Comment by sdenton4

6 days ago

Meanwhile, corporations, ngos, and governments are not exactly people, and partake in economic transactions all the time.

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sdenton4

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mjburgess  6 days ago

Granting your premise, i'd be forced to argue that economic value (as such) doesn't arise from their activity either -- which i think is a reasonable position.

Ie., The reason a cookie is 1 USD is never because some "merely legal entity" had a fictional (/merely legal) desire for cookies for some reason.

Instead, from this pov, it's that the workers each have their desire for something; the customers; the owners; and so on. That it all bottoms out in people doing things for other people -- that legal fictions are just dispensble ways of talking about arragnemnts of people.

Incidentally, I think this is an open question. Maybe groups of people have unique desires, unique kinds of lives, a unique time limitation etc. that means a group of people really can give rise to different kinds of economic transactions and different economic values.

Consider a state: it issues debt. But why does that have value? Because we expect the population of a state to be stable or grow, and so this debt, in the future has people who can honour it. Their time is being promised today. Could a state issue debt if this wasnt true? I dont think so. I think in the end, some people have to be around to exchange their time for this debt; if none are, or none want to, the debt has no value

  • sdenton4  5 days ago

    You can factor humans out with the same trick: All economic activity is driven by the needs of micro-organisms. We mainly observe these desires and economic transactions through their conglomeration into joint entities (ie, humans).

    Corporate and state decision making is, I would argue, often completely distinct from the desires and needs of the individuals that make up the entity. As an example, no individual /needs/ a particular compliance check to pass, but the overall entity (corporation) does, and so allocates money and human effort to ensure the check passes. It's a need of the conglomerate entity, not the individuals within it.

    • mjburgess  5 days ago

      There is no "trick", the relevant sufficient and necessary properties for an agent to give rise to economic transactions are likewise not possessed by a micro-organism.

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