> Curious that a country as overgoverned as China would have this
> scandal.
Overgoverned != Well governed. There seems to be a general absence of
'conscience' in many current Chinese activities, the almighty yuan and
main chance at the moment seems to override everything. The PRC
government is riddled with corruption, and criminal behaviour is often
winked after bribes.
In this case the government was shamed into making an example; 3
company managers were imprisoned, and two were executed.
>> >> >Even more true, I would think, of most government bureaucrats, including
>> >> Both you and Mr. Wilson seem to trot out this old canard, "Government >> >> Bureaucrats"
>> >> when describing the FDA. How many of the 11,000+ employees of the FDA
>> >> are doctors, scientists, pharmacologists, toxicologists, and biologists?
>> >Probably quite a lot. But the final decisions are made by bureaucrats, >> >not by the scientists they employ.
>> So, the doctors, scientists, et. al. do the work to determine the
>> suitability for the stated purpose of a treatment, and they make
>> a recommendation to their management. How often is their recommendation
>> ignored or reversed by the "bureaucrats"? Please provide some
>> references. My understanding is that most drugs are approved by a panel
>> of professionals, not by some faceless political appointee.
>To begin with, legislators create the basic criteria. Thereafter, the >doctors, scientists, etc. are answering questions whose content is >determined by the administrators.
Questions like "Will it kill anyone?", "Is it efficacious"? Please provide
some examples of the "content determined by administrators".
If you think the doctors, scientists, et. al. would approve a dangerous
drug because some legistator forgot to ask if the drug actually worked,
you're doing a grave disservice to those who participate in the FDA drug
approval process. If you think they won't approve an efficacious drug
because some legislator, in the pocket of a competitor, changes the rules
regarding approval, well I'd need a couple of citations to actual cases
where this occurred.
Shawn Wilson <ikonoql...@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Jun 26, 10:35 pm, d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>> >So, the FDA stops inspections and then what? Do you think NO ONE
>> >would perform inspections?
>> Nobody would perform neutral, unbiased, random inspections, that is correct.
>Why not? Such has value to consumers, and value to producers of the
>drugs that would pass such tests in getting consumers to buy them.
And you have to measure that against the value of the higher profit margins
to the company and stockholders for not doing this extra service that has
nothing actually to do with the products they're trying to sell. They'd
rather spend that money on advertising and on brightly-colored posters.
You do know about balancing values of things to be done against each other,
given a limited budget, right?
>> Did you think there's some overall angelic force that comes by and inspects
>> meatpacking plants and chicken farms and pig farms and freezes them in time
>> and notifies the local police, if conditions are such that consumers will get
>> poisoned or infected or nauseated? Cuz there's not.
>Actually there is- it is called the free market and competition. It
>is why we get EXACTLY that sort of testing without government
>mandate. It provides valuable information to the parties involved.
The free market and competition _takes away_ the inspections and testings.
Companies that don't have to do it can compete better because they're not
spending time, money, and personnel on the quality testing. Companies that
do have it have a smaller profit margin. Sure, you can say "but the value
to their consumers balances it out!" ... but the COMPANY doesn't care
directly about that. The _consumers_ do. Some of them. The COMPANY only
sees this as an indirect effect, much like complaints about the color of
the wrapper for the hamburgers this month.
>> The Invisible Hand of the
>> Free Market sweeps interference with the natural course of business _away_,
>> remember?
>Yawn. Why DO you find socialism so attractive, anyway?
You do know what the Invisible Hand is, and who first referenced it, and
what sort of science he was doing, right?
>>Once the government stops forcing them to, and once the local places that
>>rate restaurants, such as the city Board of Health, stop doing so, the
>> internal
>> quality control inspections will get dropped quicker than a greased
>> Hamburglar.
>Why?
Cost savings.
>> Quality is expensive.
>> Fast, shoddy, and mass-produced is cheap. Cheap means bigger profit margins.
>Only if you have customers wiling to buy your crap. Business in the
>real world does not.
...You haven't been out in the real world much, have you. There are VAST
markets for such crap, and zillions of people who would buy it in a heartbeat.
And give it to their kids.
>> > That A&P would be unconcerned if a salmonella outbreak were
>> >linked to items sold at their stores?
>> Unconcerned? No. Having their public-relations spin the heck out of what
>> happened until none of it was their fault and hey, we're having a sale on
>> salmon this week? Sure.
>And do YOU take PR hacks words for anything? Why do you think anyone
>does?
Cuz I _know_ I'm not normal, and that my reactions to advertising are a lot
different than most people's. Whereas you seem to still be working with what
you learned in undergraduate econ classes, rather than what you've seen out
in the real world in your various jobs.
>> Again, how closely have you studied _actual_ business
>> practices, rather than idealized class-based simulations? Businesses don't DO
>> the extra inspection and final 3% of quality and cleaning up the rough edges
>> stuff unless forced to; it's cheaper not to.
>They are forced to by the market, not government.
Nope. Government. The _market_ says "Cut corners, you save money that way, and
it'll only make a few of your customers sick, not enough to count". And those
who cut corners get a bigger profit margin than those who don't. External
forces have to be invoked to get that bigger profit margin to NOT be
attractive, or to reduce it until following the imposed regulations makes
more money than not doing so.
(You +were+ following the saga of the banks during the last three or four
years, right? And seeing exactly what happened there when the banks felt
they didn't have to follow the imposed regulations that were there to keep
things from being screwed up? That was pure free market at work, dude.)
Dave
-- \/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
In article <slrnjun0u0.b8u....@gatekeeper.vic.com>,
d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
> The free market and competition _takes away_ the inspections and testings.
> Companies that don't have to do it can compete better because they're not
> spending time, money, and personnel on the quality testing. Companies that
> do have it have a smaller profit margin. Sure, you can say "but the value
> to their consumers balances it out!" ... but the COMPANY doesn't care
> directly about that.
I don't think I follow that final claim. The company doesn't care whether or how much consumers value their product? Surely that's what determines the price they can get consumers to pay, which they do care about.
> On Jun 25, 12:29 pm, Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
> <tausti...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Jared <jared4...@gmail.com> wrote
>> innews:js8bjt$lg$1@speranza.aioe.org: >> > "Hidden Order: The Economics of Everyday Life" is a good
>> > book, and worth reading.
>> Is it a comedy?
> I read Friedman to laugh at him.
> Here Friedman tries to promote ignorance:
> "Suppose the number of carpenters suddenly increases, due to the
> immigration of thousands of new carpenters from Mexico. Both
> before and after the change, carpenters receive their marginal
> revenue product... But the wage after the migration is lower
> than the wage before. Since the supply of carpenters is higher
> than before, the equilibrium wage is lower.
So he's an anti-immigrant racist?
> ...an increase in the supply of an input I own drives down its
> price (and marginal revenue product) and so decreases my income.
> The same is true for an increase in the supply of an input that
> is a close substitute for an input I own. If I happen to own an
> oil well, I will regard someone else's discovery of a new field
> of natural gas--or a process for producing power by
> thermonuclear fusion--as bad news." -- David D. Friedman (1990).
> _Price Theory: An Intermediate Text_, Second Edition.
Presumes, of course, that the supply with increase or decrease independtly of any other factor, and is the only thing that affects the price of said goods or services. This is, of course, well, stupid, on any number of levels. The most obvious is that immigrants are also consumers, so an increase of immigrants increases the market.
(One can quibble quite a bit over the ratio between the two, and legitimately so, but to ignore it completely is just, well, stupid. Or dishonest.)
> Here Friedman is directly contradicted in the literature:
> "...The immigration scenario now is a movement... [in which]
> in order to preserve full employment by moving from a technique
> with a high capital-labour ratio to one with a low capital-
> labour ratio..., the real wage has to be raised in reaction to
> the immigration of labour...
> ...We may therefore say that the intertemporal equilibrium
> shows a transition from one steady state to another ... such
> that a rising real wage rate is ... associated with a rise
> in the demand for labour through a 'perverse' substitution
> effect...
> It has been shown that transitions involving reswitching and
> employment opportunity reversals can be represented within
> intertemporal equilibrium models... A rising supply of labor
> is absorbed by raising the real wage rate... The conclusion
> seems inevitable: intertemporal equilibrium does not provide
> a stronghold which could be better defended against the
> critiques from capital theory than the older notions of
> long-period neoclassical equilibrium. They stand or fall
> together."
> -- Bertram Schefold, "Paradoxes of Capital and
> Counterintuitive Changes of Distribution in an
> Intertemporal Equilibrium Model". _Critical Essays
> on Piero Sraffa's Legacy in Economics_. (edited by
> H. D. Kurz), Cambridge University Press, 2000.
> I have pointed this direct contradiction out to David several
> times before. He has told me he does not want to argue
> with me.
Nobody likes to argue with someone who has a real point.
> His actions show that he likes teaching incoherent
> nonsense.
Perhaps it's just that his students are powerless to mock him.
-- Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
In article <nUKGr.39378$C06.13...@news.usenetserver.com>,
sc...@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) wrote:
> >To begin with, legislators create the basic criteria. Thereafter, the > >doctors, scientists, etc. are answering questions whose content is > >determined by the administrators.
> Questions like "Will it kill anyone?", "Is it efficacious"? Please provide
> some examples of the "content determined by administrators".
> If you think the doctors, scientists, et. al. would approve a dangerous
> drug because some legistator forgot to ask if the drug actually worked,
> you're doing a grave disservice to those who participate in the FDA drug
> approval process. If you think they won't approve an efficacious drug
> because some legislator, in the pocket of a competitor, changes the rules
> regarding approval, well I'd need a couple of citations to actual cases
> where this occurred.
Imagine that you are an FDA administrator making a choice, either about particular drugs or about the rules for approval. For simplicity, you face two alternatives:
A: A choice that will delay or prevent ten good drugs and one bad one. The effect of delaying or preventing the introduction of the good drugs will be ten thousand extra deaths, due to the cure rate of the new drugs being somewhat better than that of existing drugs.
B: A choice that will permit all eleven drugs. The bad one will kill a thousand people due to an unexpected side effect.
Which choice is in the interest of patients? Which is in your interest, seen in terms of your future career? Note that if a drug is never introduced, it will never be known how good its cure rate would have been.
I've mentioned Peltzman's old article analyzing the effect of the Kefauver-Miller amendments to the Pure Food and Drug act, which essentially required that a drug had to not only be safe, which was already in the act, but shown to be useful--in some way an improvement on what was already available. Peltzman's conclusion was that the act cut the rate of introduction of new drugs roughly in half.
Of course, that wouldn't be a bad thing if it was blocking the useless drugs. So he used several different proxies to try to measure the average quality of drugs introduced before and after the amendment. As best he could tell, it didn't change. The amendment substantially raised the cost in time and money of introducing a new drug, since it required extensive additional testing, and that was apparently sufficient to sharply reduce the rate of introduction.
My point isn't that legislators change the rules to advantage competitors, although it's possible that there is pressure to make the introduction of new drugs more costly in order to benefit the companies that own the patents on the existing drugs. My point is that the incentives of the regulators don't match very closely the welfare of the patients.
Various people in this thread have pointed out that patients and physicians are not perfectly informed, which is true. But the simple argument for why democracy causes politicians to do the right thing requires the voters to be perfectly informed--to, for instance, know the facts of my hypothetical. That's a much worse approximation to reality. People are less likely to bear the costs of being well informed if the information is useless to them. In a large polity, each individual knows that his vote has a negligible effect on outcomes, hence gets no benefit from being well informed about whether politicians and those they appoint are or are not acting in his interest.
> > Curious that a country as overgoverned as China would have this
> > scandal.
> Overgoverned != Well governed. There seems to be a general absence of
> 'conscience' in many current Chinese activities, the almighty yuan and
> main chance at the moment seems to override everything. The PRC
> government is riddled with corruption, and criminal behaviour is often
> winked after bribes.
Yes. The official obeisance to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism long having
been replaced by a de facto crony capitalism, the corruption isn't
surprising. Even when the old CCCP was operating, there was nothing
like the health and safety regimes of the Western social democracies
or their slightly more capitalist cousins like the USA.
> In this case the government was shamed into making an example; 3
> company managers were imprisoned, and two were executed.
> In article <jsd6ds$g4...@panix2.panix.com>,
> wdst...@panix.com (William December Starr) wrote:
>> In article <ddfr-7F37B3.16460822062...@news.giganews.com>,
>> David Friedman <d...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> said:
>> > That might be a disagreement about beliefs, but it might also
>> > be a disagreement about definitions. A friend of mine, who
>> > actually wrote a book on atheism, convinced me that atheism
>> > does not mean being certain no god exists but only failing to
>> > believe that any god does, hence that some people who
>> > describe themselves as agnostics are in fact atheists.
>> Assuming that the two words do not have exactly the same
>> meaning, what does "agnostic" mean, then?
> In this context, it means having no strong opinion either way. I
> probably should have made my earlier definition of "atheist"
> more precise.
> As I understand it, an atheist thinks there is no god but is not
> necessarily certain, a theist thinks there is a god but is not > necessarily certain, an agnostic has no strong opinion either
> way.
As usual, you are full of shit. They're not actually related at all, directly. Atheism/theism is about belief there is or isn't a diety, agnosticism is about certainty. On can believe, either with, while recognizing that objective proof is impossible (by definition). One can also have some subjective experience that leaves one with absolute certainty.
-- Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
>: wdst...@panix.com (William December Starr)
>: What do we call people who _are_ certain one way or the other?
> Eg, "an atheist who is certain".
> An antitheist, of course, is one who goes around trying to convince
> all and sundry that there is no god. Per analogy from elsethread.
If you like to make up new definitions of words, perhaps. If your goal is to deliberately mislead others as to what you're talking about, perhaps. (Self proclaimed) Atheists seem to do that. A *lot*.
-- Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
>: wdst...@panix.com (William December Starr)
>: what does "agnostic" mean, then?
> Just what you'd expect from the root words. Means roughly
> "don't know". Roughly, and remembering that there is room for
> variation of certainty in these,
> atheist: know not
> agnostic: not know
> apatheist: not care (or perhaps, "makes no odds")
> I, of course, am apatheist.
I am a trollist. I'm more interested in mocking what you believe than even defining what I believe.
-- Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
> In article <1340745...@sheol.org>, Wayne Throop
> <thro...@sheol.org> wrote: >>: wdst...@panix.com (William December Starr)
>>: what does "agnostic" mean, then?
>>Just what you'd expect from the root words. Means roughly
>>"don't know". Roughly, and remembering that there is room for
>>variation of certainty in these,
>> atheist: know not
>> agnostic: not know
>> apatheist: not care (or perhaps, "makes no odds")
> "Atheist" isn't "know not", it's "not god".
That's what he said. He just said it in a way that stupid people don't understand.
-- Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
>> > Ah. I see I was unclear. "know not" and "not know" are
>> > intended as shorthand phrases for "know [there is] not [a
>> > god]" and "not know [there is a god]", respectively. Thought
>> > it would be obvious from context.
>> I thought it was. And a nice way to make the distinction
>> between "know there is not" and "not know there is."
> The problem is that to 'know not' idiomatically means 'doesn't
> know', not 'knows to be false'.
In the context of the other two lines, however, it was pretty clear.
For non-idiots.
-- Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
>:: Assuming that the two words do not have exactly the same meaning,
>:: what does "agnostic" mean, then?
>: Juho Julkunen <giaot...@hotmail.com>
>: "Intellectually dishonest", usually.
> How is it dishonest to conclude that it is not known?
Clearly, anyone who expect (self proclaimed) atheists to use words is such a way as to be understood, and to accurately reflect their beliefs, *must* have something wrong with them.
Pretty much the same as fundie theists, as I have mentioned.
-- Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
> In article <slrnjun0u0.b8u....@gatekeeper.vic.com>,
> d...@gatekeeper.vic.com (David DeLaney) wrote:
>> The free market and competition _takes away_ the inspections and testings.
>> Companies that don't have to do it can compete better because they're not
>> spending time, money, and personnel on the quality testing. Companies that
>> do have it have a smaller profit margin. Sure, you can say "but the value
>> to their consumers balances it out!" ... but the COMPANY doesn't care
>> directly about that.
> I don't think I follow that final claim. The company doesn't care
> whether or how much consumers value their product?
Advertising is probably a more reliable approach to improving how much consumers value their product.
>> So, unless you want to have no police protection whatsoever, you
>> contract out to a private police force, and a private court to
>> prosecute arrests, and a private jail to incarcerate convicts.
>> (Precisely how conflicts involving parties who contract to
>> different companies would be resolved would probably make a decent
>> military sci-fi novel).
> _The Cold Cash War_ by Robert Asprin (a year before he wrote (or at
> least got published) his first Myth Adventures book)?
>> In short, Libertoonians are fucking insane, and stupid. Only
>> loonier political party I've ever seen is the Canadian Natural
>> Law Party, who apperntly ran once on a platform of promising to
>> tow Quebec to the Carribean and leave it there (and not
>> metaphorically). And that's a close call.
> Man, how could anyone _not_ vote for that?
I'm not sure, but since Quebec is still in Canada, apparently, there is a way.
-- Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
>>>>Hint: his definition of whether someone else is capable of
>>>>intelligent discussion includes a rating on how well they can
>>>>keep themselves from BEING provoked into an exchange of
>>>>insults. (As well as a sub-rating on how amusing the exchange
>>>>of insults might be.)
>>> It was possible to keep him provoked for more than a year
>>> before he gave up and went away (from the contest thread).
>>Your ass is still sore over that, eh? Dude, you argued with Pee
>>Wee Herman quotes nad _empty posts_ for *eight* *months*, before
>>you ran away with your tail between your legs (as I predicted
>>you would, and as you swore you never would).
>>And now you're back for more.
> The killfile setting is still there if you want to post in the
> specified thread. You're the one who ran with the tail
> dangling.
As usual, you're too craven to admit you got a-scared and ran away. The entire thread is still there for all to see, son. You, vowing to get the last word, and me, getting the last word.
-- Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
> David DeLaney <d...@vic.com> wrote:
>> Laws that everyone obeys voluntarily,
> Not everyone obeys the laws *now*. Compare anarcho-capitalism
> with the current system, not with unattainable perfection. > Utopia is not an option.
>> or government that's entirely supported by voluntary donations
>> and doesn't issue pronouncements, statutes, forbiddances,
>> requirements, etc., are a sign that you're not actually dealing
>> with humans any more, as such.
> A couple centuries ago similar things were said about the
> abolition of slavery. A couple centuries before that, similar
> things were said about the power of the Church.
> As for issuing pronouncements, statutes, forbiddances,
> requirements, etc., the pope still does so, but nobody has to
> pay any attention if they don't want to. There's no reason
> governments can't take the same route. I'd have no problem with
> a system in which being declared a felon has no more
> consequences than being declared a heretic has today.
IIRC, that's because you are a felon, so that makes sense. Criminals *always* resent being punished for breaking the law.
People like you are the reason governments exist.
-- Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
>Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org> wrote in
>> The killfile setting is still there if you want to post in the
>> specified thread. You're the one who ran with the tail
>> dangling.
>As usual, you're too craven to admit you got a-scared and ran away. >The entire thread is still there for all to see, son. You, vowing to >get the last word, and me, getting the last word.
grin. Indeed.
-- I used to own a mind like a steel trap.
Perhaps if I'd specified a brass one, it
wouldn't have rusted like this.
> In article <jsfhue$rn...@dont-email.me>,
> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>> On 6/27/12 1:21 PM, David Friedman wrote:
>>> In article <jseu42$rp...@dont-email.me>,
>>> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>>> (B) Beta-blockers ARE perfectly legal drugs, as far as I can tell.
>>> The FDA approved them many years ago. When approval (of the first
>>> beta-blocker) was announced, the FDA estimated that the action would
>>> save eight to ten thousand lives a year. It didn't offer any estimate of
>>> lives lost prior to that.
>> Because prior to that isn't relevant. Or do you accuse drug researchers
>> of killing thousands per year if they VOLUNTARILY wait to release the
>> drug while doing drug trials? Or, perhaps, the drug INVENTORS of killing
>> people because they didn't invent the drug last year instead of this?
> Only the FDA, if it instructs physicians that they are not to use a drug
> for a particular purpose until it approves that use.
Okay, so your double standard is at least clear. Makes no sense, but it's clear. The researchers are depriving people of that drug to save lives, and could choose to release it at any time. The FDA is doing *exactly* what the researchers would be doing, yet the regular drug researchers are perfectly okay, and the the FDA are murderers.
In message <ddfr-93AD59.15392027062...@news.giganews.com>, David Friedman <d...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes
>My point isn't that legislators change the rules to advantage
>competitors, although it's possible that there is pressure to make the
>introduction of new drugs more costly in order to benefit the companies
>that own the patents on the existing drugs. My point is that the
>incentives of the regulators don't match very closely the welfare of the
>patients.
The licensing process takes so long that it absorbs most of the patent period. The drug companies interest would be rather strongly in the direction of faster approval both to replace their older drugs as the patents expire and to get to sell the drug during a larger part of the patent term.
-- Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm Livejournal http://brett-dunbar.livejournal.com/ Brett Dunbar
>> The free market and competition _takes away_ the inspections and testings.
>> Companies that don't have to do it can compete better because they're not
>> spending time, money, and personnel on the quality testing. Companies that
>> do have it have a smaller profit margin. Sure, you can say "but the value
>> to their consumers balances it out!" ... but the COMPANY doesn't care
>> directly about that.
>I don't think I follow that final claim. The company doesn't care
>whether or how much consumers value their product? Surely that's what
>determines the price they can get consumers to pay, which they do care
>about.
As I understand it in immediate post communist Russia the lack of effective food safety regulation functioned as a barrier to entry to restaurants. Rather than be able to rely on a statutory external regulator enforcing standards consumers had to depend on the reputations of the restaurant. This provided a big advantage to the large chains who have the ability to enforce good standards on their suppliers. The consumer knew that the food in say a McDonalds would be safe, as any case where they weren't would be widely reported and seriously damage their reputation. Small independent restaurants simply lacked any reputation so you didn't know whether or not they were trustworthy. Bringing in external regulation meant that you could trust that the food in any restaurant was safe.
-- Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search http://www.mersenne.org/prime.htm Livejournal http://brett-dunbar.livejournal.com/ Brett Dunbar
On Jun 27, 2:01 pm, Ddfr <daviddfried...@gmail.com> wrote:
> At a slight tangent, it seems to me that there is an apparent
> inconsistency between the argument you have been making in this thread
> and your evaluation, here and elsewhere, of our relative
> qualifications for talking about economics.
David, I have SEEN your errors about basic economic forces. Hell, you
make another one in the post I'm responding to here. You are not as
qualified as you think you are. And if you think your father's name
isn't dispositive feel free to cite other people in your posiution
without such an advantage.
>> The free market and competition _takes away_ the inspections and testings.
>> Companies that don't have to do it can compete better because they're not
>> spending time, money, and personnel on the quality testing. Companies that
>> do have it have a smaller profit margin. Sure, you can say "but the value
>> to their consumers balances it out!" ... but the COMPANY doesn't care
>> directly about that.
>I don't think I follow that final claim. The company doesn't care >whether or how much consumers value their product? Surely that's what >determines the price they can get consumers to pay, which they do care >about.
And everyone knows that consumers make value judgments objectively, right?
Like $150 Nike shoes are higher quality than the Court Classics for $20 at costco,
right?
Or why does Budweiser use bikini babes to sell beer? Because the beer
actually _tastes_ better?
I'm beginning to think libertarians (such as they are) seem to believe that
all people are the "same" as them - same level of intelligence, same background,
same desires, same goals, same thought processes. Considering that half
are below the median in any category, I think that's pretty rose-colored.
