If you had 2 children, and both came to you asking for money, one for playing golf, and the other one for food because it is starving; you only have enough for one child. Whom would you rather give your money?
I happen to have two kids, but this question tests MY values, not theirs.
Nice ;). The immense majority will answer my question exactly like you and I and all within this forum would, and therefore prove my point. Do you doubt that? It is because a non-essential need is not as important as an essential need. All who disagree must be dead already! Why should you then argue that the non-essential need of A has priority over the essential need of B? But luckily you can test it and make a huge survey and see if I’m right, but I don’t see a point in asking people rhetorical questions (except they pretend to answer differently).
It’s like saying any feather is not as heavy as any bowling ball. Just because it is thinkable to build a bowling ball so small that it would in fact be lighter than a feather, does not shake the truth of the statement.
The immense majority will answer my question exactly like you and I and all within this forum would, and therefore prove my point.
I do not think so. This would just prove THEY prefer to give to one kid and not to the other. This proves nothing about values the kids have. This statement is meaningful even if both the kids participate in the survey.
So if both my kidneys failed I could accost you on the street, smack you by the head, cut one of your (non-essential) kidneys out, and put it in my body. When your predicament is explained to you upon waking up, you’d be: “Oh no problem, as long as it was essential for him.” Close?
Sir, you are looking for the backwards bending leisure/labor curve. Interpersonal utility calulations are immpossible, but emprically, it was like the previous poster said about time and money.
Bearchu, you talkin’ to me?
HAHA nice Z. I just clicked to respond to you becasue it was the closest.. Classic clip, though.
the you sir part, was for the OP
I figured. Fyi, if you click on “replied on” in the header of each post it brings you to the post to which it is replying.
Thanks, didnt know that. Its just that my work computer is slow and i didnt want to find the post, then wait for it to load. Plus, you deserve some extra points right?
Clear at first instance it is,what is more preferably to him. But what does he prefer? Also clear, it will be the situation which will maximize satisfaction of both kids. So his decision is based on utilitarian grounds. But how can he even make that decision if it is not possible to measure/compare the needs of other people? Finally that’s the task he has to solve. His satisfaction depends on the satisfaction of his kids. If it were impossible for him to make that decision because you can’t measure he would be completely in the dark and would decide only based on luck! But do you really think it is like flipping a coin if you’d make that decision? Isn’t it fuckin easy to decide that? How is it possible that it is absolutely impossible to “measure” but at the same time nobody would even hesitate to give the same answer? Can you explain that?
@Z
No. I never proposed said or implied that. I am against forced redistribution of wealth. EDIT: As you I think this is theft. And I don’t accept theft. Except someone steals (like Robin Hood) from someone who steals from innocent. But I would not accept it if somone steals from someone who steals only from people who steal. 
Value scales are constantly changing, based on experience and opportunity. At any given moment, you are doing whatever is highest on your scale, at that moment, given the opportunities available at that moment. That is, you choose to refrain from, or postpone all other available actions while you perform the current action.
That being said, if food was always ranked higher than golf, no one would ever golf.
you guys misunderstand. the “A Dollar Is Worth More To The Poor Than Rich” argument isnt based on valuation in the first place. but rather on a premise of what a non-asocial life style means in the first place, and hence the necessity of money to achieve it
What is the unit of measure? By how many units of satisfaction will your satisfaction be increased if you consume choclate ice cream rather than vanilla? You can certainly say, “Chocolate ice cream will satisfy me more than vanilla would,” (or vice versa) but you cannot quantify (measure) the difference. One gives simply “more” satisfaction than the other.
As for making a decision, he’s certainly able to do that. Can he make his best guess. He can guess what the outcome of each scenario will be, and choose what he feels will be the best. But “best” is his subjective view of his estimated outcomes. He may try to guess how much satisfaction will be gained by each son, that is which will be “more”, but it will only be a guess. He can empathize, but he cannot read minds. Ultimately, the father will choose the course of action that best, in his opinion, supports his own subjective values.
If he hates son #2, he may enjoy the idea of him experiencing hunger pains while son #1 is teeing off.
That the value scale is changing all the time is not the problem, since it is Dollars we speak about, which are a means not an end. With Dollars you can nearly buy every end you want.
To be honest I thought long about this line now and I really got very insecure. On one hand I am sure on the other I am not at all.
First of all I really need to retreat. You can never understand this statement dogmatically as a law. At best it is a rule with exceptions. If you see it only from the spending side then you could say 1: The utility gain per additional Dollar you spend decreases steadily. 2. All people have a nearly unlimited pool of wants and needs. 3. Although not parallel the value scales of all people start at zero and end in infinity. Therefore as a rule of thumb will a Dollar spend by a relatively poor person gain more utility to him than a Dollar spend to a comparably rich person.
But this completely neglects the issue that Dollars are not distributed arbitrarily by a higher power. Dollars have to be earned. Of course there are people who are lucky, who are born rich, or win in the lottery. But it is not their luck that makes other people poor. Either they get their riches from someone who earned it (I idealize it a bit, because with crony capitalism/corporatism it is not so easy of course) like their parents, or in the case of lottery from likeminded people who, for having the hope of becoming rich one day, redistribute their wealth among one of them voluntarily. For the most part though, Dollars have to be earned. It is not like the powerful means of production falls into your lap or is robbed from a poor person. You have to create a means of production, and that’s a tough thing. Nobody can know how much one did put into it. People always only see what they get out. And therefore this line is flawed.
Regarding “measuring”: Yes, they are not measurable. And there is no unit for it. Never can be, never argued for it. I only was saying that from physiology we are bound to satisfy the essential needs first. We cannot escape that fact. If we tried we die. This is the reason I think the question I stated is so easy to answer. It is a given and we know it by instict. You would not risk dying from hunger if you can afford to play golf, so you never would risk it that one of your kids might even be harmed because of too less food.
But I think this example was bad and didn’t fit the purpose, because it was some kind of lifeboat situation, which doesn’t fit the meaning of the thread topic. The thread topic clearly is about relative poverty not absolute life threatening poverty. And it also ignored the income side.
That being said I am still not sure what to think about it, but it seems to be one of those Bastiat things: What is seen (what someone gets out) and what is not seen (how much he put in to serve others).
Not even close.
You’re half way there, but you’re making the error of putting the rich man and the poor man (or any two people) on the same curve. You are assigning equal utility to the satisfaction of their respective highest priorities, second highest priorities, etc. But if there were some magical way to measure satisfaction, the ranknings very well could look something like this:
Though it certainly will bring Adam less utility than Adam’s first dollar, Adam’s thousandth dollar may still bring Adam more satisfaction (utility) than Bob’s first dollar will bring Bob. Since such a magical measure does not exist, we simply cannot say.