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MichaelVassar comments on Money: The Unit of Caring - Less Wrong
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Unfortunately, money is not and cannot be a universal system for representing value. There are some things whose value cannot be summed up by any such system.
Integrity, for example, is proverbially a thing which can be sold but never bought. Its utility comes from its inability to be exchanged for something else and retain its value.
The idea that everything of value can be converted into a generic and interchangeable medium is incompatible with the concept of value itself.
Integrity is a virtue. It is defined with respect to a value. Virtues cannot be maximized - they are a mean between extremes.
If you have two goods and think you can't compare them, consider the situation where you have to choose between them.
If you never make decisions that involve choosing a over b you don't value a over b. In your schema integrity is just something that you have never encountered a good opportunity to trade away.
If you can seriously consider exchanging your integrity for an amount of money, you don't possess integrity in the first place.
It's not that we don't choose a over b. It's that a and b belong to completely different categories that can't be exchanged or even compared.
The Morgans fear what may not be purchased, for a trader cannot comprehend a thing that is priceless. - Sister Miriam Godwinson, "The Collected Sermons", Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
I'm not a great fan of Godwinson, but even a blind squirrel will find a nut, and she's found a great big one. As I recall, you don't understand why the Morganite and Gaian factions hate each other so much, either.
So you and Eliezer actually agree, then.
Sort of. If we're going to break some of our rules in order to acquire some benefit, there must be some other rules by which we've abiding that permit us to evaluate conditions and choose to break the lesser law.
The ultimate rules guiding our behavior must not be broken. But really, they can't be broken at all. Thus, when I speak of "selling out" or violating your own integrity, I'm not talking about those ultimate rules, I'm talking about the proximate ones, the ones that can be broken.
E. and I agree, but to a limited degree.