Range Of Effectiveness

[Albrenia]

It's probably just me being stupid, but this thread confuses me. I'll answer the best I can with how I understand it though:

If we had access to all the resources and markets in the universe, we'd have contact with aliens (if they exist, which they probably do) and pretty much unlimited reasources. All human manufacturing would be made defunct as the market is flooded with better, cheaper alien goods made with their technology.

Remove aliens from the picture and instead just give us access to the near-limitless resources of the universe, and you'd just make capitalism entirely go off the rails. Raw materials would be effectively valueless if everyone had magic access to them in effectively eternal quantities. This would include gold, diamond, and other resources we haven't even discovered yet.

Maybe it will help to first focus on the range of effectiveness being extended from city to state or country. I think you would agree that this extension would be beneficial. But why, exactly, would it be beneficial?

Larger customer base, more competition, easier access to skilled workers, ability to shop around, and so on.

[Neanderthaland]

Only because you somehow believe that every single aspect of life is contained within your insane economics.

Most aspects of life, surely the most important ones, involve trade-offs. For example, you and I could be doing other things with our limited time on this planet besides discussing economics. Clearly it's the case that this use of our time is more valuable to us than the alternatives. But this won't always be the case. Each of us is free to decide for ourselves exactly when it ceases to be the case. This freedom of ours is fundamentally important and beneficial to society. It is the true source of all progress and prosperity.

Great. Explain to me how these trade-offs contributed to the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the Bolivian silver trade. Be specific.

[Xerographica]

It's interesting that my thread helped you arrive at this conclusion. So now what? Are you going to start a Facebook page?

What conclusion?

The only conclusion I've reached is that for your hypothetical, it would be unwise for me (given the specifics of my relationship with Samantha), to increase her "range of effectiveness." Such a narrow conclusion about a specific hypothetical isn't likely to interest any other community.

Eh? Why would this conclusion only be applicable to Samantha? Wouldn't this conclusion be applicable to producers in general?

Also, if it would be unwise for you to increase her range of effectiveness... would it be wise for you decrease her range of effectiveness? Would you benefit if she always wore a blindfold? Would you benefit if she was only permitted to speak a foreign language? Would you benefit if she was only permitted to purchase inputs from people of the same race, sex and age? Would you benefit if all her spending decisions had to be unanimously approved by city officials? Would you benefit if she was in a coma? What's the rule that ensures that her range of effectiveness will maximize your benefit?

[Infected Mushroom]

What conclusion?

The only conclusion I've reached is that for your hypothetical, it would be unwise for me (given the specifics of my relationship with Samantha), to increase her "range of effectiveness." Such a narrow conclusion about a specific hypothetical isn't likely to interest any other community.

Eh? Why would this conclusion only be applicable to Samantha? Wouldn't this conclusion be applicable to producers in general?

Also, if it would be unwise for you to increase her range of effectiveness... would it be wise for you decrease her range of effectiveness? Would you benefit if she always wore a blindfold? Would you benefit if she was only permitted to speak a foreign language? Would you benefit if she was only permitted to purchase inputs from people of the same race, sex and age? Would you benefit if all her spending decisions had to be unanimously approved by city officials? Would you benefit if she was in a coma? What's the rule that ensures that her range of effectiveness will maximize your benefit?

No, because there's no telling what our business relationship would be in those alternatives. As they exist now, they are mutually beneficial (and very importantly, very beneficial to me). If those things were done to her, who knows... If the table is well set up... don't flip it over.

Eh? Why would this conclusion only be applicable to Samantha? Wouldn't this conclusion be applicable to producers in general?

No because I generally don't get along very well with my producers. They generally seem to have the upper hand against me. Its only in your unique hypothetical that I get along so well with Samantha.

[Xerographica]

Maybe it will help to first focus on the range of effectiveness being extended from city to state or country. I think you would agree that this extension would be beneficial. But why, exactly, would it be beneficial?

Larger customer base, more competition, easier access to skilled workers, ability to shop around, and so on.

We would get more and more of this as her range of effectiveness was extended. But this is solely a matter of geography. Let's switch from geography to type of goods. There are roughly two types of goods... private (ie concrete) and public (ie roads). With the current system her range of effectiveness includes private goods but it doesn't include public goods. Should it? How many of the benefits you listed would apply?

Let's imagine that Samantha produces pottery.

Larger customer base? This wouldn't be applicable.
More competition? Nope.
Easier access to skilled workers? Not really.
Ability to shop around? Well...

Hmmmm. Let's back up a bit. We'll pretend that Samantha lives in Boulder City, Nevada. It seems that gambling isn't allowed there. In this scenario Samantha's range of effectiveness (ROE) only extends to private goods in her city. So she gets the clay and everything else she needs for her pottery in her city. If we tweak the scenario by extending her ROE to the entire state, then perhaps she can find some better clay elsewhere in the state. This would be a good thing. However, not only can she spend her money on better clay... she can also spend her money gambling. She doesn't just have more "good" options... she also has more "bad" options. Why isn't this an issue? Because we trust her value judgements? We trust that she won't spend all her money gambling? We trust that she'll spend her money wisely, prudently and relevantly?

Let's tweak the scenario some more and extend her ROE to public goods. Not only can she spend her money on better clay and gambling, but she can also spend her money on road repair. If we wouldn't worry about Samantha spending too much money gambling, would we need to worry about her spending too much money on roads? Would we need to worry about her spending her money on irrelevant public goods?

Maybe it helps to think about juggling. When Samantha's ROE only extends to private goods in her city then she only juggles a relatively few things. To be clear, I don't mean physical juggling... I mean mental juggling. If her ROE is extended to private goods in her state then suddenly she's required to juggle far more things. A state is going to have far more potential inputs than one city. It's certainly challenging for her to research, study, test and compare all the potential inputs. The juggling becomes even more challenging if her ROE is extended to the country and then the planet. Would extending her ROE to public goods be the straw that breaks the camel's back? Or would it result in even greater benefit?

[Lady Scylla]

This is even less coherent than average.

-snip-

The first sentence by itself nearly gave me an aneurysm.

[Xerographica]

Most aspects of life, surely the most important ones, involve trade-offs. For example, you and I could be doing other things with our limited time on this planet besides discussing economics. Clearly it's the case that this use of our time is more valuable to us than the alternatives. But this won't always be the case. Each of us is free to decide for ourselves exactly when it ceases to be the case. This freedom of ours is fundamentally important and beneficial to society. It is the true source of all progress and prosperity.

Great. Explain to me how these trade-offs contributed to the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the Bolivian silver trade. Be specific.

It was the absence of these trade-offs that contributed to their fall. If each and every citizen isn't free to decide for themselves whether some government endeavor is worth the alternative uses of their money, then far too many of the society's limited resources will be irrelevantly used. I gave the example of the pyramids but any government endeavor could be used since I have no idea what the actual demand for it was. What was the actual demand for putting a man on the moon? The government sure spent a lot of the taxpayers' money on this endeavor... but how much money would the taxpayers themselves have spent on it? I don't know if the typical taxpayer would have said..."Oh yeah, great! Putting a man on the moon is much more important than infrastructure, public education, the justice system, national defense and all the other public goods!"

My premise is that taxpayers, as a group, must be better than politicians at recognizing the true importance/necessity/relevance of things. Otherwise we should very quickly abolish all markets.

Abolishing markets would be really stupid. This has been tried, and it failed. Politicians are not better than taxpayers at recognizing the true importance/necessity/relevance of things.

To minimize the chance of an empire's extinction, its adaptability must be maximized. This depends on giving each citizen the maximum freedom to respond to changing conditions. Therefore, people's range of effectiveness must be extended to the public sector.

[Xerographica]

Eh? Why would this conclusion only be applicable to Samantha? Wouldn't this conclusion be applicable to producers in general?

Also, if it would be unwise for you to increase her range of effectiveness... would it be wise for you decrease her range of effectiveness? Would you benefit if she always wore a blindfold? Would you benefit if she was only permitted to speak a foreign language? Would you benefit if she was only permitted to purchase inputs from people of the same race, sex and age? Would you benefit if all her spending decisions had to be unanimously approved by city officials? Would you benefit if she was in a coma? What's the rule that ensures that her range of effectiveness will maximize your benefit?

No, because there's no telling what our business relationship would be in those alternatives. As they exist now, they are mutually beneficial (and very importantly, very beneficial to me). If those things were done to her, who knows... If the table is well set up... don't flip it over.

Figure out why and how the table came to be well set up in order to discern room for improvement. It's tragic to simply accept that something is working well without endeavoring to understand and improve the underlying mechanisms. We need improvements man. We don't need more status quo.

[Infected Mushroom]

No, because there's no telling what our business relationship would be in those alternatives. As they exist now, they are mutually beneficial (and very importantly, very beneficial to me). If those things were done to her, who knows... If the table is well set up... don't flip it over.

Figure out why and how the table came to be well set up in order to discern room for improvement. It's tragic to simply accept that something is working well without endeavoring to understand and improve the underlying mechanisms. We need improvements man. We don't need more status quo.

The table is set up well because it is a defining parameter of your hypothetical.

Specifically, you've said:

You like to buy what she sells. What do you like to buy? Better yet, what's the most interesting thing that you like to buy? This is what Samantha sells.

...If you're some kinda cool then you'll give Samantha high-5s. Maybe with most people your success rate is 40% but with her it's 100%.

I can't figure out why something is working well when that something is your hypothetical. That information is for you to add (or not add if you think its not relevant to the question for the hypothetical). I don't know why you would want me to speculate on why certain parameters are set up in your hypothetical.

In real life, to my understanding, you rarely have situations where buyers and sellers get along so well (where the buyer can really say, "wow, I'm really getting 100%"). Unless the seller's a family friend or you have some political power over the seller... usually the buyer is just glad he's able to afford what the seller is selling. The price is "alright" but not as a result of "bargaining" (usually you simply pay what the price tag says) at least not in the regular sense of the word.

If the price is low and the product's quality is very high, then usually the buyer is happy.

Increasing/decreasing the range of economic activity for the seller doesn't guarantee either outcome for the buyer. The seller might realise he could charge more... he might relocate to his advantage (and to the detriment of the buyer)... he might stop stocking the buyer's product of interest and re-specialize in something the buyer's no longer interested in (but other buyers are)...

Alternately, he might stay in the same business but do it better and increase the buyer's benefit.

It's entirely up in the air.

Though if I'm getting "100%" from her... there's a good chance I know something and she doesn't. And increasing her range of activity could change that. Hence I don't like that idea.

[Albrenia]

Public works are a bit of a difficult issue if the amount of money they were getting each year was wildly varying. A pipe bursts in a main city street and suddenly the sewer-works have far more than they expected, and the hospitals don't have enough funds after a few years without a major flu season.

People might not want to pay for inspectors to look into workplace safety, but people would probably die if they didn't.

[Xerographica]

Though if I'm getting "100%" from her... there's a good chance I know something and she doesn't. And increasing her range of activity could change that. Hence I don't like that idea.

The 100% is actually referring to your high-5 success rate with Samantha. Every high-5 perfectly connects. There's no missed-connections. There's 0% chance of a very unsuccessful high-5 (aka "bitch slap"). Am I the first person in the entire world who has referred to a "bitch slap" as a very unsuccessful high-5?

Increasing/decreasing the range of economic activity for the seller doesn't guarantee either outcome for the buyer. The seller might realise he could charge more... he might relocate to his advantage (and to the detriment of the buyer)... he might stop stocking the buyer's product of interest and re-specialize in something the buyer's no longer interested in (but other buyers are)...

Sure, there are no guarantees. The issue is whether extending producers' ROE is more likely to improve consumers' benefit. It's weird to imagine that there's no connection between producer ROE and consumer benefit. Otherwise, there'd be no problem with completely restricting producer ROE. Producers could all be incarcerated and the supply would somehow still be great.

There must be a connection between producer ROE and consumer benefit. The challenge is to articulate it as precisely and concisely as possible.

[Xerographica]

Public works are a bit of a difficult issue if the amount of money they were getting each year was wildly varying. A pipe bursts in a main city street and suddenly the sewer-works have far more than they expected,

This might occur if it's impossible to see how much money sewer-works has received. The solution is simply for sewer-works to be completely transparent. Taxpayers would know exactly how much money sewer-works needs and has received.

and the hospitals don't have enough funds after a few years without a major flu season.

The other day I was randomly looking over a friend's Facebook page and I saw that she had posted a pic of a little round wound on her finger that was actually Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. I Googled it. I like to Google things. The other day I Googled Leucochloridium paradoxum. That thing really creeps me out.

Does Samantha not appreciate or understand that her business depends on healthy employees? Does she not understand that her business won't do so well if she gambles all her money away?

People might not want to pay for inspectors to look into workplace safety, but people would probably die if they didn't.

Wouldn't workers want to pay for inspectors to look into workplace safety?

When I lived in China I so loved to eat street food. Cumin lamb skewers! Was it really lamb though? Ignorance is bliss? Here in Los Angeles there aren't any hordes of food carts crowding the streets. Because.... regulations. Thanks for all the protection? Umm... how much, exactly, is all this protection costing me anyways?

Sure we hear food horror stories coming out of China. It's easy to see a big harm... it's visible. What isn't easy to see is the size of the benefit that results from less restrictive regulations. More people sell food... there's more variety, availability and competition and lower prices. Plus, there are more employment opportunities which means less poverty and crime.

I'm not saying that regulations aren't necessary. I'm saying that they aren't equally necessary. The true necessity/relevance/importance of a regulation can only be accurately determined by taxpayers. Samantha should have the opportunity to decide for herself just how necessary a food regulation is to her business. Giving her this opportunity would extend her ROE.

If you still think that Samantha's ROE should be restricted, then what's the rule? When, where and why, exactly, is her effectiveness no long effective?

[Chestaan]

This sounds like an argument in favour of free-trade. In which case, yes, free-trade generally improves welfare.

[Neanderthaland]

Great. Explain to me how these trade-offs contributed to the fall of the Ming Dynasty and the Bolivian silver trade. Be specific.

It was the absence of these trade-offs that contributed to their fall. If each and every citizen isn't free to decide for themselves whether some government endeavor is worth the alternative uses of their money, then far too many of the society's limited resources will be irrelevantly used. I gave the example of the pyramids but any government endeavor could be used since I have no idea what the actual demand for it was. What was the actual demand for putting a man on the moon? The government sure spent a lot of the taxpayers' money on this endeavor... but how much money would the taxpayers themselves have spent on it? I don't know if the typical taxpayer would have said..."Oh yeah, great! Putting a man on the moon is much more important than infrastructure, public education, the justice system, national defense and all the other public goods!"

My premise is that taxpayers, as a group, must be better than politicians at recognizing the true importance/necessity/relevance of things. Otherwise we should very quickly abolish all markets.

Abolishing markets would be really stupid. This has been tried, and it failed. Politicians are not better than taxpayers at recognizing the true importance/necessity/relevance of things.

To minimize the chance of an empire's extinction, its adaptability must be maximized. This depends on giving each citizen the maximum freedom to respond to changing conditions. Therefore, people's range of effectiveness must be extended to the public sector.

That still has nothing to do with the fall of Ming.

It's interesting that even when you know that you don't know what you're talking about, you still try to make it about your beliefs. It's like some religious zealot trying to explain every natural event by God's anger.

[Galloism]

My premise is that taxpayers, as a group, must be better than politicians at recognizing the true importance/necessity/relevance of things.

Why would you have that as a premise?

Otherwise we should very quickly abolish all markets.

Why would not accepting your premise lead to the abolition of markets?

And, to keep in mind what you're saying here, let's do a similar comparison:

My premise is that cars, as a group, must be better than airplanes at transporting people. Otherwise, we should very quickly abolish all cars.

[Galloism]

This sounds like an argument in favour of free-trade.

That's really not what it's about.

[The Holy Therns]

I don't even know what the question is, but I'm certain that the answer Xero is looking for is that we should all give Samantha the entire contents of our bank accounts because we like the stuff she sells.

I think you're trying to hijack the thread to talk about my favorite topic.

The OP is about my favorite topic, but I disguised it so well that nobody can tell, so it's ok.

This is my new favorite Xerographica post. It's like... poetry.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

So what you're trying to ask is why is her expansion into other markets a good thing if she sells widgets people find the most interesting thing in their lives?

Well... it's pretty obvious that it's beneficial for her to be able to sell her widgets to a larger market. What I think is somewhat less obvious is that it's also beneficial for her to be able to buy her inputs in a larger market. What inputs does she use to make the widgets? In a larger market she'd be able to find a greater variety of inputs... which means even better inputs. Where it gets tricky is that this additional room for her to maneuver means that there's more chance of making mistakes?

If she can only choose the inputs from within her city then she has a relatively small amount of possible inputs to research, study and test. But if she can choose the inputs from anywhere on the planet, or universe, then the amount of possible inputs would be immense. How could she possibly have the time to research, study and test all the possible inputs? Yet, nobody in the right mind would argue that Samantha should only be able to purchase the inputs available in her city. This arbitrary restriction of her range of effectiveness would be obviously bad. So when is it ever beneficial to arbitrarily restrict her range of effectiveness?

Well, as she grows she also would need to delegate the task of research and development to other people.

Even as a solopreneur in her small little city, she'd need to rely on what other people talk about the product, because even when you have unlimited access to resources, you don't have an unlimited amount of time, so she has to offload some of that knowledge to it being from other people and rely on her better judgement to pick the one she has heard lauded the most for the thing she needs created.

[Xerographica]

It was the absence of these trade-offs that contributed to their fall. If each and every citizen isn't free to decide for themselves whether some government endeavor is worth the alternative uses of their money, then far too many of the society's limited resources will be irrelevantly used. I gave the example of the pyramids but any government endeavor could be used since I have no idea what the actual demand for it was. What was the actual demand for putting a man on the moon? The government sure spent a lot of the taxpayers' money on this endeavor... but how much money would the taxpayers themselves have spent on it? I don't know if the typical taxpayer would have said..."Oh yeah, great! Putting a man on the moon is much more important than infrastructure, public education, the justice system, national defense and all the other public goods!"

My premise is that taxpayers, as a group, must be better than politicians at recognizing the true importance/necessity/relevance of things. Otherwise we should very quickly abolish all markets.

Abolishing markets would be really stupid. This has been tried, and it failed. Politicians are not better than taxpayers at recognizing the true importance/necessity/relevance of things.

To minimize the chance of an empire's extinction, its adaptability must be maximized. This depends on giving each citizen the maximum freedom to respond to changing conditions. Therefore, people's range of effectiveness must be extended to the public sector.

That still has nothing to do with the fall of Ming.

It's interesting that even when you know that you don't know what you're talking about, you still try to make it about your beliefs. It's like some religious zealot trying to explain every natural event by God's anger.

I like your analogy. I'm a market zealot trying to use markets to explain the rise and fall of nations.

What I think is interesting is that you've had, and squandered, so many opportunities to wonderfully educate all of us about the fall of Ming. Here's my very meager attempt to provide at least some info on the topic. From Wikipedia...

The fall of the Ming dynasty was largely caused by a combination of factors. Kenneth Swope argues that one key factor was deteriorating relations between Ming Royalty and the Ming Empire's military leadership.[1] Other factors include repeated military expeditions to the North, inflationary pressures caused by spending too much from the imperial treasury, natural disasters and epidemics of disease. Contributing further to the chaos was a peasant rebellion in Beijing in 1644 and a series of weak emperors. Ming power would hold out in what is now southern China for years, though eventually would be overtaken by the Manchus.

Obviously Wikipedia does not say that Ming fell because taxpayers were not free to use their tax dollars to support the most relevant/necessary/important/beneficial government endeavors.

But let's consider what the father of liberalism (broadly speaking) had to say about Europe compared to China...

What has made the European family of nations an improving, instead of a stationary portion of mankind? Not any superior excellence in them, which, when it exists, exists as the effect, not as the cause; but their remarkable diversity of character and culture. Individuals, classes, nations, have been extremely unlike one another: they have struck out a great variety of paths, each leading to something valuable; and although at every period those who traveled in different paths have been intolerant of one another, and each would have thought it an excellent thing if all the rest could have been compelled to travel his road, their attempts to thwart each other’s development have rarely had any permanent success, and each has in time endured to receive the good which the others have offered. Europe is, in my judgment, wholly indebted to this plurality of paths for its progressive and many-sided development. But it already begins to possess this benefit in a considerably less degree. It is decidedly advancing towards the Chinese ideal of making all people alike. — J.S. Mill, On Liberty

Europeans didn't have the freedom to directly allocate their taxes but they did have the freedom to directly allocate themselves...

It isn’t just that China doesn’t have an Industrial Revolution, it doesn’t have a Galileo or a Newton or a Descartes, people who announced that everything people did before them was wrong. That’s hard to do in any society, but it was easier to do in Europe than China. The reason precisely is because Europe was fragmented, and so when somebody says something very novel and radical, if the government decides they are a heretic and threatens to prosecute them, they pack their suitcase and go across the border. — Joel Mokyr, Why the Industrial Revolution didn’t happen in China

It was harder in Europe than in China to silence the "heretics". With this in mind, Europe would have made far more progress in far less time if Europeans had also been given the freedom to use their taxes to express themselves. Then the economy would have reflected even more individuality. If we define "liberalism" as respect for the individual, then what I'm advocating for is more liberalism. I clearly perceive how more incorporation of diverse perspectives would facilitate a nation's ability to correctly respond, adjust and adapt to constantly changing conditions. A pragmatarian nation would be perfectly fluid.

[Xerographica]

My premise is that taxpayers, as a group, must be better than politicians at recognizing the true importance/necessity/relevance of things.

Why would you have that as a premise?

Otherwise we should very quickly abolish all markets.

Why would not accepting your premise lead to the abolition of markets?

And, to keep in mind what you're saying here, let's do a similar comparison:

My premise is that cars, as a group, must be better than airplanes at transporting people. Otherwise, we should very quickly abolish all cars.

Are dogs better than cats? Are dogs more important than cats?

Imagine if politicians voted for either dogs or cats. Then we'd see which animal was more popular with politicians.

Here's the alternative. Rather than citizens voting for either cats or dogs... they would spend as much money as they wanted on their preferred animal. To be clear, they wouldn't be spending their money to buy their preferred animal. They would be simply be spending their money to help determine the importance of their preferred animal. Then we'd see which animal was more important to the people. The money that the people spent would be given to their preferred animal charity.

Politicians voting and consumers spending are very different things. They are going to have a very different result. Personally, I could care less about the outcome of politicians voting for their preferred animal. I'd be far more interested to learn the outcome of the people spending for their preferred animal. Spenders, as a group, would be far better than the politicians at recognizing the true importance/relevance of cats and dogs.

[Soldati Senza Confini]

Why would you have that as a premise?



Why would not accepting your premise lead to the abolition of markets?

And, to keep in mind what you're saying here, let's do a similar comparison:

Are dogs better than cats? Are dogs more important than cats?

Imagine if politicians voted for either dogs or cats. Then we'd see which animal was more popular with politicians.

Here's the alternative. Rather than citizens voting for either cats or dogs... they would spend as much money as they wanted on their preferred animal. To be clear, they wouldn't be spending their money to buy their preferred animal. They would be simply be spending their money to help determine the importance of their preferred animal. Then we'd see which animal was more important to the people. The money that the people spent would be given to their preferred animal charity.

Politicians voting and consumers spending are very different things. They are going to have a very different result. Personally, I could care less about the outcome of politicians voting for their preferred animal. I'd be far more interested to learn the outcome of the people spending for their preferred animal. Spenders, as a group, would be far better than the politicians at recognizing the true importance/relevance of cats and dogs.

Why would we hold such a stupid election?

[Vorpa]

Abolishing markets would be really stupid. This has been tried, and it failed.

really, when?

Politicians are not better than taxpayers at recognizing the true importance/necessity/relevance of things.

and by extension i suppose that means that society as a whole will be better at recognising this than just taxpayers

[Galloism]

Why would you have that as a premise?



Why would not accepting your premise lead to the abolition of markets?

And, to keep in mind what you're saying here, let's do a similar comparison:

Are dogs better than cats? Are dogs more important than cats?

Imagine if politicians voted for either dogs or cats. Then we'd see which animal was more popular with politicians.

Here's the alternative. Rather than citizens voting for either cats or dogs... they would spend as much money as they wanted on their preferred animal. To be clear, they wouldn't be spending their money to buy their preferred animal. They would be simply be spending their money to help determine the importance of their preferred animal. Then we'd see which animal was more important to the people. The money that the people spent would be given to their preferred animal charity.

Politicians voting and consumers spending are very different things. They are going to have a very different result. Personally, I could care less about the outcome of politicians voting for their preferred animal. I'd be far more interested to learn the outcome of the people spending for their preferred animal. Spenders, as a group, would be far better than the politicians at recognizing the true importance/relevance of cats and dogs.

That has nothing to do with what I wrote. Try it again.

[Xerographica]

Abolishing markets would be really stupid. This has been tried, and it failed.

really, when?

One example is China during Mao.

Politicians are not better than taxpayers at recognizing the true importance/necessity/relevance of things.

and by extension i suppose that means that society as a whole will be better at recognising this than just taxpayers

If taxpayers were responsible for determining the relevance of government endeavors then virtually everybody would be a taxpayer.

[Xerographica]

Are dogs better than cats? Are dogs more important than cats?

Imagine if politicians voted for either dogs or cats. Then we'd see which animal was more popular with politicians.

Here's the alternative. Rather than citizens voting for either cats or dogs... they would spend as much money as they wanted on their preferred animal. To be clear, they wouldn't be spending their money to buy their preferred animal. They would be simply be spending their money to help determine the importance of their preferred animal. Then we'd see which animal was more important to the people. The money that the people spent would be given to their preferred animal charity.

Politicians voting and consumers spending are very different things. They are going to have a very different result. Personally, I could care less about the outcome of politicians voting for their preferred animal. I'd be far more interested to learn the outcome of the people spending for their preferred animal. Spenders, as a group, would be far better than the politicians at recognizing the true importance/relevance of cats and dogs.

Why would we hold such a stupid election?

In the case of politicians it wouldn't be an election... it would be a survey. In the case of consumers it would also be a survey but with donations rather than with votes.

Imagine a society where every decision was made by tug-of-war. Then stronger people would have more influence. The outcome wouldn't be so great. Just because somebody is physically strong doesn't necessarily mean that they should have more influence over decisions.

If every decision was made by the market instead of tug-of-war then people with more money would have more influence. They would have more power. They would essentially be stronger. But the beauty of this system is that we would use our money to strengthen the people with the best grasp of reality.

Don Quixote did not have the best grasp on reality. He went around attacking windmills because he thought they were giants. If he was empowered then he'd more effectively destroy more windmills. But in a market who would choose to give their money to Quixote?