Joe_Cavalry All Day Every Day

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

- Gandhi

You'll take the yacht and starve to death. Yeah fucking right.

You hide behind stupid jokes whenever you're arguments are proven to be wrong. And then a few days later you make the same stupid arguments again.

Suppose you can only have one or the other.

......................

You keep using the phrase "marginal utility" as though it means "utility". This tells me you don't understand what the "marginal" part means. But since I've already tried to explain it twice, I'll just let that go.

You're sort of right that we can't measure utility precisely. However, we can approximate it. For example, in the vast majority of cases, we know that when people are starving, they value food more highly than a yacht. You don't need numbers to know that. It's obvious. We can use that judgment to conclude that giving food to a thousand starving people would carry greater utility than giving a yacht to a rich person (at least in the short term).

Furthermore, in theory we could measure utility exactly. It just comes down to neurons firing. The amount of subjective value obtained from a hamburger vs a yacht could be measured through some extremely complicated equation. The number may be too hard for us to find, but it does exist. And even if we can't determine the exact value of a given thing to a given person, through careful study, we can bring our approximations closer and closer to the true value.

I mean, say I kicked someone in the balls. Would it be reasonable for me to say the other guy's suffering was meaningless because it couldn't be precisely quantified?

Food is not so valuable to an anorexic person.

Yes, yes, obviously the rules don't apply to the mentally ill. But the vast majority of people are not mentally ill. Besides, even anorexics value food significantly, or else they would starve to death. Anyway, you're missing the point.

This is the value of this thing for everyone...

No, that's not what I'm saying. Diminishing marginal utility just means the value of each additional thing drops as you get more it. The "absolute" value is irrelevant. It seems like you're not really understanding the concept or marginal utility, and if you can't grasp it then we're not going to be able to move forward here...

It's dictatorial and I rather die than live under a dictatorial regime.

No, Joe... the amount of coercion done by the government lies in a spectrum with anarchy on one end and totalitarianism on the other. You can't just point to any act of coercion and claim dictatorship.

I'm glad you conceded the main point: that death is worse than being stolen from.

What? I'm not sure I really understand your argument. I think what you're trying to say is:

1) People value things differently.

2) Therefore the concept of "value" is meaningless.

3) Therefore you can't say food is more valuable than a yacht.

It's true that some people like watching basketball and others don't, therefore the ability to watch a basketball game can hold more utility for one person than another. But there are some things that are universally valued by all people. Food, for example. Food will always be more valuable to a starving person than a yacht to a rich person.

The more apples you eat, the less you want. The value of each additional dollar drops as you get more of them. Marginal utility is a well defined economic concept.

I wasn't talking about taxes, I was talking about the basic principle of whether being stolen from is worse than death.

Who the hell wants to fill out tax forms every year for the rest of their life?

So get a pro to handle it.

Let me rephrase: the fact that people will always want more is irrelevant to the question of whether stealing is acceptable in certain situations (because it avoids a greater evil).

As far as the billionaire, if he can't buy that yacht because he just had to pay a million dollars worth of taxes, then the "marginal utility of that money" did NOT drop!

You don't seem to understand the concept of marginal utility...

It's like eating apples. If you're really craving an apple you might be willing to pay a dollar for one. But after you eat it, you're craving is mostly satisfied. So you would only be willing to pay, say 75 cents for another one. If you ate a couple more after that, you would probably start to get sick of apples and the amount you would pay for another one would start to approach 0. Get it?

If you go from zero to a million dollars that means you can get food, a house with air conditioning and heat, a car, the ability to support a family, healthcare, etc, etc.

If you go from a billion to 1.1 billion you get a yacht.

Which of the two carries more subjective value?

It's not that we are greedy...

Wait, so you're a rich person now?

Says who?...That is a subjective statement...

It's not subjective. It follows logically from the facts. Like I said:

"The marginal utility of money drops as you get more of it. A million dollars is worth a lot to a starving person but comparatively little to a billionaire."

There will always be a group of people clamoring for more

Irrelevant. The fact that people will always want more has no bearing on the question of where we should draw the line.