) That a voluntary interaction makes both parties better off is completely false.
What if we changed this sentiment to “there is nothing that can be said one way or the other about such a transaction”. We are not capable of calling it “good” or “bad”
Consider the use of marketing to influence people’s decisions to buy products which do not live up to expectations as created by the advert. It is well known that misleading advertizing is knowingly used.
This would have more to do with legal and contract theory, rather than economic theory. And in the sense, if you are a Keynesian - I have no idea how a large federalized bureacracy is really all that desirable a place to live. That of course is an aesthetic though.
It makes both parties better off before the fact, and since individuals are most likely to know what they themselves want, then it is, at least relatively speaking, efficient (though of course it isn’t perfect). In other words, you are more likely to know what you want than anyone else (including, and especially some government official).
And this is precisely the point: the maket is an emergent, evolutionary dynamic process, where individuals learn through a continuous process of trial and error. This is a major element of AE.
Sure it is. People like to equivocate in oder to defend their untenable and incoherent positions.
This is the sort of equivocation I was just referring to. How does persuasion eliminate the possibility of voluntary action? You are conflating persuasion with coercion.
You cannot aggregate value because value is an ordinal ranking which, by definition, cannot be summated. Also, do not confuse value with prices; prices are determined by the interplay of subjective values, at the margin on the market, but they are two distinct phenomena. Prices, though, are indeed objective.
It’s important to distinguish such elements in order to avoid confusion.