domain:thezvi.wordpress.com
MathWizard
Good things are good
4m ago
In a perfectly efficient market, this would be the case. But it's easily disproven in practice by the fact that market prices can change by effects which have absolutely no impact on the utility value.
Ie, suppose we have a city with a bunch of plumbers, all of equal plumbing skill/ability, and a company that hires them and manages their distribution to clients, and pays between $80k and $120k depending on how skilled and aggressive the plumber is at negotiating (aggressive meaning they demonstrate an ability/willingness to quit and do a different job instead if they don't get the salary they want). We've assumed by axiom that they provide the same value, and yet get paid different amounts, let's assume the frequency is evenly distributed across this range, such that the average plumber is paid $100k. I suppose you could say that the "utility value" is the highest the company is willing to pay, $120k, and anyone being paid less is simply a bad negotiator, but I'm not sure if you'd say the "market value" is $120k given that most of the plumbers aren't earning that, and a new plumber entering the field is unlikely to get an offer that high.
Suppose then that the plumbers unionize and negotiate that all of them will receive the same pay of $110k. That's now the market value, unambiguously, that's what the market, as created by this single local monopolistic company (which is the only company offering reliable and consistent pay for plumbers in this city) and this one union (which all employees of the company must join) will pay. And yet the utility value of plumbing has not changed, because the union doesn't impact plumbing skill/ability in any way.
Suppose that the company actually takes in revenue of $140k for each plumbing employee it has, and keeps the difference as overhead/profit. There's a sense in which the utility value of a plumber is actually $140k since that's what clients are willing to pay, although if the overhead is necessary then I suppose the utility of the plumber themself is lessened by that. However if a plumbing emergency happens and the company gets a lot more business, earning $150k per employee one year, but takes the extra as profit and changes no salaries, then the utility value of plumbers goes up that year, the market price (from the client and owner's side) goes up, but the market price (from the employees side) remains unchanged.
And suppose that the employer uses local regulations, an army of lawyers, and relationships with local politicians to crush any new plumbers that try to form their own company or go independent in this area. It is not a free market, it is effectively a local monopoly. If you want to be a plumber, you negotiate here, or you leave the city and pay whatever transition costs it takes to uproot your life and your family and be a plumber somewhere else. The fact that this changes market prices but doesn't change the utility value of plumbers should clearly demonstrate that market prices are distinct from utility prices, even if an ideal perfectly efficient and free market would cause them to be equal. In practice, no market is perfectly free, therefore we should expect deviations in precisely the areas where these imperfections drive them apart.
cjet79
21m ago
So everyone wishes they were a monopolist with respect to their own jobs. No surprise, but we need to treat these requests as the selfish self interested lobbying that they are, rather than some generous societal oriented philosophy.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
27m ago
Market prices reflect real resource shortages and tradeoffs. "Important" jobs are often paid low because many people can do it.
Or as Dr. Kersten points out, there are many positions which are necessary but not important, like a gear in a watch -- vital yet easily replacable.
I think what Corvos is calling "utility value" is price at which consumer surplus reaches zero. That's definitely different than (and much higher than) "market value".
Quantumfreakonomics
28m ago
What do you guys think of the Matt Gaetz pick specifically? This seems to be a high-variance pick from a high-variance administration. Attorney General is IMO the most important cabinet position for domestic policy. As we all learned in high school, the executive branch enforces the laws. The Department of Justice is the agency tasked with boots-on-the-ground execution of that constitutional mandate. If nothing else, the Gaetz pick puts the fear of god back into a lot of people in Washington.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
28m ago
There is nearly no interesting discussion on Reddit now, the vanishingly rare interesting post on 4chan is extinct (and will probably be posted on X anyway), substack is fine but most blogs are found and marketed on X and the comment system sucks (impossible to determine which comments may be valuable on ACT, for instance), tik tok is probably interesting for viewing memetic culture but obviously has no discursive value…
For quality discussion on popular sites, this just leaves X, then?
zoink
28m ago
How much of this is two neurotic people being neurotic and bouncing off of each other? I don't always trust neurotics perception of reality.
zoink
48m ago
One issue is grandmas getting older. At the more extreme end but probably not incredibly uncommon in the past a grandma could be in her low 30's certainly 40's. My mom, who is now a grandmother to my toddler is in her early 70's.
Lizzardspawn
51m ago
Obviously overpaid. Marissa Mayer ruined Yahoo for 239 million dollars, I would have gladly ruined it for 150 million. And there are people that would run it into the ground for a million and some for free.
cjet79
54m ago
The idea that utility value and market value are different is a fundamental economic misconception.
Market prices reflect real resource shortages and tradeoffs. "Important" jobs are often paid low because many people can do it.
bonsaii
1hr ago
Do you think most C-suite executives are over, under, or appropriately paid relative to the market value of their labor?
zeke5123a
1hr ago
You might be interested in https://www.amazon.com/Order-without-Law-Neighbors-Disputes/dp/0674641698
It is a similar point in that law is useful when the game is functionally not iterative (either because of the size of the market or the size of the transaction) but when iterative law is basically irrelevant.
hydroacetylene
1hr ago
This is true, but Niger’s TFR is not driven by low IQ, it’s driven by being full of subsistence farmers. The highest TFR group in the world is the Amish, who are high-IQ subsistence farmers(ish, it’s complicated).
Within country IQ/fertility correlations mostly don’t point towards idiocracy.
2rafa
1hr ago
The psyop overproduction theory isn’t invalid, but it doesn’t explain the widespread genuine belief among some kooks in defense / the mic that aliens r real.
cjet79
1hr ago
No worries someone else from themotte has been super available, they also like trains a bunch. So you'll be happy to know we aren't neglecting the trains like I would.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1hr ago
I cannot disagree with you.
That said, kinda low effort booing. You know we frown on posts that are just dunking on your outgroup like this.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1hr ago
(Meta: is it obnoxious to do multi-top-posts like this? I didn’t want to talk about these ideas right away because I felt it would bias the replies, but at the same time it seems like a waste to write this as a second level reply in an old thread just before the new CW thread opens up).
Within reason it's okay. We only get annoyed if someone keeps starting multiple threads about the same topic.
naraburns
nihil supernum
1hr ago
In Aristotle's Politics, he observes that families hold property "in common" while cities hold property privately (but for public benefit). He thinks this is natural, because if cities treated property as communal, no one would have stewardship and freeloaders would be a problem--but with our true intimates, it's actually normal and natural to live communally.
What you are saying sounds to me like kind of a modern take on the same phenomena, or maybe even just a more granular take. The reason we have the law of contract is to facilitate agreement between non-intimates. But the line between family and stranger can be more of a spectrum, and in many circumstances we find ourselves treating strangers as near kin, at least temporarily.
I don't think I have anything substantive to add, really, I just think it's always interesting to observe that these questions have been the subject of philosophical inquiry for all of recorded history.
Amadan
I will be here longer than you
1hr ago
No. As I said, "contempt" is also appropriate, but hate is an accurate word. If someone is being histrionic here, it's not me.
BahRamYou
1hr ago
I agree with all of this. I would add that, in my experience, Korea is not very good at advertising its more interesting places to foreign places. It just sort of shunts us all to the same basic places ("here, look at some kimchi being made. Here, rent a hanbok and walk around an empty palace ground"), while you have to really do research and plan a bus trip to the countryside to see the more interesting places.
That said, there are some fascinating neighborhoods in Seoul. Not really "historic," but you can really see how some places were just build up crazy fast in the 80s and 90s, with some incredibly weird (and sometimes dangerous) choices of how to fit them in to the hilly terrain.
Celestial-body-NOS
🟦 All human beings are equal, **even when they aren't.**
1hr ago
The only case I can see is a relative one - people opposed to liberal views aren't banned as much anymore, and that's a disadvantage compared to what they have.
"When one is accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression."
TitaniumButterfly
1hr ago
Meta: is it obnoxious to do multi-top-posts like this? I didn’t want to talk about these ideas right away because I felt it would bias the replies, but at the same time it seems like a waste to write this as a second level reply in an old thread just before the new CW thread opens up
My two cents, but you're fine. It adds to the impression that we have a rolling conversation going around here. Personally I'm unlikely to go digging through prior topics to see what conclusion you came to if any, not least because it wouldn't be clear where to look.
People who aren't interested can minimize the post and its children. I minimize about half the posts here within a few seconds of skimming. It's a great system. Also, this isn't 4chan; no topics died to make room for yours.
Finally, as you say, it's Sunday. So long as things are kept in good taste, there's always been an unspoken understanding that Sunday-poasting doesn't have to adhere as tightly to the straight and narrow. It's like Hawaiian shirt Friday at the office.
campfire
1hr ago
The songs you mention don’t seem to fit the theme, and I only listed a few in the genre.
SerialStateLineXer
1hr ago
Outside the bounds of prescribed behavior. It's a highly proscribed behavior, unless the fentanyl is prescribed.
X is full of such garbage and riddled with mediocre grandstanding (even if you prune your followed obsessively), but it remains the place with the most interesting links. The issue is more that midwits clog up the comments for anyone even remotely interesting, misinterpret things constantly, and generally bring annoying.
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