This is pretty dishonest. Throughout the thread I mentioned Bastiat's opportunity cost concept, Hayek's partial knowledge concept, the issue of fallibilism, the idea of sacrifice, Turgot's (and many others) idea of individual agency, it's a long list.
You can mention economists all day and night, but that doesn't change the fact that you still haven't acknowledged or addressed in any way your fallacy in which you smugly assert that the fact that people won't normally give a substantial sum of money to a stranger somehow means that the individual always knows best how to effectively apply resources to their goals.
How does the fact that people wouldn't give $200 to a random stranger not support my argument? You say "it does nothing of the kind". Nothing? Really? Clearly it indicates something. Some sort of evaluation occurred.
It does indicate something. In fact, if you bothered accurately acknowledging others' posts, you'd find that in my response to you, I pointed out exactly what it reliably indicates; it indicates a rational distrust of people who have not demonstrated that they share the interests of the decider in question. Since you are either unable or unwilling to acknowledge either of these facts (the fact that the refusal to give the money doesn't support your thesis, and the fact that I already pointed out what such a response DOES indicate), I'll spell it out for you for what will likely be the final time (since, as per my ground rules, I have a limit on how much serial dishonesty I will tolerate):
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you have not demonstrated that you share the same goals, so the real and effective question is actually one of "do you believe you can spend your money in a manner more beneficial to your goals as contrasted against a random and likely hostile stranger?"
If we instead looked at a situation of "you" vs. "your friend, who might offer financial or project advice on a specific issue," then actually YES, there are many cases in which such an advisor would be far, far more effective than you within the scope of that advice (for example, a friend of mine who's a chef is a great advisor for getting the most out of a trip to the grocery store, or explaining why/why not -- and when -- to pay more for certain kinds of ingredients, etc.).
So this schoolyard / nyah-nyah notion that a bunch of strangers turning down the "offer" of having you spend their money for them proves anything at all about general economic principles -- beyond demonstrating a well-grounded common distrust of likely cheats and swindlers -- is (at best) silly.
If you meet a stranger on the street and he's holding a briefcase, which he opens to reveal one million dollars, all things being equal, would you trade your $200 with him for the briefcase?
"All things being equal" was absolutely not part of your original premise, nor was it part of your juvenile non-evidence of people refusing to give a stranger a lot of money. If you plan on moving the goalposts and backtracking, you're going to have to acknowledge that you're doing so first.
What am I offering you for your $200? I'm offering the opportunity to help promote the Magna Carta movement. Do you value the Magna Carta movement? No. Therefore, it wouldn't be worth it to give me your $200. If economics boils down to ONE question it is..."Is it worth it?"
If everyone was immortal, had unlimited spending power, no risk of major injury or death, etc., then sure you might (by still oversimplifying many things) boil it all down to "is it worth it?" Back here in the real world, where humans are mortal, work from woefully imperfect information, live under coercive political and economic conditions, and are susceptible to a wide range of irrationalities of habit, it doesn't work that way. Off the top of my head I can think of dozens of causes and actions I consider to be worth doing or indirectly supporting but which my current circumstances do not permit (i.e. my decision to pursue self-preservation under the hostile -- and only -- terms currently available to me takes up an inordinate amount of my finite time and energy, thus precluding me from doing most of them).
Many times all we can do is make an educated guess about the worth of something. That's why...people often ask you..."was it worth it?". If something wasn't worth it...we made a mistake. What does a mistake mean? It means we wasted our valuable limited resources. Nobody wants to waste their limited valuable resources...which is exactly why the most productive citizens end up with the most resources.
If you believe for even a moment that the most productive citizens end up with the most resources, you're profoundly delusional. Income and control over resources isn't even remotely based upon personal contribution to productivity. The wealthiest/most influential people are precisely those whose relationship to income and political influence is NOT anchored to their personal contribution to productivity, because if it were, there's no way they could have their current level of influence (there's a limit to the ACTUAL contribution any given individual can make, and -- newsflash!/This Just In -- if someone's receiving millions of dollars, they've definitely exceeded that limit).
So some people take risks...while others are risk adverse.
Bigoted nonsense. Everyone takes risks. They are forced to. Due to deeply contrived social engineering by elites, the system is gamed to favor those who already have over those who currently do not. Or did you think it's just a miraculous chain of coincidences which so routinely produces the outcomes by which the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, etc? It's NOT an accident.
We need both kinds. We'd never get anywhere if people didn't gamble on their crazy ideas. Most people will lose their home in the process but a few lucky, insightful, creative and determined people will win and provide something that many other people will sacrifice for.
A cold, sober look at elite power will routinely demonstrate that actually...elites risk far, far LESS relative to their livelihood, their social and political power, etc. than everyday working class folks or (especially) the poor. The difference is that since politico economic elites dominate the narratives fed to the public, they have a far more reliable ability to rationalize/whitewash their own complicity in such a mess. In other words, the wealthy are not generally smarter, or harder-working, or better strategists than the rest of the population....rather, they successfully use their privilege to secure even more privilege and to convince others -- and themselves -- that their privilege is earned rather than unearned, "natural" instead of contrived, justified instead of unjustified, etc.
How am I going to argue against emergence or synergy? Of course the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But if you don't believe that the parts included influence what emerges...then you're missing the point.
As usual, you have an annoying habit of attributing positions to people which they neither hold, support, and which do not follow at all from anything they've posted.
What emerges from 150 million taxpayers will be infinitely more valuable than what emerges from 538 congresspeople.
I'm a big fan of having more constituent input into collective decisions vs. less. Some day we might have a productive discussion of that. For the moment, however, you still haven't acknowledged that your silly example of people being unwilling to give lots of money to a stranger actually does NOT demonstrate the claim you assert. You still haven't acknowledged my example of how someone else may indeed be a more effective decider of how to use your money.
I have certain requirements of integrity for those I will continue a discussion with, and so far you're failing to meet those requirements (with flying colors). Perhaps if you spent fewer calories on congratulating yourself for scoring imaginary points in an imaginary contest, and more calories on accurately and substantively responding to fellow human beings, you might get somewhere. (Of course, this assumes that substantive discussion is a priority for you, and at this point such an assumption may be too charitable).
Again, you're simply not understanding the concept of the invisible hand.
Actually, YOU don't understand the concept of the invisible hand. Current political and economic conditions violate not just one or a few...but ALL of the prerequisite conditions for the existence and operation of a functional free market. I'd explain further, but we're still stuck waiting for you to acknowledge the fallacy of your original premise (your silly notion that people refusing to give out their money to a suspicious stranger somehow demonstrates that an individual always knows best how to spend their money).
Don't get caught up in the propaganda against the concept. The invisible hand is basically the idea of tolerance.
Wrong. The concept of the invisible hand is an assertion of an instance of synergy/emergence, in which is it alleged that *under very specific conditions*, the economic desires of individual actors -- expressed through consumer choice mediated through purchase -- will end up reflecting the aggregate economic demands of the population as a whole.
It concerns Buddha's parable of the blind men touching different parts of the elephant. You and I certainly have different values and opinions and perspectives. Even though we disagree there's incredible value in not imposing our decisions on each other. There's incredible economic benefit to tolerance. You allocate your taxes according to your values...and I allocate my taxes according to my values. What do you have against tolerance?
Of course there's great opportunity in promotion of tolerance. That's not, however, at all what the invisible hand concept seeks to address. Furthermore (as usual), you attempt to attribute positions to others which they don't hold (rejection of your false presentation of the Invisible Hand does not, for example, imply opposition to tolerance).
You're shooting at the wrong target. So I have to make the target more obvious to see if you can hit it. You keep missing it. The target is whether your perspective should matter.
Wrong. No poster visible to me has taken the position that one's perspective shouldn't matter. Once again, you are not free to make up your own facts. Facts actually matter. If you can't be bothered to accurately summarize and acknowledge the views and evidence of other posters, there's little point in your participation here (save, perhaps, the possible juvenile kick of successful baiting).
When it comes to economics...do people's perspectives matter? When it comes to the distribution of resources...should your perspective matter? Your perspective only matters when you can choose how you use your limited time/money. That's your target. You know why? Because that's my argument.
Short of absolute robotic totalitarianism (in which a robotic suit prevented people from controlling their own body movements), it is always the case that one at least has primary influence over what they do with their time. That might be an interesting topic to look at later, but for the moment, we're still stuck with dealing with your dishonesty. Maybe, in some unknown future time when you can bring yourself to acknowledge the fallacy of your early premise (the fact that people being unwilling to give a suspicious stranger a substantial sum of money does NOT demonstrate that the individual summarily knows best how to spend their money effectively), then at THAT point, we might move on.
