Quote Originally Posted by Renton View Post
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Here's what I think. Everyone deserves a certain standard of living. Why should the billionaire businessman and the penniless homeless man be treated differently when it comes to the standard of healthcare they receive? Does the homeless man not have a right to live because he has no money? A certain standard of healthcare should be provided for everyone, if the billionaire wants to pay for better healthcare over and above the standard given to all that's fine.

I don't think you would be preaching free market doctrine with such gusto if you were the one in desperate need of food or medicine. Would you be telling your starving friends and family to "stop whining, aren't you aware the earth has scarce resources? We have no money to pay for food so we don't deserve to live. How is this not obvious?" I doubt it.

I think that pure capitalism breeds inequality and corruption. Not furiously competitive markets and scrupulous businessmen. The greed and constant drive for ever increasing profit makes businesses ignore externalities one of the most important being the environment, that's not my opinion, it's scientific fact. Big fossil fuel companies pump out propaganda trying to influence public opinion and cast off claims from the scientific community that climate change is a real and imminent problem so as to protect their profits. This cannot be justified, the continuation of the species and health of the planet is more important than a companies profits/share price.

Another thing I have a problem with is treating economics like a science. Some of the underlying principles of economics are demonstrably false. One of the most obvious being "rational consumers" and others "homogeneous products" and "perfect information". Assuming something that you know in reality to be false as true so your diagrams work out nicely and you can pretend that you know what you're talking about doesn't seem very "scientific" to me. Any conclusion drawn from a false premise is inherently false, an inconvenient fact for economists.


You can't just create an imaginary "rational consumer" that never deviates from the rules you assign it and develop a framework around this "rational consumer" then apply it to irrational consumers. This is ludicrous and illogical.

It's like saying I know in reality this player has a nutted range on the river but I'm going to assume he's got a weak range to justify my all-in bluff. Or in economics, I know in reality consumers aren't rational but I'm going to assume they are so my "law" works. Also if there were actual economic laws there wouldn't be different theories of economics nor any debate about it at all there would be a unanimous consensus by all professional economists as to the best configuration and means of proceeding from here.

Finally this might come across as snarky but it's not intended to be, my view is just as valid as yours regardless of how much you think you know.

Here's a link to a study that was performed regarding rational consumers you have to sign up to read it. It's from the peer reviewed Economic Journal: http://econpapers.repec.org/article/..._3a1431-44.htm