[extropy-chat] Futurist priorities was ex-tropical

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

Harvey wrote:
> Subject: RE: [extropy-chat] Futurist priorities was ex-tropical
>
>
> Technotranscendence wrote,
>> You want the best PC?  If you can afford it, you can get a lot.
>> However, most people set limits on how much they will pay for a PC.
>> They are willing to settle for less options or whatever if the price
>> is lower.  This is because they don't have infinite resources and
>> costs matter.
>
> Exactly my point.  Most people want cheap PCs and that is what the
> market focuses on providing.  If you want some fringe attribute
> besides price that most people don't want, the market is not geared
> toward serving you.

### It is not true - a robust, many-supplier market, like the one in
computers, will serve even narrow slices of the population, persons
interested in the "fringe" attributes, as long as they are willing to pay
the premium due to the small aggregate size of the demand they generate, and
its attendant inefficiencies of small scale.

Indeed, the market vastly outperforms all other methods of resource
allocation in the ability to serve niche users. Look at the supply of parts
for exotic and ancient cars, and your doubts should vanish.

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>
>> This is also an illustration of the paradox of freedom.  If you allow
>> people to be free to make their decisions -- decisions like buying a
>> PC -- they will make choices you disagree with -- even choices you
>> feel are stupid, wrong, suboptimal, unhealthy, etc.
>
> Exactly my point.  Most people choose suboptimal goals, and the
> market fills these suboptimal goals.  Thus, the market choices are
> often suboptimal.

### It might feel good to believe in one's intellectual superiority, which
is the condition for being able to legitimately call most of other people's
wishes "suboptimal", frequently however, this feeling will not be well
grounded.

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>
>> Therein lies the rub.  You look at these as all or nothing choices.
>> Either there is one monolithic system that is cost efficient or
>> there's one monolithic system that extends lifespan.
>
> I do see cheap healthcare and life-extension at opposite ends of the
> spectrum.  Cheap healthcare plans don't offer life-extension.
> Life-extension plans don't come cheap.  You cannot get both cheapness
> and life-extension in the same plan today.  The market can optimize
> toward one end of the spectrum or the other.  It currently seems to
> be choosing price over life-extension.  Therefore, the
> market/majority goals are not my goals (right now).

### Again, the market has superb ability to serve niche consumers (at least,
much better than e.g. central planning), therefore, whatever you can get in
a free-market healthcare system is likely to be the best (for you) you can
get. There are lots of plans making an infinity of fine tradeoffs between
cost and scope, even now under the 60% control of the state, despite courts
which disregard contracts in the name of "consumer protection". You won't
have these choices once there is only one plan, the state plan.

Rafal