Re: Big purple digit

In article <memo.20080416232339.1884C@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
 jgd@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (John Dallman) wrote:

> In article <ddfr-E3B506.12162816042008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>, 
> ddfr@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 (David Friedman) wrote:
> 
> > I'm still not sure I understand you--are you talking about money or 
> > value? 
> 
> I don't know enough of the technical terminology to tell. 
> 
> > The stock market doesn't make money appear and disappear, nominal or
> > otherwise. 
> 
> Say I own 100 shares in XYZ, a trivial fraction of the company's value. 
> I bought them at $10, they are now worth $12.5 because the share value 
> has gone up. 

At which point you have more value--your shares are worth more--but no 
more money.

> I sell them, I have made a profit of $250. Something has 
> been created, because that $250 wasn't taken away from anyone else, but 
> I don't know if you call it money or value. 

The $250 was in the hands of the buyer, it's now in your hands, so the 
amount of money hasn't increased, any more than it would increase if you 
had done the buyer some service and he had paid you for it.

> The behaviour I was complaining of in politicians, now I think about it 
> a bit more, was a reverence approaching wor****p for the process of 
> buying and selling, and an outright contempt for the idea that anyone 
> could have desires or interests that weren't measured in terms of things

> that could be bought and sold.

Frankly, I doubt it. It's true I don't know the politicians in question, 
but your comment sounds more like an expression of your outright 
contempt for people with different views than yours.

How would you find out that someone either wor****pped the process of 
buying and selling--as opposed to seeing it as a useful process for 
serving human ends--or that he had contempt for the idea that anyone 
could have desires not measured in things bought or sold? Did the 
politician, for instance, express disinterest in whether his wife and 
children loved him? That would seem to follow from your account of his 
views.

-- 
 http://www.daviddfriedman.com/
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
 Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
 Published by Baen, paperback in bookstores now