From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Re: More Rhetoric
Date: 10 Apr 92 07:30:37 GMT
Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera

In article <1992Apr10.182739.7365@waikato.ac.nz>, rmarsh@waikato.ac.nz writes:
>Certainly I think
>certification is a good idea - but only to show who has passed the 
>qualifying exam, not to keep people out of the field. Medicine is little
>more tricky though - you wouldn't want to let a 'doctor' perform tricky
>surgery if you weren't sure of his competence. This does need some
>thought."

"We already allow just that.  Almost any cancer patient in this country may, if
he so chooses, travel to Mexico for the latest quack therapy, or to the
Philipines for `psychic surgery,' instead of undergoing conventional therapy. 
Many people commit suicide by doing just that every year.  Why not save them
the expense of travelling?  Why not have `certified quacks'?"

>>And suppose someone squanders the resources he starts with?  What happens then?
>>We already have a situation in which enormous numbers of people squander their
>>opportunity for education, and then blame the rest of society for the fact
>>that, having spent their time in school disrupting the efforts of others to
>>learn, they don't have an education.  Somehow I doubt that your scheme will
>>change this sort of behavior.  
>
>  "Except that those who don't like school the way it is can buy the kind
>of education they would rather have

"In many cases, that would be `none.'  And later in life, they'd STILL blame
society for not giving them a proper education."

>and instead of education being the
>'responsibility' of government or some other outsider, the responsibility
>resides wholly with the person hirself. That way if they decide to spend
>their time and money on something other than education it's nobody's fault
>other than their own, and that is plainly evident."

"It's already plainly evident.  Besides, they can always argue `My education up
to that point was so terrible, I didn't know any better.'"

>>Now, if your scheme says that those who squander
>>the resources they control don't continue getting more, I don't think you'll
>>get rid of property and poverty crime.  And if your scheme DOES require that we
>>continue diverting more resources to them, you've eliminated property and
>>poverty crime only in the sense that their continued theft is now legal. 
>>Either way, you've not dealt with the problem.
>
>  "To a certain extent it depends on what you mean by squander. There are
>very few reasons we can think of to remove someone's right to control their
>own resource share. One of these reasons is eco-crime. Just as bankrupts
>today are required to take budgetry advice and have their affairs run for
>them, so anyone who wantonly destroyed (squandered?) resources would have
>their share admiistered for them. If you meant something else by
>squandering resources then I think you may have found a(nother?) hole in 
>the system."

Hypothetical conversation:  "I KNOW it was Elvis I just saw in the 7-11.  I'll
bet you everything I own that it was HIM!"  "You're on!"

>>Actually, for a Pareto-Optimal outcome (i.e., one in which you can't make
>>anybody better off without making someone else worse off), you don't want to
>>use the average valuation, you want to use the marginal valuation;  i.e., the
>>value placed on it by the person who wants it most.
>
>  "Are you sure?

Yes.

>If we put the max. value on a resource nobody would want
>to own it except the person who wanted it most, and even that person would
>be indifferent.

Not true.  You're implicitly assuming that one buys the resource in one
fixed-size, huge lump.  That's not the way things work.  For example, if I were
in a situation where vitamin C was scarce, I might be willing to pay a huge
amount for a few limes.  After I'd had enough to prevent scurvy, I'd be willing
to pay considerably less for additional limes.  The price at which the market
for limes clears will be the amount the person who most wants the last
available lime is willing to pay for it.  Believe me, it works.  You might find
it useful to take an introductory course in microeconomics, if it's within your
means.

>What we want is the valuation which allows everyone who
>values the resource more highly to control it, and those who value it less
>highly to receive compensation. Admittedly this won't be the average value,
>but unless there's a very small quantity of resource it won't be the
>maximum valuation either."

If the commodity is reasonably divisible, it WILL be the amount the person who
most wants the last available unit it is willing to pay for it, given the
following (extremely reasonable, in my opinion) assumption:  The more you
already have of something, the less you're willing to pay for more of it.