Revealed Preferences (people are liars)

[pvn]

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Are you serious man? Allow me to quote you, from this very thread:

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But of course magical angelic omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent bureaucrats and politicians suffer none of these failings.

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Gimmicky, sarcastic quick about politicians. Yes, we have actually seen this post already in 95% of AC related thread, but please by all means, post it again...

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It's not gimmicky. It's dead serious. And it's never answered.

If "people" are too stupid to be left to make their own decisions, how is taking one of these "stupid" people and letting him make the decisions for other people supposed to help anything?

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Does this really not conflict with anything you, or perhaps pvn, has posted in the past? Because I'm fairly sure that in the trans fat thread, the crux of the argument against laws such as "No trans fat" is that I can't possibly know that someone would prefer not to eat trans fat. If I got the mistaken impression, please feel free to correct me, as it seems relevant to this thread.

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It DOESN'T MATTER to me if someone would prefer to eat it or not. If someone ASKS you to intervene on his behalf and prevent him from eating transfats, fine. If they don't, mind your own business. "Joe probably would appreciate what I'm doing" is no justification.

[Borodog]

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Are you serious man? Allow me to quote you, from this very thread:

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But of course magical angelic omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent bureaucrats and politicians suffer none of these failings.

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Gimmicky, sarcastic quick about politicians. Yes, we have actually seen this post already in 95% of AC related thread, but please by all means, post it again...

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Dude. How many times do I have to say this? What post was that in response to? This one:

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Lack of insight
blah blah blah

Lack of information
blah blah blah

Poor assessment of risk
blah blah blah


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He said this in support of intervention, one must assume, by politicians and bureacrats. All I did was point out that politicians and bureaucrats suffer these same failings.

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The rest, well you can say that I've determined that your posts in other threads have "revealed preferences"... [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

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Ah, the "if you put a smiley after it it isn't condescending" school I see.

What is this supposed to mean in the context of the current discussion, where you are misconstruing my positions?

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But seriously, do you want to continue to quote that post and not address any of the (IMO) interesting and on topic parts?

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Uh, no? They don't interest me in the slightest. The OP was about "revealed preference", in the specifically Austrian sense, and you took it completely off topic by trying to change the sense in which "preference" is used. I don't care how their preferences are formed. And your pretention to know people's preferences better than they do does not interest me, since those are not the preferences that are subject to economic law. The demonstrated ones are.

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I at least try to sprinkle in a little factoid here or there along with my baseless attacks...

Although, while I'm at it, you highlighted the following:

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I see no attempt to answer these questions, besides simply "this is how person X does it and this is how person Y does it and we can't argue because how could you know better". Well, I do know better, and I won't accept the argument that I don't simply because it is conceivable that I'm wrong.

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Does this really not conflict with anything you, or perhaps pvn, has posted in the past?

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I highlighted it because it is bull [censored]. I have never been particularly interested in why people have the preferences they do, and it is complete bull [censored] to misconstrue my position as "we can't argue because how could you know better."

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Because I'm fairly sure that in the trans fat thread, the crux of the argument against laws such as "No trans fat" is that I can't possibly know that someone would prefer not to eat trans fat. If I got the mistaken impression, please feel free to correct me, as it seems relevant to this thread.

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Thes are the two posts that I can find that I made in any "trans fat" thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...age=0&vc=1

I told hmkpoker he was on a roll.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...age=0&vc=1

I joke ar moorobot's ass's expense.

Not to mention the fact that you seem to be saying, "I believe that I can fairly accurately predict what someone's preference WOULD BE if they had the information that I do." Well no [censored] [censored], Sherlock. You think Bob wouldn't want to drink that soda spiked with rat poison if he knew about the rat poison? Brilliant!

How that affects his ACTUAL preferences in the real world where he doesn't have your knowledge and more importantly (imo) YOU DON'T HAVE HIS, rather than some fantasy world, is not apparent.