"Fuck the poor"

[Master of Ossus]

Show me where I said that they set an infinite price rather than just, you know, a price that does not match the value the buyers place on the commodities? Now you are just strawmanning.

Ummm... yeah, the monopoly price is precisely the value that buyers place on the commodities. It is the market price in a monopoly.

Moreover, you stated that a monopolist (or a cartel) "will charge whatever price they fucking feel like charging," as if this is necessarily separate from the value that buyers place on the commodities. Again, your ignorance of basic economics prevents you from reasonably evaluating the model presented.

If it sounds like I'm harping on this, then I apologize, but you really can't have a reasoned discussion on this subject until you understand water-diamond paradox and its resolution. Your entire criticism of Surlethe's argument boils down to the fact that you don't have that understanding.

Okay, and so if we only have enough food for the rich people, why are the poor equally deserving?

Why are the rich more deserving? Burden of proof is on you, buddy.

This goes back to Surlethe's argument, which you have not debunked at all, showing yourself in the process to be entirely incapable of having a discussion about economics without bungling it and entirely devoid of reading comprehension and intelligence.

[Formless]

Show me where I said that they set an infinite price rather than just, you know, a price that does not match the value the buyers place on the commodities? Now you are just strawmanning.

Ummm... yeah, the monopoly price is precisely the value that buyers place on the commodities. It is the market price in a monopoly.

In other words, you simply define value in the moral sense as equal to monetary value, because by definition whatever the pricetag on a commodity it must be the value buyers put on it even when its been forced upon people by a monopoly or conspiracy by the sellers. The words "Begging the Question" come to mind why?

Why are the rich more deserving? Burden of proof is on you, buddy.

This goes back to Surlethe's argument, which you have not debunked at all, showing yourself in the process to be entirely incapable of having a discussion about economics without bungling it and entirely devoid of reading comprehension and intelligence.

You are now stating Surlethe's argument is true by fiat, even when the validity of measuring the desire of the buyers by what they are willing to pay has been thoroughly debunked. That you refuse to accept this is telling. At best it indicates you have not been keeping track of this thread or this argument, or you would know what it is I was disputing in his argument.

[Andrew J.]

Monopolistic necessity suppliers are bound in their pricing decisions by extra-market forces, like government intervention, the threat of government intervention, and the possibility of their customers rioting and murdering them all. Absent such factors, I would expect such suppliers to increase the prices of their goods and/or services as high as they could without causing their customers to starve to death.

[Formless]

Monopolistic necessity suppliers are bound in their pricing decisions by extra-market forces, like government intervention, the threat of government intervention, and the possibility of their customers rioting and murdering them all. Absent such factors, I would expect such suppliers to increase the prices of their goods and/or services as high as they could without causing their customers to starve to death.

They would simply leave them miserable instead. Hence why there is a difference between moral utility and economic utility, and why we have those extra-market forces in the first place.

[Simon_Jester]

MoO, you're being foolish. The fact remains that in a very real sense, food is not a luxury. You may, if you are lucky, have the option of choosing one kind of food over another. You do not have the option of choosing to abstain from food entirely. Likewise water or air. You don't really have the choice of abstaining from shelter either.

That is Formless's point: that there exist commodities where the buyer's need for the item is greatly out of proportion to the seller's need to sell it. Or vice versa. In these situations, market-fundamentalist models that are designed to track the price of luxuries like lattes and iPods do not, and can not, apply.

So... in Formless' world, we would expect to see people who sold things like food to be able to charge fundamentally limitless prices for such products. Yet... McDonald's charges something like $7 for a value meal. That might be rated as "expensive," depending on your frame of reference I suppose, but it's hardly infinite and certainly doesn't constitute a substantial fraction of the total net worth of most of their customers (in fact, I'd be hard pressed to find or even conceive of any food supplier who regularly sold their wares at prices which regularly rivaled the net worth of their customers). Ergo, supply and demand seems a much better explanatory model for this situation than Formless'... formless theory.

MoO, your argument has become so facetious I cannot for a moment believe that you take it seriously, unless you are colossally suggestible, and have somehow imprinted on this bizarre notion promoted by Surlethe as an exercise in devil's advocacy. Or unless you are so contentious and obstinate that the mere fact that Formless believes something magically compels you to disagree with it, no matter how blindly idiotic you have to be to keep on disagreeing.

I for one would like to cut the bullshit. So, let us return to the original proposition of this thread:

There is no way to measure utility (or value - I conflate the two) save by the actions that people take. The only rational measure of utility given a person by a particular outcome is what the person is willing to voluntarily sacrifice to achieve the outcome. In particular, we can measure the value of a person by what other people are willing to give up for him.

The bidding process therefore measures the value a person places upon a good or service. The person bidding the highest receives the good or service because he values it most. What of income inequality? Simple: the person with more income is a person more valuable to society. Therefore, goods and services are allocated not just to those people who derive great utility from them but also to those whom society, i.e., the aggregate of all other human beings, values most, as measured by the voluntary transfer of resources from all other human beings to that individual.

Note that this process only accurately measures utility when people are not coerced, i.e., not threatened with direct harm by other humans should a particular outcome occur.

I am calling on you to explain to me the following:

1) How does this model work in light of irrationalities of pricing?
I'm not talking about monopolies or other tactics seen in competitive markets, either. I'm talking about fundamental limits of human psychology. Human beings are not capable of setting consistent, reliable prices on objects in terms of currency. This is easily proven. The most obvious example of is hyperbolic discounting: people who would rather take a dollar tomorrow than ten dollars in a year and a day. Or, conversely, are willing to spend ten dollars a day for a net result that they would not pay nine hundred dollars in a lump sum to get for the next ninety days. People are irrational like that.

How do you address the problem of situations where people empirically do not consistently settle on a price for a commodity that accurately reflects their short term and long term wishes?

2) Why do you draw no distinction between "willing to pay" and "willing and able to pay?"
Are there not ways by which I might come by the ability to pay for my desires without, in fact, doing anything of value to society? Say, by theft, or inheritance? Conversely, are there not ways by which I might be deprived of the ability to pay for my desires even though I continue to do things of value to society? Say, by a natural disaster?

3) Why do you believe an income curve to be necessary to utilitarianism?
In particular, why do you believe a draconian version of the curve is necessary, one where, as a practical matter, the value of your continued existence is set not by some kind of index of future potential, not by some kind of consideration of the effects on society of letting a dozen people die to save one, but by the size of the pile of small green bits of paper you happen to have on your person at the time?

4) What makes you think that the number of units of fiat currency that can be exchanged for an item is an objective measure?
Few, if any, modern nations use currency that bears any objective resemblance to reality. Currency is a social convention, not a concrete thing that exists outside our minds. The value of currency is defined by our willingness to accept it as a token of value, a symbol. In this case, the map is not the territory: you cannot eat money.

5) Why do you think an "objective measure of value" is so urgently needed?
Because having found one, you immediately threw all the normal ethical concerns of the non-sociopathic fraction of the human race out the window. What's the rush? Why did you suddenly stop giving a damn about whether your proposed ethical system works for the benefit of actual people, rather than towards the optimization of some arbitrary quantity? Because you have, so far, blithely dismissed the possibility that the system might simply break down when confronted with commodities essential for life. Or that there might be commodities (say, a child's education) which have a value to society very different from what some individuals can be prevailed on to pay for it.

[Master of Ossus]

In other words, you simply define value in the moral sense as equal to monetary value, because by definition whatever the pricetag on a commodity it must be the value buyers put on it even when its been forced upon people by a monopoly or conspiracy by the sellers.

Because that is the observable, market-clearing price at the quantity that is sold.

The words "Begging the Question" come to mind why?

I have no idea. This is explained clearly in Surlethe's original argument. That you ignore it is no surprise: you have demonstrated repeatedly that you are willfully ignorant of what other people have posted in this thread.

You are now stating Surlethe's argument is true by fiat, even when the validity of measuring the desire of the buyers by what they are willing to pay has been thoroughly debunked.

Where? Cite this post. It's explained clearly in the OP that actions are the only observable measure of desire.

That you refuse to accept this is telling. At best it indicates you have not been keeping track of this thread or this argument, or you would know what it is I was disputing in his argument.

How, though? Simply by asserting that you can go around asking people how much they value things, or by trying to point to monopolies as examples in which the market magically ceases to operate (even though it doesn't, and even though your model produces demonstrably false predictions in such circumstances)?

[Formless]

The problem with MoO, Simon, is that he seems unable to distinguish a moral argument from an economic argument (although there is the more sinister possibility that he may honestly believe that economic concerns outweigh moral ones!). I looked up the diamond-water paradox. It states that for some reason water, though infinitely more useful, is considered less valuable to people than diamonds for the purpose of exchanging goods. Look at that last part.

Now, what is an instrumental value? Its something that is valuable only because it allows you to obtain (exchange for) something else of value. Which means that its worth is directly subservient to the value of something else-- namely, satisfying one's preferences (or whatever particular utilitarian goal you decide to adopt. You don't have to limit yourself to just one, either).

The fact that water has (or rather had-- there are technological uses for diamonds, even before we consider the social functions of art and jewelry) more practical uses than diamonds is simply the end of the story as far as a utilitarian is concerned. It has the higher value. There is no paradox from a utilitarian perspective-- humans are just irrational. News at eleven.

MoO's argument that I (and by extension you) don't understand economics is completely irrelevant here, because our arguments are predominately moral, not economic. Frankly, until he understands that this argument is going to go nowhere.

Edit:

Where? Cite this post. It's explained clearly in the OP that actions are the only observable measure of desire.

When I read this I almost laughed out loud. I got this image of someone trying to measure their girlfriend's sexual desire in the manner described and getting slapped in the face. Just one of those hilarities I didn't notice before.

[Master of Ossus]

I for one would like to cut the bullshit. So, let us return to the original proposition of this thread:

There is no way to measure utility (or value - I conflate the two) save by the actions that people take. The only rational measure of utility given a person by a particular outcome is what the person is willing to voluntarily sacrifice to achieve the outcome. In particular, we can measure the value of a person by what other people are willing to give up for him.

The bidding process therefore measures the value a person places upon a good or service. The person bidding the highest receives the good or service because he values it most. What of income inequality? Simple: the person with more income is a person more valuable to society. Therefore, goods and services are allocated not just to those people who derive great utility from them but also to those whom society, i.e., the aggregate of all other human beings, values most, as measured by the voluntary transfer of resources from all other human beings to that individual.

Note that this process only accurately measures utility when people are not coerced, i.e., not threatened with direct harm by other humans should a particular outcome occur.

I am calling on you to explain to me the following:

1) How does this model work in light of irrationalities of pricing?
I'm not talking about monopolies or other tactics seen in competitive markets, either. I'm talking about fundamental limits of human psychology. Human beings are not capable of setting consistent, reliable prices on objects in terms of currency. This is easily proven. The most obvious example of is hyperbolic discounting: people who would rather take a dollar tomorrow than ten dollars in a year and a day. Or, conversely, are willing to spend ten dollars a day for a net result that they would not pay nine hundred dollars in a lump sum to get for the next ninety days. People are irrational like that.

1. The example that you give is a perfect example of individual preference which is revealed by pricing decisions. It in no way invalidates the market mechanism explained by Surlethe: it is just an unusual preference which is revealed by their actions in discounting. Some people have different preferences over time than others. I cannot understand how you think that this invalidates the mechanism explained by Surlethe.
2. Again, in competitive markets (which clear at the margin), the behavior of individual outliers does not mean that the market as a whole is irrational. Again, prices are set at the margin. There is no reason to believe that, because some people price irrationally, the market must therefore price irrationally because only the preferences of the marginal consumer impact market price.

How do you address the problem of situations where people empirically do not consistently settle on a price for a commodity that accurately reflects their short term and long term wishes?

Again, I'm not sure what you mean. Peoples' preferences for goods change over time, and their preferences for current vs. future consumption can be different from the preferences which are set at the margin. This is not in any way a challenge to the model.

2) Why do you draw no distinction between "willing to pay" and "willing and able to pay?"
Are there not ways by which I might come by the ability to pay for my desires without, in fact, doing anything of value to society? Say, by theft, or inheritance? Conversely, are there not ways by which I might be deprived of the ability to pay for my desires even though I continue to do things of value to society? Say, by a natural disaster?

Yes, there are. This is a much more powerful argument than anything that moron, Formless, was asserting. Indeed, this is one of Rawls' challenges to the model, which I already referenced in one of my first posts to that idiot.

Utilitarianism disregards these mechanisms through the concept of social insurance. You can buy that or dismiss it to the degree that you think it deserves.

3) Why do you believe an income curve to be necessary to utilitarianism?
In particular, why do you believe a draconian version of the curve is necessary, one where, as a practical matter, the value of your continued existence is set not by some kind of index of future potential, not by some kind of consideration of the effects on society of letting a dozen people die to save one, but by the size of the pile of small green bits of paper you happen to have on your person at the time?

I don't understand this criticism in the slightest. You'll have to explain, further. An income constraint is necessary to an understanding of the utility curve, because it reveals the actual purchases that an individual will make. Indeed, a constraint of some kind is necessary to understanding the problem of resource allocation: without a constraint, there is no problem of resource allocation because you have presupposed infinite resources.

4) What makes you think that the number of units of fiat currency that can be exchanged for an item is an objective measure?

It is objective. It can be readily ascertained by empirical observation. This is the definition of objective.

Few, if any, modern nations use currency that bears any objective resemblance to reality. Currency is a social convention, not a concrete thing that exists outside our minds. The value of currency is defined by our willingness to accept it as a token of value, a symbol. In this case, the map is not the territory: you cannot eat money.

And, yet, it can be exchanged for a virtually unlimited range of goods and services at readily-ascertainable, objective rates. I think this is your failure to understand what the term "objective" means.

5) Why do you think an "objective measure of value" is so urgently needed?

I don't, but we have one.

Because having found one, you immediately threw all the normal ethical concerns of the non-sociopathic fraction of the human race out the window. What's the rush? Why did you suddenly stop giving a damn about whether your proposed ethical system works for the benefit of actual people, rather than towards the optimization of some arbitrary quantity?

Because that IS the moral model that we are evaluating. It is not answerable to the sort of moral or ethical concerns that you or I might present and hold up as important. It's not a particularly good criticism of the model to say, "Well... other systems of morality wouldn't agree with that because they value [X, Y, or Z]."

Because you have, so far, blithely dismissed the possibility that the system might simply break down when confronted with commodities essential for life.

I don't think it does, at all. Again, this is water-diamond paradox.

Or that there might be commodities (say, a child's education) which have a value to society very different from what some individuals can be prevailed on to pay for it.

THIS is the better criticism. Thank you. Finally. The sort of strict libertarian model presented by Surlethe does not recognize circumstances of market failure. Presumably, a true adherent would either dismiss them or else retreat to the concept that it limits the application of their moral system. I'm actually not sure what they'd do, to be frank, but at least it attacks the premises of their moral code rather than presenting all manner of Formless' idiotic strawmen.

[Master of Ossus]

The problem with MoO, Simon, is that he seems unable to distinguish a moral argument from an economic argument (although there is the more sinister possibility that he may honestly believe that economic concerns outweigh moral ones!). I looked up the diamond-water paradox. It states that for some reason water, though infinitely more useful, is considered less valuable to people than diamonds for the purpose of exchanging goods. Look at that last part.

Now, what is an instrumental value? Its something that is valuable only because it allows you to obtain (exchange for) something else of value. Which means that its worth is directly subservient to the value of something else-- namely, satisfying one's preferences (or whatever particular utilitarian goal you decide to adopt. You don't have to limit yourself to just one, either).

The fact that water has (or rather had-- there are technological uses for diamonds, even before we consider the social functions of art and jewelry) more practical uses than diamonds is simply the end of the story as far as a utilitarian is concerned. It has the higher value. There is no paradox from a utilitarian perspective-- humans are just irrational. News at eleven.

So, basically, after looking up water-diamond paradox you completely missed the fucking point and you still don't understand the answer. The resolution has nothing to do with irrational behavior on the part of humans. Any utilitarianist thinker would immediately see that it presents no problem whatsoever to their worldview. Instead, you continue to champion water-diamond as if it completely refutes the entire OP, when in fact it poses no challenge at all to it (hint: it was resolved a long time ago; prices are set at the margin).

MoO's argument that I (and by extension you) don't understand economics is completely irrelevant here, because our arguments are predominately moral, not economic. Frankly, until he understands that this argument is going to go nowhere.

Again, utilitarianism is an ethical system that is grounded in an understanding of basic concepts of economics. Since you obviously don't understand them and can't be bothered to read about them even when it is repeatedly pointed out to you that they are fundamental and entirely defeat your moronic criticisms of the system you therefore cannot even evaluate utilitarianism to understand its precepts or its conclusions.

And, no, your criticisms have not been based on morality. Your criticisms have been designed to find inconsistencies with utilitarianism itself, and you have repeatedly claimed victory even when it's pointed out to you that the claimed "inconsistencies," are in fact not inconsistent at all, and you have simply erred in your (mis)understanding of the economics involved.

[Formless]

So, basically, after looking up water-diamond paradox you completely missed the fucking point and you still don't understand the answer. The resolution has nothing to do with irrational behavior on the part of humans. Any utilitarianist thinker would immediately see that it presents no problem whatsoever.

That's exactly the point. The paradox does not exist, because the fundamental assumption that diamonds are actually valuable is unsupported and flies in the face of their status.

Again, utilitarianism is an ethical system that is grounded in an understanding of basic concepts of economics.

No, its grounded in an understanding of human psychology. Words like "preference," "pleasure," "happiness," "pain," "misery," and so on have nothing to do with resources, let alone economics. Buy a philosophy textbook, then try again.

[Master of Ossus]

That's exactly the point. The paradox does not exist, because the fundamental assumption that diamonds are actually valuable is unsupported and flies in the face of their status.

So your insistence that food is more valuable than money is precisely... oh, yeah, the same thing. Thanks for playing.

But, actually, that isn't the point: diamonds are valuable. They are more valuable, quantity-for-quantity, than water (even though water is necessary for human existence--just like the food that you've asserted somehow refutes the line of argument in the OP--and diamonds are not). Again, you cannot resolve this because you don't understand the resolution to water-diamond paradox, even though it's been explained to you repeatedly throughout the thread. Instead, you repeatedly fall back to the concept that "people are irrational." But the water-diamond paradox has a logical, rational explanation--it is this resolution which I challenge you to understand.

No, its grounded in an understanding of human psychology. Words like "preference," "pleasure," "happiness," "pain," "misery," and so on have nothing to do with resources, let alone economics. Buy a philosophy textbook, then try again.

I suppose that this at least is fair, but again it misses the point: all of your critiques of utilitarianism are baseless because economics explains that they are in and of themselves illogical and inconsistent.

[Formless]

So your insistence that food is more valuable than money is precisely... oh, yeah, the same thing. Thanks for playing.

Because if you don't eat you starve to death. That is empirical evidence enough as to its value. If you have no money, you may just be living in a society that has no money. That suggests it has no value that we didn't give it artificially.

But, actually, that isn't the point: diamonds are valuable.

Bull. Shit. You keep stating this, and you keep failing to back it up with evidence beyond your own say-so.

I suppose that this at least is fair, but again it misses the point: all of your critiques of utilitarianism are baseless because economics explains that they are in and of themselves illogical and inconsistent.

Bullshit. First of all because I am a Utilitarian, why would I attack it? I'm attacking Utilitarian based Libertarianism a la the OP *. Appealing to the way economics works proves nothing. Someone fails to eat: they starve. That's utility. Someone has no money: they might be living in a communist state that provides for their needs, both physiological and social. It does not have utility. If you want to disagree, go ahead and starve. See how long you last before your stomach starts rebelling against your pea sized brain.

* read, asshole:

(Note that this deals with utilitarian libertarianism and not deontological libertarianism, which is a different beast entirely.)

[Master of Ossus]

Because if you don't eat you starve to death. That is empirical evidence enough as to its value. If you have no money, you may just be living in a society that has no money. That suggests it has no value that we didn't give it artificially.

How is this relevant, at all? That some societies value things that others do not is no critique at all. And, again, you don't understand the model. WHY is water priced at a lower point than diamonds, even though people who had water could (in your view) charge whatever they wanted for it?

Bull. Shit. You keep stating this, and you keep failing to back it up with evidence beyond your own say-so.

http://www.diamondse.info/

Bullshit. First of all because I am a Utilitarian, why would I attack it? I'm attacking Utilitarian based Libertarianism a la the OP *. Appealing to the way economics works proves nothing. Someone fails to eat: they starve. That's utility. Someone has no money: they might be living in a communist state that provides for their needs, both physiological and social. It does not have utility. If you want to disagree, go ahead and starve. See how long you last before your stomach starts rebelling against your pea sized brain.

* read, asshole:

(Note that this deals with utilitarian libertarianism and not deontological libertarianism, which is a different beast entirely.)

Conceded, now explain why this idea that there are goods which are important to human survival necessarily invalidates utilitarian libertarianism. Oh, yeah, you can't because you don't understand water-diamond paradox, and this completely resolves the mechanisms which you have repeatedly advanced as somehow invalidating the system.

[Formless]

WHY is water priced at a lower point than diamonds, even though people who had water could (in your view) charge whatever they wanted for it?

This is actually two questions. To the first (why are diamonds more expensive than water): it is because humans have an odd fascination with rarity and shiny things. However, is =! ought. If it has value (which I do not actually deny, after a fact) it is not intrinsic to itself, and it does not necessarily follow that it is more valuable than water. To the second (why don't people who sell water charge enormous sums for it), historically water has been so abundant that you would be a fool to even try to monopolize it, if the thought even occurred to you. As our societies began making markets, they never stopped to worry about the price of water, if they thought about it at all. However, if you got caught shitting in the well everyone in your village drank from, you would likely have been punished by them because regardless of its abundance, it is still that much more valuable to society.

http://www.diamondse.info/

Is =! ought. You are an incredible moron. I ask you to prove that diamonds should be considered valuable, so you simply point to the fact that morons are willing to pay huge sums of money for them! What if I were to do the same thing with a used car lot? Does the word "scam" mean anything to you?

Conceded, now explain why this idea that there are goods which are important to human survival necessarily invalidates utilitarian libertarianism. Oh, yeah, you can't because you don't understand water-diamond paradox, and this completely resolves the mechanisms which you have repeatedly advanced as somehow invalidating the system.

It invalidates Libertarianism because if we accept that there are things that cannot be sold on the market and ever expect a fair price, then society's only other option is to have a government or similar power distribute them instead, and distribute them evenly. We call that "socialism" and its the opposite of Libertarianism in any of its incarnations *. More specifically as far as this thread is concerned, it shows that the rich are, on some level, no more special or deserving of such goods than poor people; and that they desire certain things approximately as much as poor people and no more in spite of the model's proposed method of measuring desire, which would suggest otherwise.

* Barring the metaphysics philosophy of the same name, which the political/economic philosophy was originally derived from. However, Liberalism is derived from the same (they both start from the idea that humanity has free will), so its not exactly the same despite the name.

[K. A. Pital]

So, here's an argument relevant to political theory. If it drifts too much toward morality, we'll punt it to SLAM. Enjoy, and don't give me any stupid rebuttals.

There is no way to measure utility (or value - I conflate the two) save by the actions that people take. The only rational measure of utility given a person by a particular outcome is what the person is willing to voluntarily sacrifice to achieve the outcome. In particular, we can measure the value of a person by what other people are willing to give up for him.

The bidding process therefore measures the value a person places upon a good or service. The person bidding the highest receives the good or service because he values it most. What of income inequality? Simple: the person with more income is a person more valuable to society. Therefore, goods and services are allocated not just to those people who derive great utility from them but also to those whom society, i.e., the aggregate of all other human beings, values most, as measured by the voluntary transfer of resources from all other human beings to that individual.

Note that this process only accurately measures utility when people are not coerced, i.e., not threatened with direct harm by other humans should a particular outcome occur.

Assumption is that the transfer is voluntary. This assumption is wrong, because economic coercion exists. Ergo, the person's choices, for example, to "allocate" his labour to a particular capitalist, nation, city or whatever - are in no way "voluntary". Labour is for the most part immobile, which further makes decisions not 100% voluntary (and unless they are, the model is not working).

Likewise, the statement "The only rational measure of utility given a person by a particular outcome is what the person is willing to voluntarily sacrifice to achieve the outcome" is wrong. The utility of death is very low on the scale, down there with long torture and other very bad outcomes. However, some people are routinely coerced into life-threatening activities. Does this mean death suddenly rises on their utility scale and becomes a more desireable outcome? Clearly no. The capacity of humans to act irrationally only further underscores the point. What if the person is lied to, and the outcome is his death, but he "voluntarily" goes to it? Say, a phony war? *laughs*

Therefore this whole construct is wrong. I hope I was concise.

[Master of Ossus]

WHY is water priced at a lower point than diamonds, even though people who had water could (in your view) charge whatever they wanted for it?

This is actually two questions. To the first (why are diamonds more expensive than water): it is because humans have an odd fascination with rarity and shiny things. However, is =! ought. If it has value (which I do not actually deny, after a fact) it is not intrinsic to itself, and it does not necessarily follow that it is more valuable than water.

Ah, so here we see that your model of behavior isn't in the slightest bit empirical. It is purely prescriptive, exists only in your mind, and relies upon you and you alone as the supreme arbiter of value in society.

And, here, we see typical Formless thinking: when reality doesn't accord with how he thinks the world should work, it is the world that is wrong; not him.

Again, you haven't bothered to understand water-diamond paradox, and so you cannot understand the error you persist in making, and this is still the basis of your attack on the OP. Indeed, it is so fundamental to your attack that you literally have nothing to fall back on, and so you continue to shore up your defense of this point even though it is moronic.

To the second (why don't people who sell water charge enormous sums for it), historically water has been so abundant that you would be a fool to even try to monopolize it, if the thought even occurred to you. As our societies began making markets, they never stopped to worry about the price of water, if they thought about it at all. However, if you got caught shitting in the well everyone in your village drank from, you would likely have been punished by them because regardless of its abundance, it is still that much more valuable to society.

So your claim as to why water isn't priced at arbitrarily high rates is because no one has ever thought to charge for water in the past? Hate to break it to you, but people do charge for water (and so they've obviously thought about it), and there are local monopolies for water--I live in areas served by local water utilities, for example. Even at desert oases, where there is only one supplier, prices are not arbitrarily high. Again, your model entirely fails to answer to this reality.

Is =! ought. You are an incredible moron. I ask you to prove that diamonds should be considered valuable, so you simply point to the fact that morons are willing to pay huge sums of money for them!

Next time you lie, don't make it obvious:

But, actually, that isn't the point: diamonds are valuable.

Bull. Shit. You keep stating this, and you keep failing to back it up with evidence beyond your own say-so.

Again, your dishonesty is apparent.

What if I were to do the same thing with a used car lot? Does the word "scam" mean anything to you?

Excuse me? You think that people who sell diamonds are involved in a massive scam?

Either your use of the English language is as formless as your brain, or else you're once again divorcing your system for judging morality from having to answer to the real world.

It invalidates Libertarianism because if we accept that there are things that cannot be sold on the market and ever expect a fair price, then society's only other option is to have a government or similar power distribute them instead, and distribute them evenly.

Define a "fair price." Most people would say that it's fair if it's freely negotiated by two willing participants with no personal influence or other sort of unjust bargaining advantage over the other. Food is obviously bartered for in this manner every day. Merely saying that one party has to buy something in no way makes it "unfair." I have repeatedly pointed this out to you.

We call that "socialism" and its the opposite of Libertarianism in any of its incarnations *. More specifically as far as this thread is concerned, it shows that the rich are, on some level, no more special or deserving of such goods than poor people; and that they desire certain things approximately as much as poor people and no more in spite of the model's proposed method of measuring desire, which would suggest otherwise.

Explain. Why is it impossible, given the model, for wealthy people to have approximately the same desire for certain goods as poor people (or even less desire: how many rich people do you know who live in studio apartments in Watts?)? Merely because a wealthy person has a higher ability to pay or can even demonstrate greater desire for certain goods than an especially poor person could possibly express does not mean that they desire all goods more than poor people: there is substitutability within goods, which you may have lost sight of because of your ridiculously broad definition of individual "goods."

[Formless]

Ah, so here we see that your my model of behavior isn't in the slightest bit empirical. It is purely prescriptive, exists only in your my mind, and relies upon you and you the market and the market alone as the supreme arbiter of value in society.

And, here, we see typical Formless Master of Ossus thinking: when reality doesn't accord with how he thinks the world should work, it is the world that is wrong; not him. repeat your assertions until the other side gives up with your broken record tactics.

Again, you I haven't bothered to understand water-diamond paradox utilitarian ethics, and so you I cannot understand the error you I persist in making, and this is still the basis of your my attack on the OP my opponents in this thread. Indeed, it is so fundamental to your my attack that you I literally have nothing to fall back on, and so you I continue to shore up your my defense of this point even though it is moronic utterly irrelevant.

Fixed for you.

So your claim as to why water isn't priced at arbitrarily high rates is because no one has ever thought to charge for water in the past? Hate to break it to you, but people do charge for water (and so they've obviously thought about it), and there are local monopolies for water--I live in areas served by local water utilities, for example. Even at desert oases, where there is only one supplier, prices are not arbitrarily high. Again, your model entirely fails to answer to this reality.

Utilities are controlled and regulated by the government, you retard. They don't charge exorbitant sums because society has placed checks and balances in the system to prevent abuse. If a Libertarian were to have their way they almost certainly wouldn't do things like this.

Next time you lie, don't make it obvious:

*snip*

Again, your dishonesty is apparent.

My apologies, that was not a lie. I was hoping you would be able to gather the implied normative angle of the inquiry from the context of this thread. However, given that you literally don't know the difference between economics and utilitarian morality I guess I should have been more careful with my words.

Excuse me? You think that people who sell diamonds are involved in a massive scam?

I'm saying that the same logic could be applied to a used car scam, and you would prove nothing about whether or not the cars on the lot should be priced the way they are simply by pointing at the pricetag.

Define a "fair price." Most people would say that it's fair if it's freely negotiated by two willing participants with no personal influence or other sort of unjust bargaining advantage over the other. Food is obviously bartered for in this manner every day. Merely saying that one party has to buy something in no way makes it "unfair." I have repeatedly pointed this out to you.

A fair price is one where the two participants are on equal footing in terms of interpersonal power, and can come to a price that accurately reflects both of their needs from the deal. If it does not accurately reflect this, the whole house of cards you call a model comes crashing to the floor.

Explain. Why is it impossible, given the model, for wealthy people to have approximately the same desire for certain goods as poor people? Merely because a wealthy person has a higher ability to pay does not mean that they desire certain goods more than poor people: there is substitutability within goods, which is lost because of your ridiculously broad definition of "goods."

According to the model, being able to give up more directly indicates you want it more. Did you seriously read the same argument Surlethe posted that everyone else did? I mean for fucks sake, you aren't even trying to comprehend the fucking title of this thread! "FUCK THE POOR." I'm seriously starting to think your attempts to attack my understanding of the English language is you projecting your own faults onto me out of stubbornness.

[Master of Ossus]

Fixed for you.

In other words, you don't feel like you should be bothered to explain why your theory of how the world works does not accord at all with reality. How typical.

So your claim as to why water isn't priced at arbitrarily high rates is because no one has ever thought to charge for water in the past? Hate to break it to you, but people do charge for water (and so they've obviously thought about it), and there are local monopolies for water--I live in areas served by local water utilities, for example. Even at desert oases, where there is only one supplier, prices are not arbitrarily high. Again, your model entirely fails to answer to this reality.

Utilities are controlled and regulated by the government, you retard. They don't charge exorbitant sums because society has placed checks and balances in the system to prevent abuse. If a Libertarian were to have their way they almost certainly wouldn't do things like this.

It is not universally true that utilities are regulated or controlled by the government, moron. Why does your model still fail in these circumstances when it is not true? I pointed this out and you completely ignored it. Once again, your willful ignorance of basic economics drives your central criticism of Surlethe's argument.

I'm saying that the same logic could be applied to a used car scam, and you would prove nothing about whether or not the cars on the lot should be priced the way they are simply by pointing at the pricetag.

That's ridiculous. At no point does water-diamond paradox rely on any party involved having a misunderstanding as to the quality or nature of the goods that are at issue. Water-diamond paradox has no reliance whatsoever on the idea that the purchaser of diamonds believes that they are necessary for their survival, nor does it rely on the concept that the buyer doesn't understand that water is necessary to human existence. It is explained by the elegant solution that prices are set at the margin: it is telling that you cannot understand a simple concept after it has been repeated to you (literally) a dozen times over the course of the thread, after you tried to look it up (but evidently quit or decided that the answer wasn't worth reading through), and despite the fact that your entire criticism of libertarianism is based on your inability to understand this concept.

A fair price is one where the two participants are on equal footing in terms of interpersonal power, and can come to a price that accurately reflects both of their needs from the deal. If it does not accurately reflect this, the whole house of cards you call a model comes crashing to the floor.

Too bad for you that food is traded in precisely this manner every single day. Do you honestly think that I have interpersonal power over the checker at Costco, or that they have interpersonal power over me? Or, perhaps, the Costco manager has a sweetheart deal with the guy who trucked in their last shipment of tomatoes based on some form of blackmail and now requires that particular supplier of tomatoes to sell to him every few days?

Despite your ridiculous assertions, the fact that people need food to live does not preclude the possibility that food is traded at a fair price. Indeed, any idiot (well, not any idiot--you obviously cannot do this) can observe that food is actually traded in precisely the same manner that you describe. Once again, your criticism totally ignores reality in favor of a moronic, nonsensical position based on nothing but your own flawed intuition.

According to the model, being able to give up more directly indicates you want it more.

No. There is willingness involved. Again, why don't rich people live in studio apartments in Watts?

Did you seriously read the same argument Surlethe posted that everyone else did? I mean for fucks sake, you aren't even trying to comprehend the fucking title of this thread! "FUCK THE POOR." I'm seriously starting to think your attempts to attack my understanding of the English language is you projecting your own faults onto me out of stubbornness.

The title is an effort at sensationalism, which you have also missed. As for "stubbornness" [sic], how the fuck do you think that food is necessarily traded at something other than a "fair price?" Seriously, think about this. Your entire criticism of libertarianism is based on an ever-expanding series of assumptions that do not accord in the slightest with reality, and when this is pointed out to you you either claim that this is real or cry foul because I am using empirical economic observations to explain why your criticism of libertarianism is completely nonsensical.

[Formless]

Oh, for fucks sake, everyone else in this thread got it. You seem to be the only one incapable or unwilling to understand:

But that makes no sense. It's a prescriptive statement based on a descriptive model. You're saying "inability to pay for a desired outcome occurs, therefore it is right and good that inability to pay for a desired outcome occurs, and those who are unable to pay for a desired outcome deserve whatever they get." That's foolish. It's like saying "evolution occurs, therefore we should encourage more evolution to occur by arranging tests of people's ability to dodge oncoming vehicles and so on." Or, perhaps more blatantly but no less unreasonably, "gravity exists, therefore we should seek to maximize the amount of falling going on in accordance with the principle of gravity."

Here is your problem. The false equivocation of Utility in the market sense, and utility in the moral sense.

It would be quite the wicked argument if that basic assumption isn't self-evidently false. People can survive without money, people can 'give up' things other than money, thus assuming money is the sole measurement of worth is faulty.

Likewise, the statement "The only rational measure of utility given a person by a particular outcome is what the person is willing to voluntarily sacrifice to achieve the outcome" is wrong. The utility of death is very low on the scale, down there with long torture and other very bad outcomes. However, some people are routinely coerced into life-threatening activities. Does this mean death suddenly rises on their utility scale and becomes a more desireable outcome? Clearly no.

All of these people, regardless of whether or not they were directly addressing your argument, understand the following distinction:

Value in the market sense is determined by supply and demand. Value in the moral sense (according to utilitarianism) is based on whether something helps achieve one of the goals of human life (like living happily, avoiding pain, satisfying desires, maximizing the satisfaction of people's preferences, and so on). The water-diamond paradox is not a paradox in ethics because its trying to compare apples to oranges. Moral values to economic values. What people appear to want and what they ought to want.

If you cannot get that right, you have no place discussing utilitarian ethics.

Hell, if you didn't learn the lesson of the Guilded Age (that economic coercion does exist and that it does skew the effectiveness of market forces to measure how highly commodities are valued or desired by the population) then I'm not sure you have any place discussing economics either.

[Simon_Jester]

I for one would like to cut the bullshit. So, let us return to the original proposition of this thread...I am calling on you to explain to me the following:
1) How does this model work in light of irrationalities of pricing?
I'm not talking about monopolies or other tactics seen in competitive markets, either. I'm talking about fundamental limits of human psychology. Human beings are not capable of setting consistent, reliable prices on objects in terms of currency. This is easily proven. The most obvious example of is hyperbolic discounting: people who would rather take a dollar tomorrow than ten dollars in a year and a day. Or, conversely, are willing to spend ten dollars a day for a net result that they would not pay nine hundred dollars in a lump sum to get for the next ninety days. People are irrational like that.

1. The example that you give is a perfect example of individual preference which is revealed by pricing decisions. It in no way invalidates the market mechanism explained by Surlethe: it is just an unusual preference which is revealed by their actions in discounting. Some people have different preferences over time than others. I cannot understand how you think that this invalidates the mechanism explained by Surlethe.
2. Again, in competitive markets (which clear at the margin), the behavior of individual outliers does not mean that the market as a whole is irrational. Again, prices are set at the margin. There is no reason to believe that, because some people price irrationally, the market must therefore price irrationally because only the preferences of the marginal consumer impact market price.

How do you address the problem of situations where people empirically do not consistently settle on a price for a commodity that accurately reflects their short term and long term wishes?

Again, I'm not sure what you mean. Peoples' preferences for goods change over time, and their preferences for current vs. future consumption can be different from the preferences which are set at the margin. This is not in any way a challenge to the model.

It is most certainly a challenge to a model that bases ethical value on economic value if economic value does not settle on consistent results. If "value" is to be some kind of intrinsic, objective property that we can use to say "should X be done?" then the value of X had damned well better be consistent between cases where all the facts are identical.

If the value of X is decided in part by random or irrational processes, then the process of valuation is not objective. It cannot claim any priority over other arbitrary, socially constructed preferences, let alone over inherent preferences such as "not dying" that an individual might have. Therefore, there is no reason to use this model of all-value-as-economic. It serves no purpose and cannot claim to be any more rational or objective than any other.

2) Why do you draw no distinction between "willing to pay" and "willing and able to pay?"
Are there not ways by which I might come by the ability to pay for my desires without, in fact, doing anything of value to society? Say, by theft, or inheritance? Conversely, are there not ways by which I might be deprived of the ability to pay for my desires even though I continue to do things of value to society? Say, by a natural disaster?

Yes, there are. This is a much more powerful argument than anything that moron, Formless, was asserting. Indeed, this is one of Rawls' challenges to the model, which I already referenced in one of my first posts to that idiot.

Utilitarianism disregards these mechanisms through the concept of social insurance. You can buy that or dismiss it to the degree that you think it deserves.

I have yet to be convinced that Formless was an idiot; unfortunately it has come to my attention that he committed to other concerns than debating your position; I can't blame him, because I haven't seen a new argument from you in some time.

That said, real utilitarianism does not disregard these mechanisms, because it does not blindly assert that you can measure the utility of all things in dollars. There is no constant by which the dollar can be converted into the utilon on a reliable, consistent basis.

You have dismissed this argument without adequate reason, as I expected.

3) Why do you believe an income curve to be necessary to utilitarianism?
In particular, why do you believe a draconian version of the curve is necessary, one where, as a practical matter, the value of your continued existence is set not by some kind of index of future potential, not by some kind of consideration of the effects on society of letting a dozen people die to save one, but by the size of the pile of small green bits of paper you happen to have on your person at the time?

I don't understand this criticism in the slightest. You'll have to explain, further. An income constraint is necessary to an understanding of the utility curve, because it reveals the actual purchases that an individual will make. Indeed, a constraint of some kind is necessary to understanding the problem of resource allocation: without a constraint, there is no problem of resource allocation because you have presupposed infinite resources.

But you are not using a rational system for measuring this kind of thing. You are using a mutant version, one that ignores, for example, the possibility that individually rational decisions might lead to long term disasters. If you cannot measure a thing in units of cash on the barrelhead right this instant, you are denying that it needs to be measured at all, by basing the entire measure of value on the question of current income. Nor have you defended doing so, by appeal to practical consequences or by making a convincing argument that things not measurable in cash on the barrelhead this instant should be ignored.

You have dismissed this argument without adequate reason, as I expected.

4) What makes you think that the number of units of fiat currency that can be exchanged for an item is an objective measure?

It is objective. It can be readily ascertained by empirical observation. This is the definition of objective.

How can it be considered objective when it is determined by a combination of blind chance and irrational decisions? You might as well decide that service should be allocated to people who want them by alphabetical order.

In the sense that somewhere in the world the number is written down, cash value is objective. In the sense that it is non-arbitrary, that it reflects some relevant natural property, it is not. You should not congratulate yourself on your objectivity if you decide what to do by rolling dice, even though you can most certainly measure the outcome of a rolled die. Because that is not objectivity. That is an excuse to avoid objectivity, by making up some arbitrary and pointless way to make your decisions without reference to the broader realities of the situation.

You have dismissed this argument without adequate reason, as I expected.

5) Why do you think an "objective measure of value" is so urgently needed?

I don't, but we have one.

Because having found one, you immediately threw all the normal ethical concerns of the non-sociopathic fraction of the human race out the window. What's the rush? Why did you suddenly stop giving a damn about whether your proposed ethical system works for the benefit of actual people, rather than towards the optimization of some arbitrary quantity?

Because that IS the moral model that we are evaluating. It is not answerable to the sort of moral or ethical concerns that you or I might present and hold up as important. It's not a particularly good criticism of the model to say, "Well... other systems of morality wouldn't agree with that because they value [X, Y, or Z]."

For one, if we measure in "cash available on the barrelhead right now," we do not have an objective measure at all. We just have a number that happens to be written down somewhere. Allocating resources by alphabetical order would be equally objective- not objective at all, because alphabetical order is set by our own arbitrary social whims in naming people and in deciding which letters come first. It is not a law of physics.

Moreover, it is at best a catastrophic mistake and at worst blatant lie to say that a moral model is not answerable to moral concerns, just as it would be to say that a physical model is not answerable to concerns about the physical world. If a moral system is found to lead to disastrous results, it is flawed regardless of whether or not it is internally consistent. I have already pointed out that the proposed model is NOT internally consistent, and that it relies on basic assumptions about reality which are not true. But even if it were consistent, the fact that it has the potential to lead to disastrous results is still sufficient reason to avoid adopting it.

Because you have, so far, blithely dismissed the possibility that the system might simply break down when confronted with commodities essential for life.

I don't think it does, at all. Again, this is water-diamond paradox.

No, it is not. Water is cheaper than diamonds only after all demand for water is filled and no one wants any more than they can already have. In a desperate drought you can be damn sure that people would trade diamonds for water. They will likewise trade diamonds for medicine to save their lives, even if the medicine is much less difficult for the original seller to obtain than a diamond would be.

This is one of my fundamental objections. Prices are arbitrary. They depend on situational details, on trickery, on irrational decisions made by individuals, on almost everything. Not just on the physical investment of resources required to make a thing happen. If prices accurately measured physical investment, that would be different... but it is not.

You have dismissed this argument without adequate reason, as I expected.

Or that there might be commodities (say, a child's education) which have a value to society very different from what some individuals can be prevailed on to pay for it.

THIS is the better criticism. Thank you. Finally. The sort of strict libertarian model presented by Surlethe does not recognize circumstances of market failure. Presumably, a true adherent would either dismiss them or else retreat to the concept that it limits the application of their moral system. I'm actually not sure what they'd do, to be frank, but at least it attacks the premises of their moral code rather than presenting all manner of Formless' idiotic strawmen.

I have been addressing concerns of market failure for the entire post and only now do you admit it. Very well, then.

I am done with this. I have raised a series of very obvious objections to the proposed moral model, and you have ignored virtually all of them, until the last minute at which you suddenly turn around and admit a gross flaw in the model that all the previous objections were aimed at.

This is exactly how devil's advocacy should NOT work, with endless stonewalling ending in instant collapse the moment the magic words are said.

[Master of Ossus]

Value in the market sense is determined by supply and demand. Value in the moral sense (according to utilitarianism) is based on whether something helps achieve one of the goals of human life (like living happily, avoiding pain, satisfying desires, maximizing the satisfaction of people's preferences, and so on).

Precisely. This is precisely the value that is revealed by supply and demand in markets, barring consideration of externalities. What the fuck is so difficult to understand about this?

The water-diamond paradox is not a paradox in ethics because its trying to compare apples to oranges. Moral values to economic values. What people appear to want and what they ought to want.

Bullshit. Water-diamond paradox is fully explained in all senses by the observation that prices are set at the margin.

I simply cannot understand how this concept has eluded you so completely throughout this thread. It has been repeatedly drilled into you and you don't even recognize that it's an issue.

Money is the basis of exchange in society: by surrendering money in exchange for a good, I am revealing that I am willing to forego other uses of this money in order to receive the good in question. By purchasing something in a competitive market (e.g., water or diamonds), I am declaring my willingness to forego other uses of that money in exchange for that good. Ergo, I am declaring that this good is the best use of the limited resources that I possess (the money that I am surrendering in exchange), and that it will best assist me in "living happily, avoiding pain, satisfying desires, maximizing the satisfaction of [my] preferences, and so on." In aggregation, this applies to society as well as to individuals (this is the basis of Surlethe's argument). Your inability to comprehend this is simply astounding! ONLY because you are apparently incapable of recognizing this simple point do you present the critiques that you have, to the point where you argued that it was impossible for food to be traded at a fair price.

Again, I am repeating this argument over and over again because your entire criticism revolves around your blithe ignorance of this mechanism.

If you cannot get that right, you have no place discussing utilitarian ethics.

Hell, if you didn't learn the lesson of the Guilded Age (that economic coercion does exist and that it does skew the effectiveness of market forces to measure how highly commodities are valued or desired by the population) then I'm not sure you have any place discussing economics either.

Pot calling the kettle black. This is from someone who has claimed repeatedly that diamonds are valueless and that water and food should inevitably trade at infinite prices, that they absolutely cannot be traded at a fair price, and that going around asking people if they want something is a good method for acquiring the same information captured by a market-clearing price!

[Master of Ossus]

Simon Jester, I'm going to do a much-abbreviated response to this post because you only advance one criticism and it can be relatively easily addressed. If you feel I have missed something, please point it out.

It is most certainly a challenge to a model that bases ethical value on economic value if economic value does not settle on consistent results.

That's ridiculous. Why wouldn't such a model expect variations over time, region, person, or place? Indeed, such a feature is fundamental to utilitarianism.

If "value" is to be some kind of intrinsic, objective property that we can use to say "should X be done?" then the value of X had damned well better be consistent between cases where all the facts are identical.

No. X can shift over time. In fact, we can even expect X to vary in certain respects over time. I cannot even understand this objection. Utilitarianism is based upon the concept of maximizing happiness or avoiding suffering. Why would we expect a good that moves us towards this objective in some particular time and place to have precisely the same effect in another context? Why would we expect that the amount of happiness provided by a particular good or service is constant across time and circumstance? Indeed, the law of diminishing marginal returns requires the value to shift with respect to the quantity of that good that is already possessed. I'm having difficulty understanding where your misconception came from: Bentham himself wrote on this subject extensively.

If the value of X is decided in part by random or irrational processes, then the process of valuation is not objective.

Again, you seem to be misusing the term "objective." A football game is subject to irrational processes (e.g., a referee calling a penalty). That doesn't mean that the outcome of the game is not an objective, observable quantity. To be objective, we only need the quality that it can be observed without introducing an observer bias into the observation. Market prices easily satisfy this requirement. Indeed, this is fundamental to the concept that money can be used as a proxy to measure the exchange value of goods. It is no wonder that you did not understand the broader discussion since you clearly do not understand this underlying principle.

It cannot claim any priority over other arbitrary, socially constructed preferences, let alone over inherent preferences such as "not dying" that an individual might have. Therefore, there is no reason to use this model of all-value-as-economic. It serves no purpose and cannot claim to be any more rational or objective than any other.

What? It is a measure of desires and preferences of the marginal buyer and the marginal seller in society. Of course it serves a purpose: in competitive and fully internalized markets it perfectly expresses the preferences and desires of society as a whole, thus maximizing utility.

I have yet to be convinced that Formless was an idiot; unfortunately it has come to my attention that he committed to other concerns than debating your position; I can't blame him, because I haven't seen a new argument from you in some time.

That said, real utilitarianism does not disregard these mechanisms, because it does not blindly assert that you can measure the utility of all things in dollars. There is no constant by which the dollar can be converted into the utilon on a reliable, consistent basis.

Define a "reliable, consistent basis." Indeed, to any reasonable observer it is clear that these are very good proxies for one another. Bentham's own explanation of utility curves, for example, can be easily converted between dollars and "utils" by the simple method of multiplication of the units on the axes.

You have dismissed this argument without adequate reason, as I expected.

Correct: I failed to see any need at all to explain the basics of Surlethe's argument to people who have been discussing it for page upon page.

Your fundamental argument is that "prices are arbitrary" (as you claimed later on). They are NOT. Absolutely nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, they are established by powerful models and can be easily explained (well... I suppose the ease of explanation turns on the competence of the instructor and the audience). It is truly astounding that someone could have such a misconception, particularly in the context of discussion of libertarian utilitarianism.

To the extent that you argue that they depend on subjective properties like individuals' tastes and preferences, this is true. Utilitarianism is based around satisfying peoples' tastes and preferences. It is self-evident, then, that in order to satisfy those tastes and preferences their philosophy must necessarily be answerable to them--and it is, even in Surlethe's allegedly simplified construction of the argument. To the extent that these tastes and preferences change over time or according to the circumstances, any society based on libertarianism must necessarily respond to this shift in tastes and preferences, as well.

Again, I cannot understand where you have gotten yourself confused on this point. It seems absolutely fundamental to understanding the argument at all, and it is obviously no criticism at all of a social system to say that it is responsive to the very concerns that form the basis of that system.

As for your claims that a Devil's Advocate does not stop arguing when presented with a powerful counter-argument... I don't know what you would expect of one. Perhaps I should have laid down when Formless presented all manner of strawmen and nonsensical logical fallacies to attack the opening post? Or... perhaps the Devil's Advocate should cling tirelessly to a losing position? The fact of the matter is, I don't know how libertarians deal with issues like externalities: they are very powerful and very easy criticisms to level against their worldview. I proposed at least two possibilities, and I'd be interested in reading others.

[Andrew J.]

"Moral value" is the reason the water-diamond paradox is called a paradox. When the question is asked "Why are diamonds more expensive than water, when water is more necessary to survival?" then the difference between the necessity of water and the necessity of diamonds is the difference in their moral value.

Market value is set at the margins. Moral value is set at...the opposite of the margins. I don't know if that has a name.

Moral value measures how much something will make a person better off. Market value measures how much a buyer believes, correctly or otherwise, something will make them better off at the time of purchase. The former may be impossible to measure accurately, but there can be little doubt that it can differ from the latter, as anyone familiar with "buyer's remorse" can attest.

[Master of Ossus]

"Moral value" is the reason the water-diamond paradox is called a paradox. When the question is asked "Why are diamonds more expensive than water, when water is more necessary to survival?" then the difference between the necessity of water and the necessity of diamonds is the difference in their moral value.

Market value is set at the margins. Moral value is set at...the opposite of the margins. I don't know if that has a name.

Moral value measures how much something will make a person better off. Market value measures how much a buyer believes, correctly or otherwise, something will make them better off at the time of purchase. The former may be impossible to measure accurately, but there can be little doubt that it can differ from the latter, as anyone familiar with "buyer's remorse" can attest.

The "moral value" that you have established is an egregiously poor basis for decision-making, however, because you don't buy things at any point other than at the margin. (This is highly instructive to anyone who thinks about utilitarianism, so it might be good for Formless to actually bother to read through and understand the whole issue of water-diamond paradox like I've been telling him to do for the last 3 pages). The fact that I need some water to live does not mean that the water that I purchase at the margin is needed to live (in fact, my marginal use of water likely goes to something like watering my lawn--an obviously less important and less valuable use). It is this latter use of water--the "watering your lawn" water--that defines the price of all water in the community, including the water that is required to keep people alive.

Ultimately, a libertarian would point out that I am a better arbiter of what I like and what my tastes and preferences are than anyone else, and I imagine that you can more accurately determine what will be of benefit to you than anyone else. That is one of the precepts of most utilitarian models and all libertarian ones. People who actually think that they can go around and more accurately tell others what they should spend their scarce resources on, therefore, must find another philosophy to live by.

[Bakustra]

"Moral value" is the reason the water-diamond paradox is called a paradox. When the question is asked "Why are diamonds more expensive than water, when water is more necessary to survival?" then the difference between the necessity of water and the necessity of diamonds is the difference in their moral value.

Market value is set at the margins. Moral value is set at...the opposite of the margins. I don't know if that has a name.

Moral value measures how much something will make a person better off. Market value measures how much a buyer believes, correctly or otherwise, something will make them better off at the time of purchase. The former may be impossible to measure accurately, but there can be little doubt that it can differ from the latter, as anyone familiar with "buyer's remorse" can attest.

The "moral value" that you have established is an egregiously poor basis for decision-making, however, because you don't buy things at any point other than at the margin. The fact that I need some water to live does not mean that the water that I purchase now is needed to live (in fact, my marginal use of water likely goes to something like watering my lawn--an obviously less important use). The ultimate lesson of water-diamond paradox is that a moral value independent of the market value is meaningless, although this isn't the immediate nor obvious result of the resolution.

Ultimately I am a better arbiter of what I like and what my tastes and preferences are than anyone else, and I imagine that you can more accurately determine what will be of benefit to you than anyone else. That is one of the precepts of most utilitarian models and all libertarian ones.

Can you show that it is an ultimate result, though? Because you seem to be saying that the only value is that of market value, and then generalizing that to material success equaling moral worth. Just as an example, diamonds are valuable. This is agreed upon generally. Is the life of the children who die in the process of mining blood diamonds valued at the price of the diamonds? What is the value of a human life under this system? How do you determine the value? By life insurance, by wrongful-death suits, by the cost of hiring an assassin? For that matter, before the existence of life insurance or wrongful-death suits, did life have no value? This also suggests that some people are worth more than others, which would tend to stratify along national boundaries.

A hypothetical. Take two nations, A and B. The market value of human life in A is four times that of B, by way of greater economic development and the presence of more worker's rights. Should a criminal receive one-quarter of the sentence for murdering a citizen of B as opposed to A? Remember, we have no value but market value here, and so the crime is therefore less for B than A. It seems to me that you would have to abandon in such a situation either market values as moral values or the concept of basic human equality.