Comment by 0cf8612b2e1e
2 years ago
But wouldn’t that be true of any kind of performance art? What value is created by me paying to watch a musician/movie/baseball? Fundamentally seems the same as watching someone eat shit for my amusement.
2 years ago
But wouldn’t that be true of any kind of performance art? What value is created by me paying to watch a musician/movie/baseball? Fundamentally seems the same as watching someone eat shit for my amusement.
Your enjoying of it. The economists in the story don’t acknowledge enjoying making the other eat shit.
It is valuable to society to do things that create joy.
Shit eating may not hold up specifically.
One of the advantages of money is that the enjoyment is implicit in the exchange, with no explicit acknowledgment necessary.
The enjoyment derived by the watcher must exceed that of having $100 and using that money in the future, or he wouldn’t have paid out. The disgust of the eater is more than compensated by the $100, or he wouldn’t accept that payment and do the job.
Both coprophages have thus derived utility from the exchange. From an economic standpoint, eating shit is just a form of working.
Is that not the implicit agreement of capitalism? If I trade X dollars for a thing, I got something I value for it. Joy, revenge, boredom, or just a lighter load in the wallet. Something must have been gained. By definition, it seems that both economists gained the experience they wanted of watching the other debase themselves.
Yes. And GDP is a rough measurement of how much value is being created, in dollars.