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A bee discovers a flower patch. She returns to the hive and dances to communicate the location and importance of the patch to the other bees. The longer/harder she dances, the more important the patch. She essentially spends her limited and precious calories to correctly inform the other bees of the flower patch’s importance. Is she spending her calories to buy the flower patch? Nope. She spends her calories to signal its importance.
Now think about your favorite book in the world. Which book is it? How much did you pay for it? My favorite book is Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and I paid $0 dollars for it. Good deal?
With buying the focus is on getting the best deals. Except, the better the deal, the bigger the disparity between what we pay and our perception of importance. So better deals mean falser signals.
Imagine what would happen to the bee hive if the signals were falser. Too many bees would go to less important flower patches and too few bees would go to more important flower patches. In economic terms, the hive would inefficiently allocate its limited labor. The result would be far less pollen, nectar and honey.
The logical conclusion is that we should never spend our money to buy/acquire things. In all cases we should spend our money to signal the importance of things. We should never spend our money to buy books. Instead, we should spend our money to signal the importance of books.
One possibility is for people who subscribe to Amazon Kindle Unlimited (AKU) to have the option to use their subscription dollars to signal the importance of the titles. If I was a subscriber and the Wealth of Nations one of the titles, then each month I could decide how many of my $10 subscription dollars to spend on my favorite book. It would be possible for me to spend all $10 dollars each month on it. In one year I would have spent $120 dollars on it. In two years I would have spent $240 dollars on it. In one decade I would have spent $1,200 dollars on it. The point obviously wouldn't be to try and fairly compensate Adam Smith for his book. He's long dead. The point would be to try and encourage more consumers to read it and more producers to beat it.
How would this work with things like food? Well, imagine if people could choose where their taxes go (pragmatarianism). Some people would give their taxes to soup kitchens. Would these taxpayers be spending their tax dollars to buy the soup? Nope. They would simply be signalling the importance of providing free food to the needy. But just like with the flower patches, soup kitchens wouldn't be equally important. Some would do a better job of providing food to the needy. These would get more funding, which would allow them to supply even more food. Except, at some point they would be supplying more food than the needy truly needed. This food wouldn't go to waste though. It would be offered to the less needy. So taxpayers would allocate more and more taxes to the best soup kitchens, and less and less money would be spent at restaurants. Eventually there wouldn't be any restaurants left. There would just be a wide variety of really excellent soup kitchens. Everybody could eat every meal for free.
It would be a pretty big paradigm shift to replace buying with signaling. But what's available for us to enjoy depends on the accuracy of signals. So focusing solely on the signaling will maximize the abundance of enjoyable things.
Now think about your favorite book in the world. Which book is it? How much did you pay for it? My favorite book is Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and I paid $0 dollars for it. Good deal?
With buying the focus is on getting the best deals. Except, the better the deal, the bigger the disparity between what we pay and our perception of importance. So better deals mean falser signals.
Imagine what would happen to the bee hive if the signals were falser. Too many bees would go to less important flower patches and too few bees would go to more important flower patches. In economic terms, the hive would inefficiently allocate its limited labor. The result would be far less pollen, nectar and honey.
The logical conclusion is that we should never spend our money to buy/acquire things. In all cases we should spend our money to signal the importance of things. We should never spend our money to buy books. Instead, we should spend our money to signal the importance of books.
One possibility is for people who subscribe to Amazon Kindle Unlimited (AKU) to have the option to use their subscription dollars to signal the importance of the titles. If I was a subscriber and the Wealth of Nations one of the titles, then each month I could decide how many of my $10 subscription dollars to spend on my favorite book. It would be possible for me to spend all $10 dollars each month on it. In one year I would have spent $120 dollars on it. In two years I would have spent $240 dollars on it. In one decade I would have spent $1,200 dollars on it. The point obviously wouldn't be to try and fairly compensate Adam Smith for his book. He's long dead. The point would be to try and encourage more consumers to read it and more producers to beat it.
How would this work with things like food? Well, imagine if people could choose where their taxes go (pragmatarianism). Some people would give their taxes to soup kitchens. Would these taxpayers be spending their tax dollars to buy the soup? Nope. They would simply be signalling the importance of providing free food to the needy. But just like with the flower patches, soup kitchens wouldn't be equally important. Some would do a better job of providing food to the needy. These would get more funding, which would allow them to supply even more food. Except, at some point they would be supplying more food than the needy truly needed. This food wouldn't go to waste though. It would be offered to the less needy. So taxpayers would allocate more and more taxes to the best soup kitchens, and less and less money would be spent at restaurants. Eventually there wouldn't be any restaurants left. There would just be a wide variety of really excellent soup kitchens. Everybody could eat every meal for free.
It would be a pretty big paradigm shift to replace buying with signaling. But what's available for us to enjoy depends on the accuracy of signals. So focusing solely on the signaling will maximize the abundance of enjoyable things.
