Settle for Biden

RE: 58
I actually respect your argument regarding debunking philosophies (ignoring the admittedly skillfull ad hominem), but Mercantilism was an economic theory built around the premise that a nation's primary economic goal was to gain control of the world's reserves of gold and silver buillion. Not hard to debunk that.

@clousems I wasn't referring to that, I just loosely pointed at that because you have shown to have the idea of dubunking an opposing view. I wanted to appeal to something that you knew so that you would have a better chance of 1) knowing about where I was coming from and 2) we could have some type of bridge and it wouldn't just feel like I was yanking your chain

@clousems If you really want to understand, just know about what I mentioned today and the rest will fall into place but in my experience, long vested interests or ideas aren't broken down overnight (and they shouldn't be because then things start to get really sketchy on a personal level)

@SlicingBishop2006 A bottle of water can be more valuable than a diamond but it needs some type of qualifier. Are you dehydrated without access to other water? Then water might be life, and the diamond is functionally useless. Is the water bottle some sentimental thing? even that, sure. Are you sitting in modern America with access to all of the water you could want but with need for money? If you say the water bottle is more valuable, it's suspicious, even if you point at some weird artsy qualifier. and if it's just "because I say so" then even I would call you foolish. Subjectivity without a qualifier is not worthy of respect or audience. A person's self contained paracosm has NO bearing on reality or truth unless there is something to link them. A person's ideas or beliefs can be valuable or worthless based on whether or not the person themselves is justified or can hold water.

@IPunishDaddy2007
Okay, I think I see what's going on here.
Am I correct in assuming that you're using the accounting definition of value, i.e. that something is "worth" exactly what the price tag says?

@clousems Not strictly but I reference that. There are different facets of value, that is one of them.

@clousems

Replying to your remark here: lichess.org/forum/off-topic-discussion/settle-for-biden?page=5#45

It is a complicated matter and you are right looking at the OECD numbers in this article www.hwwi.org/uploads/tx_wilpubdb/HWWI_Policy_Paper-55_01.pdf b.e. (pardon I use a source in german, but the tables are surely understandable). If you look then at the money spend per person and the efficiency in later tables you see another picture. Additionally there are several ways to measure quality.

You are far from unfair if you summarize it this way: Having money you get a good healtcare in the US. Being poor you don't get good healtcare over all.

Edit adds:

There is another point of measuring the quality of healtcare. How does the health system react to a crisis. What happens now in the US with Corona is not only the consequence of the alternative fact politics by Trump. This made America first true in a way nobody can be happy about. If the healthcare system were in a better state (again: in spite of being the most expensive worldwide) the federal states could have adjusted better to this crisis and the PotUS would have been only a sad sideline.

@IPunishDaddy2007
Fair enough. I can see how that would lead to the idea that trade hurts one party and benefits another, as using something akin to the accounting definition would imply that any difference in explicit value would necessarily make one party worse off.

The value that I'm using refers to the value that either party places on the good. Both parties are not necessarily made financially better off (although they can be, depending on whether the buyer uses the good as an input into their own production), but both parties would prefer having what the other is offering over what they have now.

@Neustart
#69
I'd agree with that summary

@clousems There are different motives leading into trade as well, and in groups or complex bodies, what trade benefits an individual might not benefit the whole that that individual belongs to. This is what we experiences with trade between USA and China and a very good example in that even the ones who benefited from it lost value elsewhere *with NO RESPECT OR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT* for that value. I'm sure you've heard Trump's take on this, it's not complete (at least as far as i've heard it) but that's enough of a gateway and one you already denounced.