Macabre Explanation of Opportunity Costs

[tcpip]

For those who haven't seen it...

I think dead children should be used as a unit of currency. I know this sounds controversial, but hear me out.

Comments

[anfalicious]

At the very least, social, cultural and environmental aspects of the world need to start being considered when we think of economics.

Re: ...

[lesslucid]

Well... I think one can have a genuinely "positive" economics, so long as one understands that it can only ever be either descriptive or predictive. The moment it becomes prescriptive - the moment you make use of one of those descriptions to recommend a course of action - it necessarily has a normative element.

And this is merely an abstract, hypothetical possibility, in much the same way that one could hypothetically have a "medical science" which is interested in the diagnosis but disinterested in the treatment or cure of illness. In reality, everyone who is interested in economics wants to know how economies work in order to know what the best course of action to take is in real situations affecting real people.

You're doing it again!

[goumindong]

"
Economics tells us that free markets lead to greater shared prosperity than central planning does."

No. It does not. Economics tells us that free markets lead to greater net welfare than central planning does within the very strict definition of "net welfare" as understood within the economic literature. (also it tells us that this is not true most of the time, and that many types of central planning can enhance net welfare under certain situations where the assumptions of free markets break down)

Saying that it leads to greater shared prosperity requires a definition of shared prosperity that you claim we cannot assume into evidence. Defining shared prosperity in a different way may mean that economics tells us that we should do things differently.

[ninboydean]

Actually, distribution and consumption, which is the subject of the OP, is an economic issue. One of the problems the OP's calculation faces is the reduction in value per dollar that an influx of cash (especially within corrupt systems) will engender. The rebuilding of Iraq is a classic example of this.

There is no "actual economics" that are divorced from social facts, since they are inherently social sciences in the first place. Your attempt to disassociate the two is bizarre and puzzling.

[goumindong]

Actually its the other way around. You cannot separate economics from your base intrinsic beliefs about what is good

[foreverbeach]

Everyone has his own set of values. It's impossible for some macro formula to take everyone's individual valuations into consideration. That's where the market comes in. People's actions reflect their values.