A "Free Market" System is Not Sensible

Hawkeye10 said:

Playing basketball is fun, people should play all the basketball they want......but it is not very productive to society, these mega millionaires who entertain us. We need to get some bang for our bucks, we the society do. When money is frivolously spent bad things follow usually.

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Why does Basketball players owe you anything? They are paid because you buy their merchandise or watch the games, those Millionaires pay MILLIONS in taxes! I think you should try harder and stop complaining about what others have.

Moderate Right said:

In other words, you are saying that all elected officials are scumbags because they will all get bought and not actually represent their constituents. What do you propose to do about that?

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Elected officials should be graded by their peers quarterly! If his district feel he's failing them they should be able to vote him out of office and replace him! That would hold these bastards accountable

xMathFanx said:

A "Free Market" System is Not Sensible

Society does not necessarily always value rational things, and others are able to profit tremendously off of the stupidity/ignorance/ect.
Lets take Professional athletes as the first example:

Do you see any problems with this, or do you believe that the Market is the best determining agent in matters such as this?

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Alright, let's pretend I'm a professional athlete like Lebron James, and I completely agree with you. I make way too much money considering all I do is play a game. So I tell you what I want instead. You can keep my salary, all I want is for every single person who comes to one of my games, or watches me on T.V., or buys one of my Jersey's or a product I've endorsed to give me 25 cents. That's it. I realize nobody needs any of my services, and they're not very important in the grand scheme of things so just 25 cents from each person who wants to watch me play is all I ask.

Is 25 cents fair? Is that too much? How about a dime? A Nickel? Turns out millions and millions of people watch Lebron James play basketball every year, and millions more buy products he endorses. So even at 10 cents per fan, that would add up to a multi-million dollar yearly salary.

Okay, now let's take something a bit more important like being a Teacher. What if I was a teacher, and I agreed with you? I said screw this **** my job is more important than Lebron James' so I'm going to demand more. He wants 25 cents from everyone, well since my job is 3000 times more important I'm going to demand 3000 times more. I'll demand $750 dollars from every single solitary student I teach in a year.

Is that fair? Seems legit to me. An education is definately worth 3000 times more than watching a basketball game. So how much does our teacher make now. Turns out the average teacher only really ends up educating about 50 children in a given year. That would still put him/her at a salary of about $37,500 for the whole year.

What you have to understand is that while an individual's true value to each individual member of society may be tiny, when that small value is generated for millions of people it adds up big time. Conversley even though a person's work has a much bigger value to each individual person that benefits, it can sometimes be difficult to give that benefit to more than a handful of people in a given year. Millionaires and Billionaires in this country don't get rich by scaming individuals out of a ton of money, they get wealthy by leveraging a very small amount of money off of Millions of people.

But there's whole other aspect to this as well. Let's pretend we decided to start paying teachers a million dollars a year, and basketball players were only allowed to make $30,000 per year. What would happen? Lebron James would go into teaching. Heck, I'd quite my job as a software developer and go into teaching for that kind of money. The result is that we'd have a massive surplus of teachers, and we'd be spending a **** ton more on eduction than we really need to. No offense to teachers or anything, but there are a lot of people who could do their jobs effectively. I've been told many times that I would make an excellent teacher by other teachers. I chose to become a software developer because I also have a talent for that, and there's way more money in it. The money is there because of demand.

Now, with respect to you overall. Is a free market system sensible? Generally yes it is, but it does require regulation. Not to balance out unfairness, but because sometimes competition leads to cheating. Sometimes in an effort to win corporations can be motivated to cut corners and resort to some underhanded things that most people wouldn't approve of. But so long as companies can hide their bad behavior under the covers and only let their customers see the end product at a low price few customers will hold them accountable for their mis-deeds. What's worse is that if one company does some shady things it can force all their competitors to do shady things just to keep up with them. This can often cause something in Economics called a Nash Equalibrium or bad Equalibrium. Usually you need government to step in and stop it.

Lastly, while most wealthy people do deserve to make the salaries they make initially, they also deserve to pay significanly higher taxes on top of that. If you benefit exponentially from a society then you should be required to pay exponentially more to keep that society running. The tax code is a completely seperate discussion from whether or not the free market works. Generally it does work quite well.

Hawkeye10 said:

We need to get some bang for our bucks, we the society do.

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Maybe. I am uncomfortable about who measures this "bang", and what this entity does about it when their definition of "need" is not met.

When money is frivolously spent bad things follow usually.

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Or maybe just "sometimes". Don't forget that many of the things we consider to be important today would have been considered frivolous 100 years ago. Who is to decide what is "frivolous"?

Marco Montana said:

Elected officials should be graded by their peers quarterly! If his district feel he's failing them they should be able to vote him out of office and replace him! That would hold these bastards accountable

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That's just not realistic. That's why they have elections in the first place. If constituents aren't happy with the results then they are voted out at the time of the next election. In fact, incumbents win re-election the huge majority of the time.

xMathFanx said:

A "Free Market" System is Not Sensible

Society does not necessarily always value rational things, and others are able to profit tremendously off of the stupidity/ignorance/ect. of the masses that support it. Examples of this are Musicians, actors, athletes, celebrities ect. ect. that in a rational society, are definitely not necessarily more deserving than an Engineer for instance (as our modern world is based on Science and Tech, not Rap/Justin Beiber-type Pop music, Kim Kardashian's ass, ect. ect).

Consider, a huge portion of the nation's wealth is being put into sectors of society that serve no real productive purpose/lack in value while areas of high value such as intellectual pursuits are dramatically underfunded and discouraged (in many respects). This is due to society at large sharing the same collective delusions and valuing trivial bullsh't over serious, productive endeavors. This will always incentivize and produce a non-rational society unless structures are fundamentally challenged/altered.

Lets take Professional athletes as the first example:

NBA- Out of 456 players in the league in 2017-18, 120 make $10,000,000 or more for one years worth of work and 389 make more than $1,000,000. The minimum salary for a 1st year player is over $800,000 per year. Links here:
A. ESPN: The Worldwide Leader in Sports
B. Minimum Salary Scales under the 2017 CBA

NFL- Minimum salary for 1st year players is over $450,000 per year. 656 players make at least $1,000,000 per year or more. Links here:
A. NFL Minimum Salaries for 2017 | The Daily Spot
B. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/salary.htm

MLB- 112 players make $10,000,000 or more per year. Out of 251 players total, 240 make $1,000,000 or more per year

Actors and musicians that "make it" get huge salaries and the ones that don't get salaries on par with other "common" jobs.

Now, contrast that to absolutely necessary fields such as Science & Maths, Engineering, Architecture, Construction Work, Waste Management, Medical Doctors, Teachers, Repairs, Farming, Electricians, Labor Intensive work, ect. ect. and fields that, although not necessary, should be prioritized/held in high esteem in a non-superficial, deep, passionate, engaged society (i.e. rational) such as Literature, History, Philosophy, Art, ect. ect.

Consider the process of becoming a Scientist (which, depending on the subject matter, is perhaps the chief field pushing innovation forward that makes all of our lives orders of magnitude more comfortable than our ancestors could have ever dreamed of--as well as revealing deep truths about the nature of our existence and the universe). One must first pay large sums of money to attend a school for 4-5 years, then proceed to further schooling for another 5-7 years (while attempting to live off of a stipend of $15,000-$25,000 or so per year--i.e.very poor), then must find a post-doc position for another 3-7 years or so which is typically only $20,000-$35,000 a year, by which time a person has been nearly dirt poor for a 15 years or more and then, finally, may find a research/professorship position (however there is absolutely no guarantee since the funding is so low due to the irrationality I have discussed--thus competition is fierce) or they very well may end up empty handed (no Science research job and/or professorship) even after that approaching two decade long process. Here are some of the fundamental questions involved:

Why in the Hell do we treat some of the greatest minds amongst us doing work that is absolutely imperative so poorly? Why do we treat others doing necessary work (e.g. Construction Workers, sewer management, ect.) so poorly? Why are we putting people who do not contribute anything to the productivity of society and/or our expanding knowledge about ourselves/the Universe up on a pedestal (e.g. Katy Perry, Kardashians, Pro Athletes, ect. ect.)?

Do you see any problems with this, or do you believe that the Market is the best determining agent in matters such as this?

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It's sensible in that any other system is even more flawed. Besides, those individuals also pay a heck of a lot more taxes than I do, and I get to drive on the roads that their tax dollars helped pay to pave.

Marco Montana said:

Why does Basketball players owe you anything? They are paid because you buy their merchandise or watch the games, those Millionaires pay MILLIONS in taxes! I think you should try harder and stop complaining about what others have.

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Hi Marco, I very much enjoy your content.

When societies mis allocate wealth they always suffer for the mistake....and it is most certainly a mistake.

We do it constantly now, because we suck now, we suck so much that we are failing as a SuperPower at stunning speed, and the world order is about to collapse...there is no saving it now, it is too far gone, because too many people for too long have not cared about doing things right.,,,and too many are now too ignorant to know what right is.