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Politics : Actual left/right wing discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dybdahl who wrote (8663)	11/25/2010 11:30:29 AM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10087

It is not about delaying the war, it is about the outcome. It certainly is about delaying the war. You said "When I say that the value of that information is larger than the total costs of WW2, it means, of course, that another war of larger scale has been avoided." The other war on a larger scale, that happened because Germany had not gained the information your talking about, had not learned its lesson, would have been something I would call WWII. If the value of the information is to avoid the war being larger later, then not having the information still means you pay the price of WWII. Its really just a case of the war happening earlier supposedly being better than the war happening later. Your not avoiding paying the price of WWII either way. For gaining the information you talk about to be worth the price of WWII, it would have to be worth it, even if you assume that had it not happened then it would never have happened at all. Most newspapers were unable to sell subscriptions to consumers when they moved online, because consumers did not want to pay for information they could get for free elsewhere. The consumer usually doesn't do the math about the value of information. I submit this is more a sign of the relatively low economic value of the information, when its competing against the same or similar information that is provided for free. Its not a case of a poor estimate of the economic value, its a very solid estimate of the economic value. If I can get something for free (and not at the cost of too much time or other non monetary cost), than the value of versions of the same thing, that I had previously paid for, goes way down, perhaps even to zero. More generally I would think twice before I would assume that a market price, in a relatively free and undistorted market, represents some false estimate of the economic value of an item. An item is worth what people are willing to pay for it. in most cases, the money would be spent much better at buying the right advice on how to use the mouse, how to sit etc. - for almost no money, you would usually get advice that will solve the problem for you perfectly for the rest of your life. However, by buying a gel-filled arm support or similar stuff, you do something that probably doesn't solve the problem Advice can be free in monetary terms, but there is all sorts of advice out there, often wrong, and if not outright wrong, it can be ill suited to your particular situation. Even when it is correct, it can be difficult to follow consistently, people are creature of habit. The time to sort through the advice, consider what is best for you, understand how to do it, put the effort in to apply it consistently, is a real price, and a far higher price for most people than a few dollars for a wrist pad, or a bit more for an ergonomic keyboard. Changing habits, either in isolation, or with the ergonomic devices, might produce better results for many, but many won't get those results (because the advice my be ill suited for them, or because they might fail to follow it, or in some cases because the habits where less of a problem for them than deficiencies in the physical items they used), and it comes at a far higher price, even if you don't have to shell out any dollars, or euros, or yen.