From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Thu Jun 06 2002 - 00:14:06 MDT
Damien writes
> At 11:52 PM 6/5/02 -0500, Barbara Lamar wrote:
>
> >Surely, Mr. Randall, in a business context, the dollar figure is a function
> >of the value of the item you're offering in trade rather than a constant.
>
> > Suppose you offer to sell me a widget, together with
> > attachments A,B, and C, for $400. We both agree that
> > the value of the attachments is $50 each. I give you $400.
> > You deliver to me a widget with only attachment B.
> What you describe looks like fraud to me...
Of course that's fraud. The seller violated an agreement.
> Isn't greed better exemplified by your wanting a widget that
> costs Mr. Randall $50 to make and bring to market, plus a
> moderate mark-up, but he insists that he won't sell it to
> you for less than $100, or $1000?
Yes, we might very well think of that as greed, but only
if it does not truly profit that seller! "Greed" is and
should remain pejorative. Greed is an overreaching of
self-interest (which should remain non-pejorative) to
the point that it is no longer in one's self interest.
It is wrong to be greedy.
Now wanting to sell that item for $10000 or $100000000
isn't *necessarily* greedy, no matter how "obscene"
the profit. The idea of a free market is that the seller
should charge whatever the market will bear. There is
a reason for this. The reason is that price signals
are extremely important for telling everyone what to do.
If that guy gets away with selling the widget for $100000000
then that sends a very LOUD signal that people should start
making widgets!
What that seller *freely* chooses for a selling price is
not a proper focus for concerns of morality. Others are
just as *free* to shop elsewhere. (I do tend to agree
with Lee Daniel Crocker that patents have gotten out of
hand, and in so many cases do more harm than good.)
> Moreover, he has the power of the state behind him to
> prevent anyone else making an equivalent widget (it's
> *his* design, after all).
Right, Damien. The state should probably butt out.
> At what point does his mark-up become `greedy'? Is it, as
> Mr. Crocker asserts, *good* that he should be greedy in
> this deal? Why not be fair, instead?
(Mr. Crocker should have used "self interest", not "greed" IMO.)
The reason not to strive for "fairness"---a medieval doctrine
used by the Church to retard economic development---is that
what is fair to you may not be fair to me, and more importantly
when the Commissars sit down to determine what is "truly fair",
they're only kidding themselves.
>(What percentage gain would be deemed `fair', though? 10%, say?)
Yeah, right. Who claims to be smarter than the market
place for determining what "fair" is. Speak up now!
> But if the widget can save your otherwise doomed life, greed has a chance
> of cleaning you out. You *have* to agree to extortion. "What are you
> complaining about, loser? You're alive aren't you? Greed is good, right?"
Think of how quickly other entrepreneurs---if we had freedom---
would jump in to make more such widgets! Understand how more
lives will be saved with economic freedom than with some
government board determining "fair prices".
Lee Corbin
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