h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(cryptic )

"the world oil market isn't failing oil producers but it is failing those who live in areas near sea level"

Yeah, but those people don't have any money, so they're not important.

A representative of the oil companies met with the environmentalists this morning, and had them all shot...

(On a non-facetious point - the first line is literally true. Those people don't have any money. Therefore, to the market, they're irrelevant. The market isn't "failing" them - it's ignoring them. No... ignoring them implies agency and choice. The market *cannot see* them. You might as well blame a blind man for ignoring a flashing light.)

"it *is* failing at least one consumer"

Is it? Really?

His favourite product isn't available *everywhere*, ALL THE TIME, and therefore the market has "failed"? I don't think so. As it is, he values that product more than he might otherwise, simply because of its scarcity. How much does anyone value Mars Bars, comparatively? Not at all, I'd say - they're *everywhere*. You care more about things that are rare.

I learned this lesson as a child, when my favourite Star Wars figures were C-3P0 and Darth Vader. Why? Well, 3P0 was all gold and stuff... but mainly, you could get Luke and Han and Leia and Chewie and Artoo and Obi-wan *anywhere*. C-3P0 was *rare*. I'd love to speak with the person who organised those artificial scarcities that shaped my childhood longings for lumps of plastic.

Given the number of Disgustingly Rich people who have houses right by the sea I'd say the claim that people living at sea level are universally poor is, in fact, *not* true.

On the Bounty issue - I still say its failing me. Here i am, money in my hand, wanting to give money to Mar Inc in exchange for a plain chocolate Bounty, and I have no means of doing so. Plus *I WANT A PLAIN CHOCOLATE BOUNTY*!!!!

As for the poor not being part of a market economy - not really. Firstly people are the raw material for the production of goods. They are also the consumers of goods. While the existence of poor people creates rich people (via competition in labour markets), it also depresses the consumer market (poor people can't afford shit). The key, fatal, structural flaw in a free market economy is that producers have to compete with one another. This they achieve through 'efficiencies' - making more with fewer people paid less. Eventually we arrive at the point where people can't afford the stuff the make.

There are a few more complications along the way, obviously, but this is the essence of how we get from my wanting a plain chocolate Bounty to The Crisis of Capitalism.

>>Given the number of Disgustingly Rich people who have houses right by the sea I'd say the claim that people living at sea level are universally poor is, in fact, *not* true.


I attended an excellent conference presentation recently that started by pointing out that there is a significant population trend towards the coast. This is because this is where you but factories if you want to be able to ship goods easily - and as Adam Smith pointed out you need to do that to get rich.

If you're Holland or Denmark - no biggie. You can build sea defences. China, even. But Bangladesh has fewer factories.

In times of stress people instinctively reach out for a natural calment- The university shop used to run out of choccy during exam time - luckily the SU never ran out of beer and peanuts...

Plain chocolate Bounty is the opiate of the people.

We're having a bit of glut of plain Bounties in Surrey. All the Waitrose stores around here just lob boxes of unsold bars into skips at the end of each day.

And spray them with paraquat, no doubt.

"I still say its failing me. Here i am, money in my hand, wanting to give money to Mar Inc in exchange for a plain chocolate Bounty, and I have no means of doing so. Plus *I WANT A PLAIN CHOCOLATE BOUNTY*!!"

You're either missing, or not understanding, or deliberately ignoring or refusing to understand (as usual) the point I'm making.

Mars are doing this to you *on purpose*, and they are NOT failing. They're not even failing YOU, because what they're doing to you is they're successfully making you value your beloved plain chocolate bounty far more than you would were it available whenever you wanted. Chances are when you can't get one you still give the Mars company money for something else.

SoRB I don't think you realise that, in the absence of a plain Bounty, Ed has his tongue firmly stuck in his cheek.

Humorous glass container with a long neck, used in distilling liquids and other chemical operations, anyone?

>>You're either missing, or not understanding, or deliberately ignoring or refusing to understand (as usual) the point I'm making.

Or disagreeing with it?

Feck! Was this even meant to be serious point-scoring, though? We're talking about fecking Bountys. Old phrase-or-saying: 'If I wanted a serious conversation I wouldn't have been facetious'. Chillax, bro. It'll be good for your blood pressure and you'll live longer.

More seriously (slightly )...

If the purpose of a market economy is to earn money for confectionery producers, SoRB clearly has a point. I concede that.

If, however, it is to feed me with plain chocolate Bountys whenever I please...it is failing.

Would anyone like to state with certainty the purpose of a market economy? Me - I go with Adam Smith: it has no innate purpose, only a blind hand.

So we're both right. Deal?

My blood pressure's fine. Mostly. It's just that this particular conversation, as it pertains to the availability of cocoa-based comestibles and the artificial scarcities thereof, hits me in two particular areas: (a) it gets my goat, and (b) I understand perfectly why it occurs because I was for a long time professionally complicit in it. And it got my goat WHILE I WAS RESPONSIBLE, however peripherally, for it.

As for "the purpose of a market economy"... I think I'd probably reach for the old one, what is the purpose of a baby? It's what you make it, I guess. Within a market economy, the purpose of a company is to maximise the return on investment for its shareholders, and that's all.

I would suggest that the "purpose" of the market economy in this case is NOT to feed you plain chocolate bountys whenever you please, it's to make you appreciate them by limiting their supply and thereby actually increasing the sum total of your happiness. I contend that if you could have one whenever you wanted, you'd actually end up liking them less.

I go back to my Star Wars figures - if one could have walked into Toy and Hobby in June 1978 and simply bought all 12 figures straight off the shelf (assuming you had the requisite twenty quid or so), where would the interest have been? Where would the *challenge* have been? As it was, about half that initial line of 12 were *everywhere*, some were rare, and some were like hen's teeth. Why? I couldn't understand it at the time, but I do now. Only yesterday, as I was getting the Xmas decorations out of the attic, for a moment I held and appreciated the Jawa my mother spent hours traipsing round York on a works day out to get for me, the last of the initial 12 figures to "complete" my collection (ha!). I *still* appreciate that because it was hard to get. In many ways the overabundance of product available to the ToyRUs generation is, I think, the reason why kids nowadays are much LESS interested in toys than we were when I was a kid.

>>I would suggest that the "purpose" of the market economy in this case is NOT to feed you plain chocolate bountys whenever you please, it's to make you appreciate them by limiting their supply and thereby actually increasing the sum total of your happiness. I contend that if you could have one whenever you wanted, you'd actually end up liking them less.


But you see...you're making a value judgement there - that it is better to appreciate scarce plain chocolate Bounty bars than to be sated with them. Economics makes no such judgement.

Do you imagine that Mars Inc has the sum total of my happiness at the heart of their mission statement? I'm sceptical.

btw...do, please, observe that we are 'Violently Agreeing' here. Agreed, a Market Economy has no purpose. But if you look back I think you'll see that it was me who said that first.

(although I admitted I was chaneling Adam Smith).

Here's another one.

Beetroot. You can always find beetroot in the greengrocers or in supermarket produce aisles, fresh or cooked and vacuum packed. But who eats it? Yes, yes, the odd jar, pickled, with a pan of scouse or leaking all over a poorly conceived ploughman's lunch, but who is it that's actually putting a dent in this beetroot mountain?

Now I know what you're thinking - Poles! Borscht! But surely this tuberous abundance pre-dates EU enlargement?

Fine by me. I like beetroot. I can get it whenever I want it, no problem. Or even when I don't.

'Course under Communism we'll *only* have beetroot.

Me! I would eat beetroot all the time if my guts would let me.