Comment by machinestops
21 days ago
The problem with optimising exclusively for oneself is that you definitionally optimise at the expense of others. Gaps are easily widened, and your balancing idea falls apart when the scales are tipped from the start.
It is not as simple as "my profit" vs. "others' expense". The elegance of the invisible hand theory is that it also accounts for the cases where others' expense is my expense and others' benefit is my benefit just as well as the others.
The scales sure can be tipped on the individual level, but you are only considering the "one individual vs. one individual" case. Many cliques of extreme power have been taken down by the weaker majority, which is also one of the processes contributing to the collapse of monopolies.
No, it isn't, which is why I added "definitionally". Let's say we have a limited resource, X, that is beneficial to hold, and it is more beneficial to hold more of it. As it is limited, acquiring necessarily means depriving another of it. Assuming one has the means to acquire more without impacting oneself negatively, in which situation (taking optimising for oneself as a maxim) you not seek to acquire more?
None, but that's exactly the point. _Everyone_ would like to have more of it.
This is a unifaceted way of posing problems, often also done with monopolization.
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