When people are allowed freely to trade, each side of the exchange will be better off. When everyone is free to exchange (and is therefore better off) the whole community (as if by an invisible hand) will be better off.
Now the alternative to being allowed freely to trade, is not being allowed freely to trade. In other words, coercion of some kind takes the place of freedom.
Your "fair price" has popped up often in history and is always advocated by the powerful at the expense of the people. A "fair price" ( like "fair trade") is no more than the general populace being forced to pay more than they want to.
People will not pay the "fair price" - which is really an unfair price - unless they are made to by police of some kind. So, Brad when you sneer at the invisible hand, you are viewing contemptuously a free people making their own decisions.
Ray said he would buy gas from his neighborhood Indian friend - even though he was more expensive. Well, in a free system, you may buy from whomsoever you wish. He probably feels happy with himself for putting family and loyalty before saving money. In a free system he may enjoy doing this. Like him, I wouldn't buy from Exxon. Exxon gas is too expensive.
You call it "trying to squeeze the last little bit of blood out of each of us turnips". In the real world, outside the fevered landscape of your imagination, it is called "sales". Millions of Americans chase after the lowest prices at their stores. My son went to Fry's "One Day Sale" yesterday to buy a computer case with power supply for $25 dollars - with a $25 mail-in rebate. (Only about 14% actually claim their rebates which is why this works for the store.) He spent about 75 minutes getting in the store and an hour getting out through the cashier.
But everyone was happy with their bargains and their is a lot of camaraderie among the bargain hunters. Not a bad experience and he saved the $35-$40 he would have had to earn in order to get$25 in his pocket. He told me that a 27" TV complete with a VHS recorder was $297 - which looks pretty good to me.
I'm sure that if you had explained to the happy crowd that they were squeezing "the last little bit of blood" out of the Fry's turnip, they would have looked at you in the way you deserved to be looked at.
Then you grandiosely declaim that "in a world in which all human relations have been reduced to exchange relations" without fully understanding what you are writing. All human relations are exchange relations.
In the very best free society, we cooperate with each other without outside restriction. E-Mail lists are good examples of exchanging information, opinion, and ideological truths (also ideological lies, but that's something for the consumer to handle).
I don't know why you brought in the nuclear power bit. I haven't bought a nuclear power plant in years. It6 seems to me that you are inclined to bring in examples of things which are part of the industrial/governmental complex - then vent your spleen on them as if they were free market operations. You say that the procurement process "leads in the long run to total disorientation and inability to function".
So, that's the problem with government operations. Thank you for the explanation. But it has nothing to do with the free market - or the invisible hand.
You then segue to travelling by air. Back in the days you mention, flying was mostly the province of the wealthy and those getting trips paid for by their companies. Then the airlines were de-regulated and competition - as you call it 'squeezing the turnip' - reared its ugly head.
Guess what happened - the great unwashed found air fares were cheap enough for them to fly. Of course this was terrible for the elite who used to do the flying. I've heard them complaining and wishing the old days were back - where fares were higher, but they didn't have to rub shoulders with the hoi polloi.
Competition is still somewhat thwarted by the Airport Gate system, but it is better than it was.
Meantime, if you were to pay $1,200 while the seat next to you went for $200, I would say you made a grievous error (unless like Ray you bought the ticket because you prize "family and loyalty above saving a few pennies").
You see the free market doesn't supply a mummy or daddy to take care of you. You have to take care of yourself. Lick your wounds and next time you fly try to do it for $150.
Harry
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Brad wrote:
Ray Evans Harrell wrote: [snip] > Indians prize family and loyalty above saving a few pennies for > gas. [snip]I believe (until proven otherwise...) that most of the damage The Invisible Hand does to us is the result of it trying to squeeze the last little bit of blood out of each of us turnips -- i.e., that the road to hell is paved with the logic of pursuing the lowest price (lowest wage, etc.), as opposed to a fair price (wage, etc.). But in a world in which all human relations have been reduced to exchange relations, doesn't is sound pathetic for someone to say: "Buy my nuclear power plant even though is costs $100,000,001 instead of my competitor's plant which costs $100,000,000, because mine is built by people who care about their work whereas my comptetitor's is built by people who cower in fear that they will lose their job if they don't work mandatory voluntary overtime to show their good attitude? To let such considerations affect the procurement process leads in the long run to total disorientation and inability to function, since if we are irrational about $1, the next thing we know we may be irrational about $2, then $4 (it's called "The Domino Theory").... And the next thing you know, workers might start demanding better working conditions because they don't know their place any more.... I remember a time, back around 1973, when air fares were pretty much proportionate to distance travelled. The company I worked for was already modernizing, however: They stopped sending non-executive employees first class *after* I had been sent on a couple business trips under the old policy. The first time I was sent coach class, I remember I decided to pay the difference myself. It was a trip from Detroit to Baltimore. The difference was $9. Yes, I know, $9 was a small fortune in those days, equivalent to the diffence between one passenger paying $200 and the passenger in the next seat having paid $600 (if not $1,200), today. But there is a difference: The difference in price back they was based on a difference in what you got for your money. Today the difference is based on the highest price a computer program figures out each seat can be sold for, even though what the money buys in all cases -- from the $200 to the $1,200 -- is the same. As we saw at the beginning, this is Universal Reason Manifesting Itself in World History, because each of us pays the lowest price for everything (even that $1,200 seat where we squeeze next to the dude who bought an identical seat for $200 because he bought his seat a few hours earlier or later).... Who says that our Emperor Dubya I's new clothes are not opaque (--I meant: Made by the lowest cost producer)?
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