Re: International Pricing Policy

"Wayne Niddery [TeamB]" wrote
values. What you are willing to pay is based on whether you think that
amount of money is better spent there or somewhere else.

That follows. I'm trying to find out if there's any standard by which one
might say "What that person is willing to pay is too much" (or too little).
IOW, is there any standard against which the person's decision could be
called wrong.

Only self-correction. But that is the wrong attribution of "subjective".

I'm not following how self correction is possible if no standard apart from
will. In other words, saying that I'd only be willing to pay $10 for an item
today that I might have paid $15 for yesterday doesn't mean that my
evaluation of worth (what I was willing to pay) yesterday was wrong, only
that, for whatever reason, I've changed my mind. Neither evaluation can be
said to be a correction of the other--each is independent and
self-validating.

Subjective doesn't simply mean "I decided", it means "I decided without
reference to reality" - i.e. arbitrarily.

Since there is no objective standard of worth apart from my willingness to
pay, of what relevance is 'reference to reality'?

This question is not easily dismissable: presumably I am willing to pay a
certain price for an item if I believe it to be 'worth' (to me) at least the
asking price. I buy if I'd rather have the item than the ten dollars. By
contrast, a sale can 'rationally' be undertaken only if the seller would
rather have the ten dollars than the item. So free commerce is only possible
if we posit that there is no common reality in terms of which the relative
value of the item and the money can be objectively assessed. We have to live
in different worlds to motivate the trade.

In any free exchange, then, it would seem that either the other person
involved lives in a different world than I do, or else he is acting
irrationally. The other possibility is that perhaps we live in the same
reality, but that is of no consequence to the our different assessments of
relative value. Which brings me back to the question three paragraphs back:
it would seem that 'reference to reality' cannot help resolve questions of
relative value, and there's no difference between the statements 'I decided
arbitrarily' and 'I decided with reference to reality'. 'Reality' does not
enforce any particular relative valuation.

sell goods at various prices. At whatever price point they find they are
able to sell their stock (at the rate they are able to supply it) is *by
definition* the market value. If someone else is able to supply it more
cheaply, that pushes the market value down.

Yes--exactly my point that market value is non-normative: it's not possible
to state that a person paying more than "market value" is making a bad
trade, only that he appears to value the item more highly than others, and
there exists no standard by which to claim he's wrong.

bobD


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: International Pricing Policy
    ... Of course there is a standard of value - your life. ... of what relevance is 'reference to reality'? ... reality, in this case judging your need or desire for a good against the ...
    (borland.public.delphi.non-technical)
  • Re: defvar affecting captured closure variables ?
    ... by a SRFI-like process than a revisiting of the ANSI process. ... and doesn't conform to the ANSI standard, there are ways you can open ... collectively referred to as "libel" although it is sometimes broken ... reference document, that makes it easier to correlate it with yours ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: Judge Jones speaks
    ... the Bible corresponds with the rare act in reality. ... sensible persons conclude they cannot perform His standard WHICH leaves ... God allows, faith alone, apart from the works of the law, to be ...
    (talk.origins)
  • Re: Buffer overflows and asctime()
    ... reference implementation is IMO a defect in the Standard. ... The behavior of asctime() should be well defined when all relevant ... "normal ranges" by means of side effects in a reference implementation ...
    (comp.std.c)
  • Re: goofy frequencies
    ... And I'd like to have the option of phase locking it to some standard ... reference, ... Back in Germany I've used another outfit that had better pricing. ... For super top notch crystals where price was not an objective we used KVG. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)