchant is obviously being unreasonable. Okay, maybe, if you aren't outmatched. > It also assumes that the merchant is evil, so evil that he will take everything you own in exchange for a single bottle of water when you are dying of thirst This sort of proves my point. People understand that this kind of behavior is wrong, so they don't do it. I was replying to someone saying it's puzzling that people consider this behavior wrong.

aetherson 12y ago

And yet, food prices, despite not being set by law, are not infinitely high. Nor indeed are they terribly high. Perhaps there's something you're missing here.

pessimizer 12y ago
Or knowing that you haven't introduced any information that you could have possibly expected this person not to know, maybe you're missing something here. When starving people participate in auctions with people who are not starving, even when both sides have equal wealth, the results may accord better with superuser2's prediction than yours.
- aetherson 12y ago
  Really? So, let's say there's a sandwich. You aren't particularly hungry. I'm starving. We both have net assets of say, $125,000. What exactly are you predicting? That you, not starving, will bid the price of the sandwich up to infinite levels because it's worth $125,000 to you to make me starve?
makomk 12y ago
For most people in Western countries, most of the time, the market more or less succeeds in ensuring that food's available at a reasonable price (generally with quite a bit of help from the government). If there's not enough food being grown or retailers are charging too much, new farmers and new retailers eventually drive the price down through competition. This works because demand for food is predictable, fungible, and relatively constant. Now imagine a natural disaster is expected and suddenly everyone needs to stock up on water and food. Retailers can basically inflate prices to whatever they like and people will pay, because they desperately need that water and food and it's not like a new retailer is going to set up shop and dramatically undercut them before the disaster hits. There are certain business practices that cannot be solved by the market, and price gouging during disasters is one of them.
- viscanti 12y ago

pdonis 12y ago

> (up to the quantity necessary to remain hydrated.) You do realize that this qualifier (which is entirely correct and necessary) completely undermines the rest of your argument, right?

nhaehnle 12y ago
Please explain how superuser2's argument is undermined by that.
- pdonis 12y ago
  Because even the wealthiest person in the world only needs a finite, limited quantity of water (or any other necessary substance, like food) to stay alive. So wealthy people simply have no incentive to bid up the prices of necessities so high that nobody else can afford them. If they did, Bill Gates and the other top ten wealthiest people would own all the groceries and water in the world. If one is really worried about certain people simply not being able to afford necessities during times of scarcity, like natural disasters, forcing prices to remain fixed won't solve that, because if prices remain fixed, people have no incentive not to buy things they don't really need (for example, water that they won't need to drink until after the natural disaster is over). So forcing prices to remain fixed just means goods get allocated by who can get to the store first, rather than who is willing to pay the most. What one would need to do is allow prices to increase, but subsidize purchases of necessities for people who truly can't afford them in a crisis. (Or one could set up a charity that bought the goods, paying the higher price if needed using donations for funding, to ensure they would be available to the indigent.)
  - nhaehnle 12y ago
    What if the total amount of water available in a region is just slightly above the minimum required in that region? In this case, rich people will not stop buying water at the absolute minimum necessary - after all, people (a) like to be more comfortable than just the absolute minimum necessary, and (b) are not very good at estimating what the absolute minimum necessary is. So your argument is wrong: rich people will bid up prices significantly to be able to go through the crisis with less discomfort. [0] As a consequence, it is quite likely that poor people will have to suffer a loss of almost all of their (already few) assets just to survive. That's not a very moral outcome. Besides, you seem to be operating under a false dichotomy. The choice isn't between (a) letting market forces run wild and (b) fixing prices while otherwise pretending as if nothing bad has happened. The choice is between (a) letting market forces run wild and (b) fixing prices while in the meantime implementing explicit rationing and making sure the underlying infrastructure problems are resolved as quickly as possible. Option (b) is what most down-to-earth, clear-thinking humans will come up with in a matter of minutes. It is also the better course of action. [0] In addition to this, consider that an argument that you made yourself can be used against you: Given the uncertainty of the crisis situation, it is quite plausible that rich people will make panic hoarding purchases of more than they need until the crisis is over, thereby bidding prices up even further.