Where Do Better Options Come From?

Reply to reply: Contrary to popular and academic belief, Adam Smith did not accept inequality as a necessary trade-off for a more prosperous economy

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I made my point.  And my point was painfully obvious.  Yet here you are wondering what my point is.  How can I make my point obvious enough for even you to understand?  Can I accomplish the impossible?  Only one way to find out.

We both want people to have better options.  Every person's gravestone should be able to say, "I was as happy as a kid in a candy store".  Life should be full of options that perfectly match your preferences...aka heaven.

In order to create heaven on earth...you have to understand where better options come from.  The owner of a candy store doesn't just *snap* his fingers and better candies magically appear.  He doesn't just go pick better candies from a candy tree.  There's a distinct and logical process that occurs.

The key to this process is consumer choice.  If kids can't choose which candies match their preferences... then candy producers won't know what the preferences of kids are.  If producers don't know what the preferences of kids are...then candies won't match kids' preferences.  So in the absence of consumer choice, kids would be sad in candy stores because the options really wouldn't match their preferences.  Life would be less like heaven and more like hell.

Right now you're so far in left field that you don't realize that the point of production really isn't to ensure that workers in candy factories are happy oompa loompas.  The objective really isn't to make oompa loompas happier...it's to make kids happier.

Maybe you want to argue that you can make kids happier by making oompa loompas happier?  If so...then why bother trying to convince Wonka that he's making a mistake by not paying his oompa loompas enough money?  If somebody refuses to pick up a gold nugget...are you going to stand there and argue with them?  If you're so certain that it's not fool's gold then you should have no problem making the effort to pick it up yourself.

If it's truly gold...then picking it up would not only give kids a better option...it would also give workers a better option.  How awesome is that?  You can become wealthy by giving people better options.  Of course, if it's not truly gold...then picking it up would be very costly.  Maybe you used your home as collateral for your business loan?  If so, then you'd lose your home.  As a knocker (liberal) you're not willing to take that risk.  So when the earth takes any steps closer to heaven...it's not because of knockers...it's despite them.