Comment by __MatrixMan__
3 days ago
It is definitely past time to start thinking outside of the economy.
Although must we deal in "worth" at all at that point? If two people have conflicting visions, it shouldn't be the one who is "worth" more that gets their way, it should be the one whose vision is most appealing to the rest of us.
No, I disagree, and for everyone who bemoans capitalism or the power of money, its important to understand the foundational arguments from which economics is born.
Wants are infinite, and resources limited. Economics is the objective methods to order a system to achieve subjective ends.
For better or worse, money is a medium of exchange and signal of what people are willing to allocate for their needs. Unless you create economic markets, information markets, and political systems that are built to handle the forces being harnessed by society, you have failure states.
In other words, taxes need to bleed of wealth, to ensure that it cannot create advantage in other fields (media, politics), breaking the even playing field in those other economies.
You are begging the question by relying an unproven basis for your argument. Why do economies have to be based on free market capitalism?
Free markets are superior to planned economies because they’re able to instantly respond to consumer preferences, resulting in efficient allocation of resources.
On a side note, I’m not sure why HN is often hostile to economic arguments. Economics is a well-established science.
3 replies →
I am making a defense of economics, not capitalism.
I like markets, and would laugh if anyone went ahead and tried to make a purely capitalistic economy. Fair, well regulated economies, work.
4 replies →