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cousin_it comments on [Link] Why don't people like markets? - Less Wrong Discussion

9 Post author: GLaDOS 20 June 2012 10:15AM

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Comment author: cousin_it 20 June 2012 09:35:16PM *  11 points [-]

This part rubs me the wrong way:

PS - Some people may be tempted to tell me that people fear markets simply because markets are destructive, evil, create unhappiness and inequality, etc. That obviously is not the answer, just like "people believe in spirits because there are spirits" is not a cognitive explanation of supernatural concepts.

What if someone dislikes markets because they saw markets cause unhappiness or inequality on some random occasion? Surely that would be a valid cognitive explanation. Digging deeper to find imaginary biases like "he dislikes markets because they're driven by impersonal factors" would be wrong in such cases.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 21 June 2012 03:34:28AM 5 points [-]

What if someone dislikes markets because they saw markets cause unhappiness or inequality on some random occasion? Surely that would be a valid cognitive explanation.

Well, one could ask why negative effects are more likely to be attributed to markets, whereas positive effects to be attributed to other factors or simply taken for granted.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 21 June 2012 11:04:18AM 5 points [-]

Because people are better at signalling. Whenever something good happens, there is a person ready to take credit for that, deserved or not.

Markets are good at signalling about individual products or companies (advertising), but not about the concept of "market" per se.

Comment author: prase 22 June 2012 09:58:48PM 2 points [-]

Is it really the case? For start I'd like to have an objective and not entirely arbitrary way of measuring how much likely various effects are attributed to markets and other factors. Speculations framed as "why people dislike X" by someone who happens to like X are always suspect of tribal politics, especially when the suggested answer points to some failure of rationality. Of course, such speculations aren't necessarily useless because of that, but one should at least be certain that one is trying to explain a real phenomenon.

Comment author: stcredzero 21 June 2012 03:14:48AM 0 points [-]

It seems that many people like to approach markets by using additional data from their personal networks.