The Least Blind Group Will Win

[Galloism]

And yet, despite the nearly infinite availability of threads at no cost, being made thousands of times faster than you could even read them, you think people should pay for them what they "truly value" them at.

Given the functionally infinite availability, and your notion that "true value" is based on availability, wouldn't the value functionality be infinitely small? Billionths or trillionths or even quadrillionths of a cent?

I just said that value should be based on availability/importance. Sure there's a ton of threads but they sure aren't equally important.

There's a ton of food available at the supermarket. But this general availability really doesn't influence my valuation. I'm more concerned with the availability of the specific food that I consider to be important.

Which brings us back to $100 ears of corn because they're valued highly among foods and it's super good corn and your admission that your system will cause more waste via spoilage.

Also, how does the customer know the availability of corn? He's not privileged to get internal corporate spoilage numbers.

How do you know the availability of anything? You search for it. The easier it is to find, the more available it is. The harder it is to find, the less available it is.

So the smart thing to do is place only one ear of corn out at a time so people view it as less available, even if you have a mountain of it in the back.

The rest had nothing to do with corn.

[Maqo]

Because they value the corn highly. You yourself have said that people should pay an amount of money for stuff equal to the value of that stuff, regardless of how much of it they want or how abundant it is.

Oh you're really going to have to quote me on this!!! Because I sure call shenanigans.

I said that value is a function of availability/importance. Poison oak is available enough... but I don't value it because I don't think it's at all important to me. Lemons, on the other hand, are certainly important to me... but I don't value them because my tree is full of them.

It would be helpful, for you and for others, if you stopped discussing things that you value at 0. 0 is a funny number in mathematics and it can lead to all kinds of wild conclusions if you try to extrapolate anything from that point.

Its also difficult to when you're using words unlike other people, and especially economic literature, use them to mean.
For example, we would say that you value lemons at some positive amount, but the additional value you gain from more lemons is zero. Its a very big distinction.


It seems like, in fantasyland, you consider yourself to value lemons at 0, because you personally have enough lemons.
Would it be correct to say then, that you could load yourself up a truck full of lemons and take it home without paying anything at a store? You value them at 0; therefore you pay 0. Right? You wouldn't want to - but it would help the lemon growers make valuable economic decisions if you do?
I mean you'd end up with a ton of lemons that you don't really want. They probably have a negative value to you because they take up space. Can you charge the store for you to relieve them of their lemons?


In the real world, we would say that the marginal utility you gain from additional lemons is low. The reason the amount of money you spend on lemons is = 0 is not because that is the amount you value them at, but because the marginal utility you gain from additional lemons is less than the utility you could gain from other uses of the same money; and that the grower of the lemons is not willing to give you the lemons beyond a certain price.

This explanation explains why you pay $0 and acquire 0 lemons when you have a lemon tree in your backyard. But it also explains why you pay $1 for 1 lemon when you have 0 lemons; $2 for 2 lemons when you already have 2 lemons; and why you don't buy any more lemons when you already have 4, despite thinking that 5 would be nice.

Your explanation in conjunction with your economic theory leads one to think that you can impose some kind of bulk-discount buying scheme yourself whenever you want to. I bought one lemon for $50. The next one I buy is worth $20. The next is worth $5.. all after that are free!

[Alvecia]

Now I kind of want to start that business. Sell lemons, strictly 1 lemon per customer. Make my money back after selling 2 lemons.

[Maqo]

It would help if you said something like that 20 pages ago.

I'm pretty sure that I said it like 20 threads ago.

But that aside, I don't understand how being in a pragmatarian market allows you to determine the optimal supply of corn more easily.

Theoretically this would be a very common occurrence in your system. I want some corn. The first shop I go to has none. The second shop has 5. I only need one.
As I gather, between when I put the corn in my basket to when I get to the checkout, I need to
- determine whether there is a market-wide shortage or surplus of corn
- determine the magnitude of said surplus
- determine the correct amount of money to allocate to the farmer, in order for him to change his production to be the optimal supply
- adjust the amount above to take in to account that I'm only one of billions of people who are also buying corn
- decide to spend that mimics money even though I could technically leave the store paying nothing, by claiming that I have a corn plant at home & thus place zero value on corn.

See, that sounds... wrong. On so many levels.
Do you really think that people can do that, accurately, for every single product they buy?

It's a different mindset. With the current system, when you get/buy corn you have an impact on the supply. But in a pragmatarian system... the getting and the communicating wouldn't necessarily have to occur at the same time. At anytime you could say, "The world should have more corn!" and then you'd allocate $1000 tax dollars to the Dept of Corn. And maybe you won't actually have any corn for another month.

And maybe you wouldn't even research the corn supply before you allocated $1000 tax dollars to the Corn Dept or your favorite corn farmer. But generally though taxpayers would be rather inclined to make sure that they weren't wasting their taxes.

Don't you see the issues with any of those points I outlined above?
Even if you make a $1000 payment to the corn department (wow) only once per year, you still have to go through all of the above steps. And every single step of the way, you're going to get it horribly, horribly wrong. So in the end you're going to be sending 'communications', 'messages', 'value signals' or whatever, that are based off bad information.

Then you get the farmer, who receives $1000 and says... yippee? $1000 doesn't tell him to produce more or less corn. If he's using the money as his guide, he than has to make a ton of inferences based on information that he doesn't have access to. And you still have the problem of the farmer somehow working out that people are telling him to produce more corn... while he's sitting there with a ton of corn that no-one ever bought.


Aaaaand to round it all off:
When you can acquire anything you want for any amount of money you want, money becomes meaningless. I can pay $10 one day for an apple, and $10 the next day for a jumbo jet, and $1 for a house the day after that. And each of those might have been my true valuation of "I would give everything I own to have X".
If people don't have the power to refuse sale for not enough money, what good does money do?

[Muthia]

It actually does it quite well. If someone likes a thread, they post on it, continuing the discussion and bringing it to the top of the page for more people to see and contribute to. Netflix subscribers communicate what sort of content they would like to see more of by what content they watch and how they rate it. Taxpayers get their taxes spent the way they want by electing the representatives who will spend their taxes the way they want. The system works quite well. Or rather, these three disparate systems that really don't have all that much in common with each other work quite well.

Spending time certainly is a sacrifice. But we use money for a reason. It's because it's a really convenient way to make a sacrifice. So it's a convenient way to communicate our valuation of things. Then the issue is ensuring that we use our money to accurately communicate our valuation of things. Hence the point of pragmatarian markets. The Least Blind Group Will Win.

Xero do you agree that people value money differently?

People value everything differently.

How are we supposed to determine how much someone values something/how significant their sacrifice is if we all value it differently?

[Xerographica]

Spending time certainly is a sacrifice. But we use money for a reason. It's because it's a really convenient way to make a sacrifice. So it's a convenient way to communicate our valuation of things. Then the issue is ensuring that we use our money to accurately communicate our valuation of things. Hence the point of pragmatarian markets. The Least Blind Group Will Win.

People value everything differently.

How are we supposed to determine how much someone values something/how significant their sacrifice is if we all value it differently?

When I look at the values of the different LP potential themes, I can discern that society as a whole values "Building Bridges, Not Walls" ($3,495) a lot more than it values "Taxation is Theft" ($15).

Of course for all I know one super poor libertarian donated his last $15 bucks in the world to "Taxation is Theft" while one super rich libertarian donated a vanishingly small portion of his money... $3,495... to "Building Bridges, Not Walls". In this case, the "Taxation is Theft" theme would actually be a lot more valuable to society than "Building Bridges, Not Walls".

But this exactly why larger markets are always more trustworthy/accurate/reliable than smaller markets. You end up with poor people and rich people on both sides of the "issue". Poor people and rich people both buy apples... and poor people and rich people both buy pens.

Both poor people and rich people purchased Harry Potter books. But perhaps most of the people who purchased these books were neither poor nor rich... but somewhere in the middle. To diminish J.K. Rowling's spending power/influence is to subvert the true will of all the people who believed it was worth it to empower her with their money/sacrifices. These consumers felt that there was a scarcity of magic in their lives and they broadcasted this shortage by their willingness to purchase her books and movies.

It is these needs which are essentially deficits in the organism, empty holes, so to speak, which must be filled up for health’s sake, and furthermore must be filled from without by human beings other than the subject, that I shall call deficits or deficiency needs for purposes of this exposition and to set them in contrast to another and very different kind of motivation. — Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being

If you truly grasp the basic concept of using money to communicate shortages that concern us, then you should realize just how truly problematic any amount of consumer surplus is. Consumer surplus simply broadcasts that the empty hole is smaller than it truly is. Consumer surplus results in producers being misinformed about the true size of a shortage.

However, if Netflix, for example, simply gave subscribers the option to allocate their fees to their favorite content, then consumer surplus goes right out the window. Producers would be correctly informed about the true size of shortages and the supply would improve accordingly.

[The Two Jerseys]

Since Xero has so much trouble with corn, let's try this little hypothetical:

Xero and I are British soldiers at Rorke's Drift. We are standing at our respective positions along the wall. We both have 40 rounds each in our cartridge box.

In front of each of our positions, a lone Zulu warrior breaks away from the 4000-man impi and charges at our line.

I kill the charging Zulu in front of me with one shot.

Xero kills the charging Zulu in front of him with one shot, then proceeds to shoot the corpse 9 more times, because Xero is using .577/450 rounds to "communicate" how much he "values" not being stabbed to death by Zulus.

Now,

• Which one of us is effectively "communicating" how much he doesn't want to be stabbed to death by Zulus?
• Who is sending Assistant Commissary Dalton the "brightest value signal" that they should be resupplied with more ammunition?

[Trumpostan]

Let's see if there will be some troll donations....

It would have been awesome if themes could have been suggested for a minimum donation of $20 bucks. How much money would "Libertarians Should Move To Somalia!" have received?

They should move there. Small government that has virtually no say, and whoever is the richest warlord gets the most say.

This whole scheme reeks of why many people don't like the LP, it seems to favor the rich and its views are essentially to tell poor and sick people to go to hell. Kind of like the GOP though without the religious BS attached.

[Izandai]

Because they value the corn highly. You yourself have said that people should pay an amount of money for stuff equal to the value of that stuff, regardless of how much of it they want or how abundant it is.

Oh you're really going to have to quote me on this!!! Because I sure call shenanigans.

I said that value is a function of availability/importance. Poison oak is available enough... but I don't value it because I don't think it's at all important to me. Lemons, on the other hand, are certainly important to me... but I don't value them because my tree is full of them.

What are you talking about? You've been saying throughout this entire thread that people should pay for things based on how much they value them.

[Xerographica]

Since Xero has so much trouble with corn, let's try this little hypothetical:

Xero and I are British soldiers at Rorke's Drift. We are standing at our respective positions along the wall. We both have 40 rounds each in our cartridge box.

In front of each of our positions, a lone Zulu warrior breaks away from the 4000-man impi and charges at our line.

I kill the charging Zulu in front of me with one shot.

Xero kills the charging Zulu in front of him with one shot, then proceeds to shoot the corpse 9 more times, because Xero is using .577/450 rounds to "communicate" how much he "values" not being stabbed to death by Zulus.

Now,

• Which one of us is effectively "communicating" how much he doesn't want to be stabbed to death by Zulus?
• Who is sending Assistant Commissary Dalton the "brightest value signal" that they should be resupplied with more ammunition?

I think I saw this movie when I was a little kid.

I like your hypothetical but you set it up kinda strange. One of the primary concerns here is that ammunition is pretty scarce. It's not abundant. How can we ensure that the limited supply of bullets is efficiently allocated?

You're at your position and I'm at my position. We're both moderately smart so we're really endeavoring to make our shots count. We really don't want to waste our ammo.

For convenience sake let's say that we both run out of ammo at the same time. One question is... who more efficiently used their bullets? If you used an average of 5 bullets to kill 1 Zulu... while I used an average of 1.5 bullets to kill 1 Zulu... then I'm certainly using bullets more efficiently than you are.

Another question is... who wants to live more? If we both bid on the next batch of bullets... who would be willing to pay more? Of course it clearly wouldn't be practical for a bunch of soldiers to have to bid on bullets in the middle of the battle. But would it be desirable to know the demand for bullets? Would it be desirable to know how efficiently each soldier was using their bullets?

Imagine a battle in which the communicating demand for bullets was entirely frictionless. Every solider would just mentally decide how much they were willing to pay for bullets and voila! Bullets would be allocated accordingly. Your willingness to pay for bullets would largely depend on your local supply and proximity of Zulu soldiers. And for sure you'd also have the option of being willing to pay for others to have bullets. Your willingness to pay for others would depend in part on their bullet use efficiency.

Centralized bullet allocation can't possibly be better than decentralized bullet allocation.

Centralized allocation is why we are fighting Zulus in the first place. Centralized allocation can never be efficient because the demand for different uses is never known.

[Grave_n_idle]

It's not a matter of having some secret insight - it's a simple observation: quality and popularity are not connected.

Britney Spears is not a particularly good singer, has a narrow range, a nasal voice (which she has admittedly made work for her), no writing ability and no ability with other musical instruments. She is also one of the best-selling artists of all time (currently, safely within the top-40 all-time sales).

On the other hand, take for example Myra (more popularly known as 'Tori') Amos, who has a substantially broader range, has written thousands of her own songs, and is such a talented composer and instrumentalist that she was inducted into the Peabody Institute on a full-scholarship at a still-record-breaking age of 5. She has also sold a fraction of the number of records Britney has sold.

Sure, this is a microcosm - but it represents the whole. You can repeat this pattern over and over, across almost any (commercial) field.

And that's why your 'idea' is junk. It turns EVERY field into a 'commercial' field.

You're saying that quality and popularity are not connected. What am I saying? That taxpayers should be free to directly allocate their taxes. What are you saying? That taxpayers shouldn't be free to allocate their taxes because we're better off allowing representatives to allocate them. Except, how do we choose our representatives? Popularity contest.

Ouch, my most of me.

You said something about me claiming I could "accurately predict how American taxpayers would allocate their taxes" - something I certainly hadn't claimed.

I pointed out that the point I had been making was that popularity is what people choose when they spend their own money in commercial arenas - and that the problem with your 'idea' is that it makes everything commercial.

I even explained this in the post you are now apparently pretending not to understand - and pointed out that they will actually select AGAINST quality, in favour of popularity.

[The Two Jerseys]

Since Xero has so much trouble with corn, let's try this little hypothetical:

Xero and I are British soldiers at Rorke's Drift. We are standing at our respective positions along the wall. We both have 40 rounds each in our cartridge box.

In front of each of our positions, a lone Zulu warrior breaks away from the 4000-man impi and charges at our line.

I kill the charging Zulu in front of me with one shot.

Xero kills the charging Zulu in front of him with one shot, then proceeds to shoot the corpse 9 more times, because Xero is using .577/450 rounds to "communicate" how much he "values" not being stabbed to death by Zulus.

Now,

• Which one of us is effectively "communicating" how much he doesn't want to be stabbed to death by Zulus?
• Who is sending Assistant Commissary Dalton the "brightest value signal" that they should be resupplied with more ammunition?

I think I saw this movie when I was a little kid.

I like your hypothetical but you set it up kinda strange. One of the primary concerns here is that ammunition is pretty scarce. It's not abundant. How can we ensure that the limited supply of bullets is efficiently allocated?

You're at your position and I'm at my position. We're both moderately smart so we're really endeavoring to make our shots count. We really don't want to waste our ammo.

For convenience sake let's say that we both run out of ammo at the same time. One question is... who more efficiently used their bullets? If you used an average of 5 bullets to kill 1 Zulu... while I used an average of 1.5 bullets to kill 1 Zulu... then I'm certainly using bullets more efficiently than you are.

Another question is... who wants to live more? If we both bid on the next batch of bullets... who would be willing to pay more? Of course it clearly wouldn't be practical for a bunch of soldiers to have to bid on bullets in the middle of the battle. But would it be desirable to know the demand for bullets? Would it be desirable to know how efficiently each soldier was using their bullets?

Imagine a battle in which the communicating demand for bullets was entirely frictionless. Every solider would just mentally decide how much they were willing to pay for bullets and voila! Bullets would be allocated accordingly. Your willingness to pay for bullets would largely depend on your local supply and proximity of Zulu soldiers. And for sure you'd also have the option of being willing to pay for others to have bullets. Your willingness to pay for others would depend in part on their bullet use efficiency.

Centralized bullet allocation can't possibly be better than decentralized bullet allocation.

Centralized allocation is why we are fighting Zulus in the first place. Centralized allocation can never be efficient because the demand for different uses is never known.

Is answering specific questions with a concise response really so goddamn hard?

[Neutraligon]

Did Xero ever explain how one can communicate that someone values something because it is free?

[Galloism]

Did Xero ever explain how one can communicate that someone values something because it is free?

No. Why would he? He hasn't even addressed this adequately yet:

Xero, let's get back to this and not drift:

Maqo, everyone pays the farmer $100 for a fucking ear of corn because they're all retarded and pay what they truly value instead of acting as the invisible hand predicts, but they don't need much, so 90% of the corn crop spoils. The farmer makes amazing profit. However, everyone said corn is "valued highly".

Should the farmer grow MORE or LESS corn. Why?

Answer the fucking question Xero. It's a simple question. Are you afraid of answering the question Xero?

If people in Timbuktu are willing to pay $100 for corn, then I'm pretty sure that producers will send more corn to Timbuktu.

Given you JUST ADMITTED that your plan will cause more waste because producers will produce more corn than can be consumed, even knowing it's more than can be consumed, and every allocation means sacrificing alternative allocations, why should we use your system which would encourage more waste and cause sacrifice of other useful allocations because of wasteful allocations?

[Senkaku]

Centralized bullet allocation can't possibly be better than decentralized bullet allocation.

"quick, everyone, pillage the magazine, take as much as you can, and run for it!" would be your approach to dealing with Rorke's Drift, then?

Centralized allocation is why we are fighting Zulus in the first place.

...the reason the British fought the Zulu was because Lord Carnarvon thought he could turn South Africa into Canada.

[The Two Jerseys]

Did Xero ever explain how one can communicate that someone values something because it is free?

No. Why would he? He hasn't even addressed this adequately yet:

Xero, let's get back to this and not drift:






Given you JUST ADMITTED that your plan will cause more waste because producers will produce more corn than can be consumed, even knowing it's more than can be consumed, and every allocation means sacrificing alternative allocations, why should we use your system which would encourage more waste and cause sacrifice of other useful allocations because of wasteful allocations?

You keep working on that, I'm still trying to figure out how Xero can claim that he's averaging 1.5 rounds per Zulu killed when he shot the same Zulu 10 times...

[Neutraligon]

No. Why would he? He hasn't even addressed this adequately yet:

You keep working on that, I'm still trying to figure out how Xero can claim that he's averaging 1.5 rounds per Zulu killed when he shot the same Zulu 10 times...

If I have two zulu and shoot one of them three times, while the other I kill with poison that is still 1.5 rounds per zulu killed right?

[Galloism]

Centralized bullet allocation can't possibly be better than decentralized bullet allocation.

"quick, everyone, pillage the magazine, take as much as you can, and run for it!" would be your approach to dealing with Rorke's Drift, then?

Centralized allocation is why we are fighting Zulus in the first place.

...the reason the British fought the Zulu was because Lord Carnarvon thought he could turn South Africa into Canada.

In fairness to Xero, he's right that if everyone used his system for everything there would be no war. War requires centralized planning.

Of course, that's mostly because gift economies don't work, and the inevitable global depression would preclude funding a military. Or police. Or fire. Or an electrical grid. Or anything else really.

So, probably lots and lots of theft, assault, and murder, but no war.

[Izandai]

"quick, everyone, pillage the magazine, take as much as you can, and run for it!" would be your approach to dealing with Rorke's Drift, then?


...the reason the British fought the Zulu was because Lord Carnarvon thought he could turn South Africa into Canada.

In fairness to Xero, he's right that if everyone used his system for everything there would be no war. War requires centralized planning.

Of course, that's mostly because gift economies don't work, and the inevitable global depression would preclude funding a military. Or police. Or fire. Or an electrical grid. Or anything else really.

So, probably lots and lots of theft, assault, and murder, but no war.

At least until society builds up to a feudalistic system again...

[The Two Jerseys]

You keep working on that, I'm still trying to figure out how Xero can claim that he's averaging 1.5 rounds per Zulu killed when he shot the same Zulu 10 times...

If I have two zulu and shoot one of them three times, while the other I kill with poison that is still 1.5 rounds per zulu killed right?

I was thinking that at some point he must have put a round in the fuel tank of Cetshwayo's Mercedes, and the explosion took a number of Zulus out...

[Galloism]

In fairness to Xero, he's right that if everyone used his system for everything there would be no war. War requires centralized planning.

Of course, that's mostly because gift economies don't work, and the inevitable global depression would preclude funding a military. Or police. Or fire. Or an electrical grid. Or anything else really.

So, probably lots and lots of theft, assault, and murder, but no war.

At least until society builds up to a feudalistic system again...

Gotta admit, history might be far more interesting if civilization had been built up amongst the ruins of an ancient super-advanced society.

I hope they call us the protheans.

[Senkaku]

At least until society builds up to a feudalistic system again...

Gotta admit, history might be far more interesting if civilization had been built up amongst the ruins of an ancient super-advanced society.

I hope they call us the protheans.

"We have discovered an ancient shrine. Press that red button and see if it summons the gods."

*Eurasia is turned to radioactive plate glass*

You keep working on that, I'm still trying to figure out how Xero can claim that he's averaging 1.5 rounds per Zulu killed when he shot the same Zulu 10 times...

If I have two zulu and shoot one of them three times, while the other I kill with poison that is still 1.5 rounds per zulu killed right?

I think this thread has taken a sharp turn into magical realism or some shit at this point

[Galloism]

Gotta admit, history might be far more interesting if civilization had been built up amongst the ruins of an ancient super-advanced society.

I hope they call us the protheans.

"We have discovered an ancient shrine. Press that red button and see if it summons the gods."

*Eurasia is turned to radioactive plate glass*

I think we did away with the red buttons. We use keys I think.

However, your point is plausible if unlikely. Advanced doesn't mean sensible.

[Xerographica]

I'm pretty sure that I said it like 20 threads ago.


It's a different mindset. With the current system, when you get/buy corn you have an impact on the supply. But in a pragmatarian system... the getting and the communicating wouldn't necessarily have to occur at the same time. At anytime you could say, "The world should have more corn!" and then you'd allocate $1000 tax dollars to the Dept of Corn. And maybe you won't actually have any corn for another month.

And maybe you wouldn't even research the corn supply before you allocated $1000 tax dollars to the Corn Dept or your favorite corn farmer. But generally though taxpayers would be rather inclined to make sure that they weren't wasting their taxes.

Don't you see the issues with any of those points I outlined above?
Even if you make a $1000 payment to the corn department (wow) only once per year, you still have to go through all of the above steps. And every single step of the way, you're going to get it horribly, horribly wrong. So in the end you're going to be sending 'communications', 'messages', 'value signals' or whatever, that are based off bad information.

For sure people can waste their money. Just like they can waste their time. But we gotta give them the room and space to decide for themselves what counts as a waste. After all, here we are! We have decided for ourselves that discussing and debating this topic is not a waste of our time. Still though, it sure wouldn't hurt to solicit substantial feedback on our use of society's limited resources. If members of this forum are paying a fee anyways, then they might as well spend some fees on this thread if they do value our behavior. Doing so will help positively reinforce our behavior. If members don't spend any of their fees on this thread/topic... and instead spend their fees on other threads/topic... then it will be good to know. Either case we'll be able to make a more informed decision whether to continue discussing/debating this topic or start discussing/debating another topic.

It's as simple as everybody behaving and valuating each other's behavior. It's as simple as somebody growing corn and you valuating his behavior. It's as simple as somebody growing poison oak and you valuating his behavior. It's as simple as us discussing valuating behavior and people valuating our behavior. In no case is anybody a mind-reader. If we want to maximize beneficial behavior, then we gotta maximize the accuracy of our feedback. We gotta let people know exactly how much we value their behavior. The Least Blind Group Will Win.

Then you get the farmer, who receives $1000 and says... yippee? $1000 doesn't tell him to produce more or less corn. If he's using the money as his guide, he than has to make a ton of inferences based on information that he doesn't have access to. And you still have the problem of the farmer somehow working out that people are telling him to produce more corn... while he's sitting there with a ton of corn that no-one ever bought.

A ton of corn that no one ever bought? If corn is included in a pragmatarian system, then people really wouldn't have to buy it. I'm guessing that's how it works with meals on wheels? Do people have to buy meals on wheels?

Aaaaand to round it all off:
When you can acquire anything you want for any amount of money you want, money becomes meaningless. I can pay $10 one day for an apple, and $10 the next day for a jumbo jet, and $1 for a house the day after that. And each of those might have been my true valuation of "I would give everything I own to have X".
If people don't have the power to refuse sale for not enough money, what good does money do?

On twitter I saw this tweet with this pic...

In response I created this illustration...

All government spending has trade-offs. But the problem is that people can't decide for themselves, with their own money, which trade-offs are acceptable. In other words, the problem is that the public sector doesn't have a market. Neither does Netflix. Neither does the NY Times.

Unfortunately, I can't figure out a decent way to illustrate the benefit of people deciding for themselves, with their own money, which trade-offs are acceptable. I highly suspect that this system, a market, is beneficial. And over and over I've endeavored to explain exactly why it's beneficial (ie society's limited resources are put to their most valuable uses)... but progress has been really slow.

We clearly don't need to understand how and why markets work in order for them to work. But if we want markets to work better... then yeah, we gotta understand how and why they work. Personally, I've done my homework. A lot of it. So I'm pretty sure that I do understand how and why markets work. But I super accept that my understanding might be flawed. So I crave a super nice test with optional participation.

Like I said, we can create two Google sheets. Each sheet will contain a list of forum threads. The list on the first sheet will be ordered by donations made by members. The list on the second sheet will be ordered by an awesome member that we elect. We will all be able to directly compare the two lists and decide for ourselves whether the Invisible Hand or the Visible Hand does a better job of ordering things. We'll decide for ourselves whether the Invisible Hand or the Visible Hand does a better job of identifying valuable behavior. It will be a fundraiser and an economic experiment rolled into one. The Least Blind Group Will Win.

[Xerographica]

Centralized bullet allocation can't possibly be better than decentralized bullet allocation.

"quick, everyone, pillage the magazine, take as much as you can, and run for it!" would be your approach to dealing with Rorke's Drift, then?

Noooo... everybody would accurately reveal/communicate their demand for ammunition and it would be allocated accordingly.

Centralized allocation is why we are fighting Zulus in the first place.

...the reason the British fought the Zulu was because Lord Carnarvon thought he could turn South Africa into Canada.

But, what was the actual demand for turning South Africa into Canada? Trump wants to build a giant wall between America and Mexico. What is the actual demand for such a wall?

Nobody appreciates feverish dreams more than I do. But I'm capable of recognizing that my dreams might be crazy. I don't think that they are... but I do recognize the possibility. I super appreciate the possibility. So even if there was a button that would make my dream come true... I sure wouldn't push it. I'd much prefer to subject my dreams to the gauntlet of millions of really different perspectives. Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.

Did Jesus and Martin Luther King super appreciate that their dreams might be crazy? In any case, they were never in a position of power to implement their dreams. It was a different story with John F. Kennedy, Mao and Hitler and Lord Carnarvon. They were in positions of power and they had absolutely no problem using their power to try and make their dreams come true. They thought that their dreams were so good that they really didn't need to subject them to the gauntlet of millions of really different perspectives.

Sure... Kennedy was elected... just like Trump was elected. But that's really not the same thing as taxpayers deciding for themselves, with their own tax dollars, that space colonization or a giant wall are worth the trade-offs.

Democracy and the market can't be equally good at spotting and starving crazy dreams. Unlike with the market, with democracy I really can't easily boycott crazy dreams. So how the hell can democracy possibly be better than the market at spotting and starving crazy dreams? And if it's argued that most of democracy's dreams aren't crazy... then why argue against people having the option to boycott the occasional crazy dream?

My dream is to make it super easy to boycott crazy dreams... but maybe my dream is crazy. So yeah, you're welcome to boycott it. But if you do so.... then... that's funny.