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VoiceOfRa comments on Why capitalism? - Less Wrong Discussion
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The problem is that "like" isn't a well-defined concept the way you use it. Trade works because the value of goods is a two place function, i.e., if Alice gives Bob a coffee for $2, that's because Bob values the coffee more than he values the $2, while Alice values it less.
Well then trade is not exchange of equals, which I guess is a decent position. But then it's hard to make that two placed "values" to play nice with value when the owner is not spesified. That is if Bob values it at $2 because he knows that Charlie values it at $3 so he can sell it to Charlie to gain $1 why is it okay for Bob to end up with that $1 instead of Alice selling it directly to Charlie so that Alice ends up with the $1? I could kinda understand if a goods "one place value" would be the value that the person that would give up most to have it would exchange it for. The situation is even more bizarre if Bob would prefer to have the $2 instead of the coffee if Charlie didn't exist.
The only way it makes sense if Alice is unable to trade with Charlie. But this is counter to assuming that trade is free. Bob has motive to keep Alice from trading with Charlie. Bob also gains without giving. If Alice buys apples for $3 and Charlie sells them for $2 I get that Alice and Charlie get to switch to a higher desirability product but Bob scores a apple or a coffee without giving up anything. If Alice and Charlie work to produce their respective cheap products Bob enjoys the fruits of labour without having to work. Economic productivity would actually be increased if Bob didn't exist.
An interpretation, trade might be win-win for the pairwise participants but it makes everybody else lose in the same go. Bob ends up overall winner because he participates in all the trade while Alice and Charlie acts as outsiders 1 time and insiders 1 time. It can also be argued that it hurts outsiders more than it helsp the insiders. Otherwise Alice should break even.
This statement doesn't even make sense. Trade occurs because people have different utility functions over property. If I'm a coffee house with lots of coffee, my marginal utility of one more cup of coffee is less than $2. If you're a thirsty consumer with lots of money and no coffee, then the marginal value of a cup of coffee is greater than $2. Trade occurs because you value the cup of coffee more than your $2, and I value your $2 more than that one cup of coffee. Your valuation of the coffee equals or exceeds my valuation of the coffee.
The rest of your example is basically about information flow and market inefficiencies, and seems rather tangential.
If there were even more thirstier money holder I would not get the cup at $2. The coffee shops valuation of the coffee is entirely dependent on the sell value of the good and not because the owner wants to drink the coffee.
The tangent is about how only inefficient economies have traders (people that make money by not creating property but receiving and releasing property). If the coffee house employs workers or buys coffee beans there is an element of functioning as a trader. That is the coffee house asks more from the customer than it thinks the components of the coffee are worth.
There is additionally the issue that the exchangers don't need to benefit in similar scales. The coffee can be near parity for the thirsty customer while the trade value for the coffee house can be substantial. Because the coffee house and the customer partly use money to buy goods from shared pools of products by buying the customer hurts his buying power.
Only if you consider the absence of costless, automatic, instant teleportation of goods from where they are made to where they are wanted an inefficiency. If that is inefficiency, there is no such thing as an efficient economy.
You might as well go further and consider the absence of instant creation of goods from thin air an inefficiency. Indeed, is there anything one spends effort on, that the existence of that effort could not be judged an inefficiency?
There is no such thing as what the components of the coffee "are worth". The growers grow coffee, the distributors transport it, the baristas turn it into cups of coffee, and the owner of the coffee house provides the premises and equipment. The customer pays all of them for providing a cup of coffee at the place and time he wants it. The "intrinsic worth" of coffee plays no part in any of this.