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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   34283 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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Can someone steelman requiring prescriptions to buy medicine? Why not just allow people to buy whatever medications they want over the counter? Obviously many people would seriously hurt themselves as a result, but I don't think that's a good argument in favor of prescriptions. People hurt themselves with cars, knives, and guns all the time but we allow people to buy those in part because cars, knives, and guns are useful. Why is medicine any different? If we stopped requiring prescriptions to buy medicines, then people who wanted to consult doctors about which medications to buy could still go ahead and do it. As for people who preferred to do their own research or consult alternative sources instead of doctors, in the vast majority of cases they would just be hurting themselves when they made mistakes, they would not be hurting others, at least not in any direct way.

Prescription medications can seriously harm you if you take them in the wrong doses, or take specific different medications at the same time. And just as importantly, if you don't use them correctly they won't treat your underlying disease. The average person will not effectively treat their diseases if they manage treatment themselves, and you'd get something that looks a lot more like the supplement industry, except instead of the pills doing nothing they'll be able to seriously hurt you.

Now what part of that changes by forcing a doctor into the process? Does the doctor come to your house and give you your pill, so you don't take the wrong dose? Does he monitor you 24/7 so that you don't take specific different medications at the same time? That might seem wild, but does he at least come twice a day to make sure you are taking it correctly so that it will treat your underlying disease?

EDIT: Wasn't looking for it, but Zvi's most recent had this and this. Interesting, to say the least.

Now what part of that changes by forcing a doctor into the process

Having someone who's more intelligent than you, knows a lot more about medicine than you, and has had a lot of practice managing patients instructing you on what to do helps a lot. It makes it a lot more likely that someone will benefit from treatment. Most people aren't actively attempting to ignore the doctor's advice, they're just kinda dumb, not really actively pursuing any particular goal, so having someone competent leading the process helps a lot, and the doctor can shut down obviously stupid ideas like 'take a huge dose of estrogen every six months as a Hormone Cleanse' that'd absolutely evolve if allowed to.

Does he monitor you 24/7 so that you don't take specific different medications at the same time

You phrased this very weirdly, but ... yes? The doctor has a list of all the medications you are taking, and when they prescribe a new one they check the list to make sure there aren't any bad interactions. This is an important thing that they do. It doesn't require visiting your house.

Having someone who's more intelligent than you, knows a lot more about medicine than you, and has had a lot of practice managing patients instructing you on what to do helps a lot.

No one is talking about banning doctors. There are options other than "mandatory" and "banned". You can still have literally every word of that.

The doctor has a list of all the medications you are taking

ROFL. Only if you tell him. Or he works for the same conglomerate as your other doctors with the same records system. And again, no one is preventing you from doing these things. And again again, they're generally just a second set of eyes, and a pharmacist does this. There are so many ways that you can have some eyes on what you're taking and look for interactions without blanket bans on prescription meds. But if the point is to make sure you don't take specific different medications at the same time, they're gonna need to be in your house 24/7.

the thing that makes it difficult for you to not take medications that conflict with each other is that the doctor won't give you both of them at the same time, and this covers >90% of the potential problem cases

the doctor

Makes it sound like there's only one. People often have many different doctors for many different things. It's more likely that they only have one pharmacist, or, rather, one pharmacy that may employ multiple pharmacists, but at least they're usually on the same computer system. That's the more natural bottleneck to have a pair of expert eyes on the medications you're taking.

Our role is to identify the correct medication, tell you what you need to know about it (which is later reinforced by the pharmacist), check in with you to make sure you are still doing as instructed, and so on.

Many medications are very dangerous if taken incautiously - TB drugs require a lot of instructions and very careful compliance for instance. Low dose Lithium is extremely safe but can easily interact with other medications, cause significant side effects, or cause problems in response to athletic activity and dehydration.

Some medications have side effects that will very rapidly kill you that are rare enough patients wouldn't think of them....the list goes on.

I'm sure all of that is very helpful to many people, but we're not talking about banning doctors. Remember, we are not stuck with just two possibilities of "banned" and "mandatory". For many, could you not just have massive warning labels that say, "This product is meant to treat specific conditions in specific ways; please consult a medical expert before use," in case someone has difficulty identifying the correct medication? They could still be sold by pharmacists, who can inform you of what you need to know about it (as they already do). If you show any uncertainty, they can say, "If you don't know, you should contact a doctor." The checking in sounds mostly paternalistic, basically just a verbal reminder; what's the real point here if you're not physically making sure they're doing as instructed?

Because remember, you're not actually making sure that they're not taking the medication incautiously. You're not actually going into their home and dispensing a precise dose at a precise time. You're an occasional verbal reminder that they need to comply with the instructions on the package of the TB drugs, another set of eyes to check if there are other medications that might interact. You're not actually stopping them from doing something dangerous.

Some medications have side effects that will very rapidly kill you that are rare enough patients wouldn't think of them

What do you actually do about that?

EDIT: The warning label can even say, "This product is dangerous if not used correctly," or even, "This product is dangerous even if used correctly," with another recommendation to consult a medical professional.

It's important to understand that medical stuff is more complicated than a layman is likely to understand, you see a lot of minimizing and belittling of the knowledge base of doctors these days and it leads to people not respecting the depth of complexity here. We do ourselves no favors in the process.

Consider a Statin. The benefits are pretty big...sometimes. But there isn't a lot of consensus as to who to give it and when. you have complex questions like "what number of rare debilitating side effects are appropriate for a moderate decrease in population risk. If you prevent 10 MIs is that worth one 30 year old getting an autoimmune issue and being unable to walk? What about 20? What about 50? What about 100? What do you do if the Family Med and Cardiology organizations disagree over what to do?

Medicine is both an art and a science and often lacks consensus. Standard of care is fuzzy and constantly being revised. We have to do ongoing education throughout our entire careers because a recommendation that was present from day one of my medical school is suddenly known to be wrong. Or maybe not, I have to read the paper and check.

Patients are not equipped to handle these considerations and don't realize how REAL they can be. We know patients will injure themselves or get themselves killed with poor decisions if left to their own devices so it's our job not to. Sketchy hormone replacement (testosterone), overprescription of stimulants and benzos, poor antibiotic stewardship...patients will do their best to do what feel is right with zero information and this can be extremely harmful to others or society (in the form of unnecessary medical costs and care).

You see a lack of consensus and a range of suggestions and think that this means that you must have an individual artisan. I see that and think, "Seems like there's kind of a range where most of the time, people will probably be okay-ish, so long as they're doing something plausibly in that range." At least until we have a more clear consensus. They can still go get advice, and if so, they'll get whatever doctor they trust, who thinks they should be in whatever part of that range. That's not killing them (at least not enough to form a clear consensus yet).

The rest of this is pretty much just paternalism. Like, I get it, many car owners are not equipped to handle the various minute considerations and the art of motorcycle car maintenance. We know car owners will injure themselves or get killed with poor decisions if left to their own devices (the number of bozos who get underneath a car that's just on a hydraulic floor jack, SMH; or maybe they'll screw up a brake bleed procedure and have a massive braking failure on the highway, etc.). But we don't ban it. Millions and millions of people still go to car repair experts, because they know they have zero knowledge. We don't ban auto repair experts, either! Sure, some people spend too much money on silly aftermarket turbos or whatever, and some of them even screw it up and blow up an engine, possibly causing death. But imagine if we took that and decided to ban people from buying their own car parts; do you think that "unnecessary car repair costs" (including the new cost of being required to go to a professional for literally every little thing) would decrease?!? I honestly do not have any idea what possible model of economics you could be using to get to this result.

I think the rate of self-injury from maintaining a car yourself would be quite a bit lower than the rate of self-injury from deciding on one's own medical treatment, and that's the reason for the different kinds of regulation.

Would it? Most of the time, when industry advocates are here arguing this sort of point, they're implicitly assuming that the use of medical professionals will drop to zero (or be banned). Thus, they're imagining the least knowledgeable person deciding on their own medical treatment. But when we look at the car maintenance world, we see the vast vast majority of low-knowledge folks still using automotive professionals. The rate of self-injury is, indeed, low, but someone needs a bit more than arguments from bad imagination if they're going to rest on a claim that the rate of self-injury would surely be "quite a bit" higher.

You hear this same shit from the realtor cartel, and frankly, any cartel that wants to maintain its market power. "Oh real estate transactions are so complicated; can you imagine how the sky would fall if we didn't get our 3% cut of every transaction?! PEOPLE WOULD BE HARMED!" You know what really would happen if you lost some of the sketchier tools to maintain your market control? First, you'd probably have to clean up your act, but second, lots and lots of people would still use you, but for your actual expertise, rather than because they think they're basically forced into it. Sure, will there be some harm that didn't occur before? Probably. But there's some harm now that wouldn't occur then, too. You need an actual argument about magnitudes rather than just imagination.

EDIT: Remember when it was every state, rather than just two states, who banned you from pumping your own gas into your car? Surely there were folks saying how risky and dangerous it would be (gasoline is flammable, don'cha'kno?) to let ignoramus individuals do it. How's that argument looking for those two states that have held on to it?

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We require people to get car insurance because we know they will make the wrong decision (not getting insurance) if left to their own devices. Some people try this anyway.

We know that people will make the wrong decision with medicine also. Some of this is objective - people would prescribe themselves substances that are controlled (for a reason, for instance opiates), people will ask for treatments where the benefits are clearly outweighed by the risks. Consider all the people who use marijuana when they clearly are not supposed to,* or try and get Addy as a performance enhancing drug, or use illegal substances. What do you think would happen if you could just Dilaudid at the pharmacy? It would be a catastrophe.

The classic non drugs of abuse example is antibiotics. People will ask for antibiotics every time they get sick. Even when it's clearly viral and therefore the abx won't help. They will demand abx, they will write reviews complaining about it and bully the prescriber into giving them abx - even though they won't do anything helpful. Zero benefit.

And the costs can be high to the individual (side effects can be very bad), and to society (antibiotic resistance is increasing greatly). If someone becomes disabled because they took an abx of their own recognize society will pay the cost. This is not theoretical, people kill their kidneys with NSAIDs for example (that's OTC).

If left to their own devices patients will make objectively shitty decisions. The regulatory state exists to prevent this, you don't want people on the road without insurance.

When it comes to the more subjective stuff it does get a bit fuzzier but the fundamental problem remains, no layman has the knowledge and experience to make these judgements, just googling a pubmed article is not enough, smart and educated people think they can figure it out but this requires training and experience. The average person has no chance and society needs to be organized around protecting average and below average people.

The regulatory state has its problems but we require building codes because people will elect to live in a poorly built slum if given the choice because it's cheap. We have to protect people from themselves.

People will take a gamble on "it's fine I have a 1% change of a bad side effect from this antibiotic but society will pay the cost and even though this infection is viral maybe its not."

This is stupid.

People do not like being told what they can do and put in their bodies, but little in the world is as important to get correct as human lives. I remember what it was like before I was a doctor, I thought I knew what I was doing I did not.

*I'm not saying nobody is allowed marijuana, it's complicated.

We require people to get car insurance because we know they will make the wrong decision (not getting insurance) if left to their own devices.

What type of car insurance do we require people buy? Hint: it's not the type that compensates them if they screw up their own car. It's for a different purpose. What do you think that is?

Most of the rest of your comment appears to be just additional restatements of the things I've already responded to. Yes, car owners lack knowledge, and they'll make mistakes sometimes when they don't use the services of a professional. I don't see where you've made any further advancement on the argument.

When it comes to the more subjective stuff it does get a bit fuzzier but the fundamental problem remains, no layman has the knowledge and experience to make these judgements, just googling a pubmed article is not enough, smart and educated people think they can figure it out but this requires training and experience. The average person has no chance and society needs to be organized around protecting average and below average people.

I do think that this part is a slight refinement. At least one that I only obliquely addressed, not directly. When it comes to the subjective parts of auto repair, it gets fuzzier, but the fundamental problem remains. Laymen aren't going to have the knowledge and expertise to make those judgments, and the Chilton guide isn't enough, either. They need training and experience. Average person has no chance... of that last few percent that is still probably within the realm of the basic guidance where there might not even be a consensus, anyway.

The regulatory state has its problems but we require building codes because people will elect to live in a poorly built slum if given the choice because it's cheap. We have to protect people from themselves.

This is just tripling down on paternalism, and it's one that is soundly rejected in most rationalist spaces. YIMBY is currently reigning supreme, haven't you heard?

People don't like being told what they can/can't put in their cars, but nothing is more important than thousands of pounds of steel hurling down the road at high speed, where lives are at stake. We can't possibly let people work on their own cars. ...or at least, that's the conclusion of your logic.

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We require people to get car insurance because we know they will make the wrong decision (not getting insurance)

Specifically, though, people are forced to get third party liability insurance, because there the costs of their wrong decisions is very much borne by others (the argument could be made that ultimately wrong medical decisions could end up like that, but it's a greyer matter).

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Medications and management of medical issues is more complicated than most realize. Medical education emphasizes teaching doctors about our knowledge deficiencies for a reason, and it's very common for people in the field to grossly overestimate their understanding and knowledge. We complain about nurses, midlevels, and even other doctors having no fucking clue what they are doing at times.

It is extremely challenging for a layman, even one who is intelligent and informed, to bridge the training gap.

"Ok but who cares" is a reasonable question, but it is important to understand that errors don't just hurt you. A big example right now is antibiotics. Left to their own devices people will ask for and use antibiotics even when it's dangerous or simply not even a bacterial infection. This has a downstream effect on others, like an increase in antibiotic resistance.

It's also easy to hurt yourself and we find it unacceptable to allow society to not pick up the bill.

Let's say you have some mild chronic pain like arthritis, you read and are smart enough to know that ibuprofen can be good for this. But then you don't know the right dose, or the right frequency and then don't realize it is not a good idea with your diabetes. After a reasonable amount of time your kidneys are dead and you end up on dialysis - and society is paying for that. Even if you have good insurance or a lot of wealth that's a spot that could be given to someone else.

And that's a medication you can already buy over the counter.

People hurt themselves with cars, knives, and guns all the time but we allow people to buy those in part because cars, knives, and guns are useful.

Virtually all jurisdictions require a license to operate a car. Many jurisdictions either require a license to own a firearm, or forbid it entirely. Many jurisdictions place strict limitations on who may purchase knives (e.g. minors).

You need a drivers test as proof that you know how to drive a car. The test for understanding medications is being a physician.

Patients are also tested by physicians before some medications are prescribed, both physically and mentally.

People hurt themselves with cars, knives, and guns all the time but we allow people to buy those in part because cars, knives, and guns are useful

Exactly, this is a bad idea.

Knives are safe enough, but guns and cars can lead to unintentional harm for both the user and onlookers. They should be regulated.

There can be 3 tiers: over-the-counter (free for all), needs based and testing based.

Pepper ball guns, tazers, and lowest caliber pistols can be over-the-counter. Wilderness communities can get needs-based allocation for larger guns. And hobbyists would have to take demanding tests to qualify for the wider selection.

Cars would come with speed limiters (80mph), limited acceleration (0-60mph 5 secs) and sales be limited to low-ground clearance vehicles of limited size. Tall vehicles like pickup trucks would be approved for those who need them. And those that want to go faster, must qualify for harder driving tests.

It seems excessive, but if you look at road & gun deaths in the US and it makes sense.

Pepper ball guns, tazers, and lowest caliber pistols can be over-the-counter. Wilderness communities can get needs-based allocation for larger guns. And hobbyists would have to take demanding tests to qualify for the wider selection.

You know that the vast majority of gun crime is done with small-calibre pistols, right? I mean, maybe not lowest, IIRC most of it's 9mm Parabellum instead of .22LR, but generally criminals aren't looking for stopping power and range - they're looking for low noise, low cost, low recoil, and especially small size, because the use-case of career criminals is "I need this unarmoured guy 10 metres away to go away on zero notice, ideally without attracting attention" and that usually means hipfire from something that can be worn on the belt and wielded one-handed (and ideally hidden).

If you want to stay on the Pareto frontier, small-calibre pistols are the first thing to ban over-the-counter.

(Also, pistols are really convenient for suicides; longarms are less so, although not much less.)

People generally don’t understand drugs or how dangerous or addictive they can be. Allowing the public to take addictive forms of morphine or opioids for every ache and pain without supervision just makes a population of addicts who cannot hold down jobs and are thus dependent on the state. Other drugs are easy to overdose on and do pretty serious damage to the body.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains are a good reason.

There's a very-clear argument in favour of requiring prescriptions for government-subsidised medicine, because the state has much more of an interest in people consuming appropriate medications than inappropriate ones. As it happens, I just got some drugs here in Oz that are over-the-counter legal but which are far-cheaper with a prescription.

There are some drugs that you probably don't want in the hands of the general population due to third-parties being harmed (methamphetamine because murders, plus all the various drugs to pacify people that can be abused for rape or slavery); requiring prescriptions for those appears pretty logical as well (obviously, if you buy into recreational-drug prohibition as a whole, requiring a prescription for medical use is necessary to enforce that).

There are some drugs that you probably don't want in the hands of the general population due to third-parties being harmed

There's also the point to be made that people in countries without a culture of medicine prescriptions just love taking antibiotics for anything that ails them, and those people not finishing an antibiotics regimen once they have started one.

This directly leads to things like India being a global hotspot of antimicrobial resistance, which kills at least 300k (likely a multiple of that) people a year.

they would not be hurting others, at least not in any direct way.

Unless they're buying them for children.

There are practical factors, like maybe some medications are supply-restricted so it's necessary for doctors to prescribe them only to people who actually need them. But it's for similar reasons that there's no country where all drugs are legal - most societies have decided to operate with a degree of paternalism regarding what other people can and can't do to themselves.

"Stereotypes are bad" is a motte and bailey argument.

The motte goes something like this: "Individual differences are bigger than group differences. So, even though group differences exist, it's unfair to treat people differently based on {immutable characteristic}. Treat everyone equally when you first meet them."

The bailey is more like: "There are no important differences between groups. Any time you think you notice one, it's because of your own inherent racism, sexism, etc.."

We're mature enough here to realize just how wrong the bailey is. In fact, almost all stereotypes are true. But, even so, some stereotypes really are false. Usually this is because of sampling bias. The people you come cross in a group are not representative of the group as a whole.

Here's an example. In America, there is a stereotype that British people are intelligent. Now, obviously, not everyone holds this stereotype. If you are a resident of southern Spain or Croatia, you've probably come to the exact opposite conclusion as you're invaded by drunken louts every weekend. But here in America, we're rarely exposed to the British working class. The Brits who make it over here tend to be the Received Pronunciation types who probably are generally smarter or at least better educated than the average American. Thus, many Americans hold the incorrect stereotype that British people are smart.

What other stereotypes are false?

If I didn't recognize the username I would have reported this as bait from a troll trying to get people to do base and boring racism.

Though we also got death, taxes, and @2rafa correcting various Americans on the intricacies of the British class system.

In general a lot of these examples suffer from definitional problems. What makes a stereotype True? What makes one Useful? Is "height correlates with intelligence" a true stereotype if there is any correlation, or only if it's the best tool by which to judge? A significant part of the perceived motte and bailey is a struggle between "Judging people by X is better than random" and "Judging people by X is less useful than judging them by Y."

A great example right now is gender race and politics. A white man is 6/10 likely to vote for Trump. So white man = Trump Voter is more accurate than blind chance. But we all know white men who didn't, and we all know white men who from across a room you can say with 95% certainty based on appearance that they didn't. Should I continue to hold the former stereotype in my mind when the latter evidence points the other way.

That said I'll throw one out there: ethnic in group preference exists, and as much as I was raised to be told it was a harmful racist stereotype one ignores it at one's own peril.

That all people with geeky interests (video games, anime, D&D etc.) are unusually intelligent.

Nerds are intelligent, and a lot of nerds have geeky interests, but there are plenty of people with geeky interests who are utterly lacking in intelligence or even common sense.

That people who play sports, exercise a lot etc. are just "dumb muscle"

All things being equal, the guy going to the gym four times a week is probably smarter, more accomplished and more disciplined than the nerdy Reddit moderator who blows all his disposable income on Funko Pops.

That homeless/underclass are unlucky and just like anyone else.

False stereotype: beautiful people are dumb and evil, ugly people are smart and have hearts of gold.

The penguin was amazing show. Too long since we had a proper protagonist that was flat out irredeemable.

But here in America, we're rarely exposed to the British working class.

Out of curiosity, what did Harry Potter qualify as?

Harry Potter's adoptive parents are an overtly negative stereotype of the Tory-supporting upper middle class, as would have been understood when the series began in the 90s.

Dursleys are middle middle not upper middle, they live in a barratt box in a new development with a tiny lawn and a small conservatory - expensive in the green belt today but relatively much cheaper in the mid 90s. Dursleys are people who say “settee” and “pleased to meet you” and so on. They scrimped enough to send Dudley to a cheap local private day school, but he would have been nobody special there. Hermione’s background is upper-middle.

Vernon Dursley is the director of a mid-sized company. Second paragraph of the first book.

Mr. Dursley was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills.

The books and films might have lowered his mannerisms below what you'd expect for such a position, but that's because it's meant to be a negative stereotype. And part of that negative stereotype is that he gets to be the director of a distinctly unfashionable business, rather than working in a high-paid but fashionable (for the 90s) profession.

Dursleys are people who say “settee” and “pleased to meet you” and so on.

Not English, what is the connotation here?

Hermione’s background is upper-middle.

I'm rusty on my HP lore, but where is this implied? I don't remember her family situation being discussed much in the books or shown in the film.

She’s the daughter of dentists and speaks in RP English, it would be the correct assumption.

There are certain word choices that differ between classes. Using the words “toilet” or “posh” is a very clear indicator that you aren’t upper or upper middle class.

Washing your hands before eating and being generally obsessive over hygiene standards is middle class, while the upper class generally prefer shabby chic and pick up half-finished meat bones with their hands.

Steretypically, the middle classes are afflicted with status anxiety, and therefore obsess over getting things right. Witness the Dursleys scripting out dinner etiquette before Mr. Dursley’s boss arrives for dinner. Whereas etiquette for the upper classes is just ‘whatever the upper classes do’ so they don’t fuss about it too much.

A classic example is the very PMC Nick Clegg and his wife going to dinner with the the Camerons (the Prime Minister and his wife, as upper class as they get) and being shocked when Mrs. Cameron used cheap mayonnaise from a bottle instead of using something fancy or making it herself. Not needing status symbols is the status symbol.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3706031/amp/SamCam-s-idea-cooking-jar-Hellmann-s-says-Miriam-Nick-Clegg-s-wife-exposes-food-habits-political-elite-new-autobiography.html

Her parents are dentists, that’s all I remember about them

Dursleys were middle class social climbers (the most universally despised class). weasels and malfoys were the two types of old money with no money (and fathers who had to stoop to taking govt sinecures as welfare, or in shady business with The Wrong Sort ("directly in business" being the most disreputable part of course)). Hermione was the acceptable kind of rising middle class (dentist, daughter in higher education, probably going into non-profit work). Harry was the ideal form of old money, with a good pedigree on the father's side, fresh blood of undeniable quality from the mother's side, and the money still there (and nobody asks where it came from because it obviously wasn't from anything as tasteless as working for it). Goblins were the international finance class obvs.

Harry is the classic storybook prince who grew up noble living in a pig pen and instantly takes to the ways of his people through pure blood memory.

I'm not sure we even saw anyone who was legitimately from the lower orders except a few parodies like hagrid and the house gnomes, maybe the bus driver? There was probably a scholarship boy hanging from a bannister by his underwear that nobody bothered to mention because it would be gauche to bring attention to it.

I love that Americans can look at the same scene through an entirely different colour spectrum, and all the flashing red bits just look gray to them.

anyone who was legitimately from the lower orders

The thief Mundungus Fletcher surely qualifies.

Guess I need to read the books again, because that name only sounds vaguely familiar. He was filching stuff from Sirius's house, right?

(Spoiler: he will not in fact read the books again)

That's right.

I love that Americans can look at the same scene through an entirely different colour spectrum, and all the flashing red bits just look gray to them.

The question is what value is encoded in the British lens and what Americans are missing by not seeing this worldview. Does it make Americans worse analysts when interacting with the Chinese etc or does it free them to do more, with less mental burdens or are they stupider because they're not constantly doing such social calculus etc etc Like preeminent American Timothy Dexter I'll put my punctuation at the end...,,,???????

If some reader misses something that the author intended and the expected audience understood, I would think less of that reader. Like if all I took away from Animal Farm was that it is a sad story about animals, you would be correct to look down on me.

Certainly I find that living in a foreign country is more relaxing in many ways because my social radar isn’t going off all the time.

Weasleys werent old money, even if we discount the weird Irish twins none of them speak in RP / upper class accents except for Ginny to some extent. If one had to place them in the British class system it would be as middle-middle rurals vaguely involved in county life but certainly not upper class. There’s no real evidence dad’s job is a sinecure and the ramshackle thing they live in is more quaint converted barn (or grain silo) than dilapidated dower house.

No, I agree with @SteveKirk here. The Weasleys have a noble background (they’re on the Black tapestry) and they’re well known as an old-established Pureblood family. Lucius Malfoy basically dislikes them for being traitors and letting the side down.

It’s noted several times that Mr. Weasley could have a lot more money and be a lot more influential if he were willing to toe the line. He has personal relationships with bigwigs and Department Heads like Bagman and Crouch.

Many of their children also get distinguished positions: Percy goes straight to the top of government and Bill has an important job in the biggest bank in Britain.

(I’m ignoring accents and going by the books, I never had much interest in the films).

Yeah, I only got dragged to the first film by gf fam, but at least in that one they... didn't seem to know what to make of some of the characters.

Every pure blood family is a well known family because the total number of wizards in Britain is in the thousands, almost certainly below 20,000 even with much longer lifespan than normal for humans. There are conceivably older wizards in their nineties or hundreds who know by name the vast majority of the wizard population in the country.

It’s also a largely post-scarcity society in which bad jobs are done by magic or slaves (eg. the dishes do themselves in the Weasley kitchen), so we imagine people working “service jobs” like shopkeepers or cooks do so primarily because they derive enjoyment from that customer interaction rather than because they need the money. There is financial inequality but it’s mostly abstract except when it comes to the purchase of some magical goods and services (like wands or brooms or magic candy) that cannot be conjured out of thin air and thus require the labor of actual other wizards. Textbooks and other things seem to have some semi-inviolable magic copyright attached.

Most people are essentially middle class, working in the few things not outsourced to magic (aforementioned artisanal magic crafts, the justice/courts system and government, some hospitality, and education). Many people appear to do just fine having little or no real employment, perhaps because wizards can conjure space, light, heat, food, warmth and can teleport. In this context, a job in “the civil service” ie Ministry of Magic isn’t the same as a sinecure in a muggle government. It’s likely the ministry creates a job for any wizard who wants one; the destitute are those wizards who choose to be.

Dursleys were middle class social climbers (the most universally despised class).

I always got the impression that JK was channeling Hyacinth Bucket when she wrote Petunia.

There was probably a scholarship boy hanging from a bannister by his underwear

Snape, I think. I can’t remember the flashback well but I think it’s implied that child!Snape comes from the bad end of town.

And the week after I compare Snape's parentage to race-mixing, the new series makes him a half-black formerly known as Prince. Absolutely perfect.

Oh, Snape's wifebeating dad definitely was. His mom married down and Paid The Toll in American racial terms.

Unless he got a very good match Snape's children would have fallen out entirely, which is one reason him being in love with Lily in spite of his class anxiety was so meaningful.

weasels and malfoys were the two types of old money with no money

Uh, since when did the Malfoys have no money? They were famously generationally wealthy, as evidenced by Lucius Malfoy purchasing a new Nimbus 2001 for each member of the Slytherin Quidditch team in Chamber of Secrets

I thought their house was described in that "not enough money to keep up the manor" state, and they were paying off servants or something. Maybe I was mixing that up with something else.

I don't think it's enough to say they were in economically dire straits, but in the Half-Blood Prince, Narcissa is portrayed trying to sell some trinkets.

I'd have liked an angle where the Malfoys turn to Voldemort out of economic desperation.

More like Voldy eating them out of house and home :P Like Elizabeth I who destroyed political enemies by turning up with her retinue for two months.

Yes, the Malfoys were evil aristos parleying old money and social status for influence.

Malfoy’s mates Crabbe and Goyle - lower class or lower middle class? Servants of House Malfoy? As an American, all I can tell is they’re somewhere between soccer hooligans and Alfred Pennyworth.

Probably a dodgy genealogy chart claiming they've been cracking heads for the malfoys since 1352, and a dubious claim on the family heraldry they put on everything. That sort.

The lowest of upper/upper middle class, from what I've gathered if I'm not mixing it up with fanon. The kind that have to brownnose people like Malfoys to stay at their level.

Senior Crabbe/Goyle are in the Death Eaters so they couldn't have been too lowborn.

Though it's strongly implied that both Crabbe and Goyle generations are almost too dimwitted to use magic.

DEs had a lot of people and AFAIR accepted anyone who was pureblood and was willing to worship the big V. I don't think it required any special position in the society, at least for mere membership - it seems to be modeled after the Nazi party, which explicitly welcomed low class people that felt the society has left them behind and wanted to do something about it, no matter who gets hurt. It seems the true numbers of DEs weren't even known as many who were eager to join when the things were going well for them, later claimed there weren't true DEs as they were imperiused or coerced (weird that they didn't have means to detect somebody had been imperiused, but let's not dwell of that, HPs magic system is so full of plot holes).

(weird that they didn't have means to detect somebody had been imperiused, but let's not dwell of that, HPs magic system is so full of plot holes).

They could always dose anyone they wanted to question with Veritaserum, the problem in HP society is that the Good Guys can't just impose such measures on the important people.

The text implied there was a ton of low-level DEs who escaped any punishment basically just by going "don't know anything, was imperiused, leave me alone" and ministry of magic doing nothing about it. If anything, the prominent DEs were the ones who got Azkaban or forced to recant and snitch in public on others, and low-level goons largely got away with it - to flock back to Voldie once he came back.

weird that they didn't have means to detect somebody had been imperiused, but let's not dwell of that, HPs magic system is so full of plot holes

Also, sometimes you just can’t do stuff. Modern fantasy is very influenced by sci-fi and D&D, and readers expects thing to be rule-based, comprehensible, and amenable to experimentation. See for example all the silliness about playing rules-lawyer with genies.

I don’t think the deep HP magic runs on such modernist lines. It’s more like art: there are principles and the basics are straightforward but the complex stuff just isn’t, and you have to go by feel.

But it's not even explained why you can't do it, not even addressed. There are a lot of limitations which are spelled out, even if inconsistently - like Avada Kedavra being unblockable (which turns out not to be exactly true but ok) or you can't use Imperius to reveal certain secrets, or other stuff you can't do. But this point is never addressed - given that there are ways to remove Imperius (e.g. Thief's Downfall) why everybody, e.g., entering Ministry of Magic is not automatically un-imperiused? Worst thing it does nothing. There's also finite incantatem, there are also veritaserum (ok this one may be too expensive to use on each suspect consistently), and if MoM can detect magic done by underage wizards, up to knowing which spell what used by whom, why can't it detect Imperius usage by others? It looks like tracing works on adult magic (if it is performed in the vicinity of underage, at least) so again, it's inconsistent.

given that there are ways to remove Imperius (e.g. Thief's Downfall) why everybody, e.g., entering Ministry of Magic is not automatically un-imperiused? Worst thing it does nothing.

True, I forgot this.

In general, I feel an urge to push back against the ‘rule-ification’ of fantasy. It’s become gospel that fantasy worlds should have systems with clear rules, and a certain amount of post-enlightenment tendency to assume that everything is explainable and amenable to engineering.

We can’t even engineer human social systems, or understand how brains work beyond very basic principles. Why would we be able to understand literal magic?

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He was left with quite an inheritance/trust fund at Gringotts.

My new head cannon is that Harry Potter's wealth comes from his parents both having taken level term life policies and used Voldemort to have a legitimate insurance claim. Voldemort spend the next 10 years trying to get his payout from Harry Potter. The unreleased book Harry Potter and the Insurance Claims Adjuster is about the lawsuit and encroaching poverty as Harry Potter is faced with ever increasing lawyers' fees.

Weirdly enough, in the parody series Barry Trotter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Gerber_(parodist)), Barry and Ermine get married and have a son who's a Squib. Because their son has grown up around magical people, he experiences a "grass-is-greener" effect in which Muggle culture seems impossibly exciting and exotic to him. His childhood ambition is to become an actuary in an insurance firm.

Perhaps I'm not fully versed on the intricacies of the British class system, but it seems obviously middle class?

Obviously so, yes, but by posing a question anyways I was able to get some adults to nerd out about a children's book series. ;-)

I'm struggling with this one and it bothers me. Not quite a stereotype but at work most of the time people come off as smarter and more competent when I interact with them one on one, then through project managers. So if I'm screaming at an email chain that so and so is a fucking idiot I try to go talk to them in person and things end up better.

I asked google and got these fun responses from the AI:

Many stereotypes are not true, including stereotypes about intelligence, gender, and race:

Intelligence: The stereotype that Asian Americans are intelligent is not true.

Gender: The stereotype that women are not as competent as men is not true.

Race: The stereotype that African Americans are less educated is not true.

Race: The stereotype that African Americans are less educated is not true.

It bothers me that I have no problem imagining a woke person asserting that this stereotype is false, and then in the next breath asserting that lower rates of educational attainment among African-Americans is one of many metrics demonstrating the extent to which the US is still a systemically racist country. It should not be possible for a mentally sane person to simultaneously believe "owing to systemic racism, African-Americans have lower rates of educational attainment than white Americans" and "the notion that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans is a false and harmful stereotype".

Like, if you believe that African-Americans are less likely to get an education because of racist policies or teachers or how assessment procedures, that directly implies that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans! The latter "stereotype" cannot be false without completely invalidating the former assertion.

Related: https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/if-you-believe-in-structural-racism-16c

It should not be possible for a mentally sane person to simultaneously believe "owing to systemic racism, African-Americans have lower rates of educational attainment than white Americans" and "the notion that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans is a false and harmful stereotype".

Why not?

I'm reminded of a past therapist who thought it was unhealthy to care about whether your beliefs are consistent with reality, or with each other, and that "rationalists" are all mentally ill, because not only do most people believe things simply because their peer group believes them, this is how sane people are supposed to acquire all their beliefs. Don't think about it, just believe whatever's popular to believe because it's popular. As social animals, the most important thing in life is fitting in, and therefore one should choose one's beliefs entirely in line with that goal.

It's why she said I should stop being an atheist and start going to church — because atheism is "weird" and believing in God is more popular, therefore belief in God is automatically more sane.

Thus, in her view, if it's popular (and high status) to simultaneously believe "owing to systemic racism, African-Americans have lower rates of educational attainment than white Americans" and "the notion that African-Americans are less educated than white Americans is a false and harmful stereotype," then holding both beliefs is "mentally sane" despite their contradictory nature, and that even stopping to think about them enough to notice that they contradict each other is bad for your mental health, and should be avoided. "Sanity" is uncritically embracing vox populi, vox Dei.

I wonder what your therapist would have made of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Doublethink promotes wellness?

Psychiatry is all about normalcy. If the people saying that have power over you, it's an evidence that you are less sane than them.

Wait, what?

I asked Grok. It spit out lots of similar "false" stereotypes including this one:

Women are naturally better at nurturing and childcare: While some women might excel in these areas, many women do not feel an innate drive for motherhood or might not exhibit traditionally nurturing behaviors.

When I pushed back strongly, it did admit that women are, in fact, more nurturing then men but refused to do it in an unqualified way, always adding "it's important to remember" platitudes to the end.

So much for a based AI any time soon I guess.

Some days I wish people (or AIs) would actually think through their statements instead of just saying things that support their side on the topic of conversation.

African Americans aren't less educated? I guess it's mission accomplished for Affirmative Action, and all of the stats about race and educational attainment must be simply mistaken. Same with race/sex and medical treatment, as well as many other minor issues.

It's one of the things that really turned me off of social justice causes and their supporters.

Basically all the stereotypes about X or Y European culture being rude/unfriendly/etc. are false. They come from a combination of clueless tourists not realizing they're being rude first, or from Europeans playing up cultural mismatches/national rivalries. Even Parisians are no less friendly than the inhabitants of any comparable big city.

There are also a bunch of intra-African stereotypes Westerners would find very surprising to hear, but they tend to reflect reasonably accurately how Africans experience other cultures, so they're largely a result of different selection affects from intra-African migration relative to Africa-to-West migration. (This is talking about general stereotypes, of course, not those stemming from national or tribal beefs, which are just as ridiculous as the Dutch calling Germans bicycle thieves, but usually without the joking aspect).

Even Parisians are no less friendly than the inhabitants of any comparable big city.

This is totally wrong, have you seen how Parisians park? They literally ram the car in front and behind them with their bumpers to make room for parallel parking. Strangers will scratch up your bumper to make their parking easier and won't see anything wrong with it. This would be considered extremely rude in most other places.

Here's a video of Americans being shocked by Parisian parking: https://youtube.com/watch?v=n51OdFlOi1o

I would agree Parisians are crazy behind the wheel of a car, but I think that's orthogonal to friendliness.

Basically all the stereotypes about X or Y European culture being rude/unfriendly/etc. are false.

Interestingly enough, I have exactly the counter view of US culture, especially related to restaurant service. I find US waiters as rude. First they impose themselves upon me as if I care about their name or their stupid questions about where I am from or why am I in the US - as if I cannot tell that they don't give a shit. Then they constantly interrupt me and my friends with inane sales pitches - and if god forbid we go under some invisible sum of $spending per minute, then they actually slam the bill on the table and just kick me out as if I am some hobo. So much for friendliness. To me US waiters are bunch of fake stupid clowns putting on clownshow for US patrons, who for some reason like that shit.

Nevertheless despite this rant, I put up with it when I am overseas and act accordingly with fake smiles and everything - each country has its own thing and US people like their waiters to be clowns for some reason, it is what it is. I am not there to reeducate them about proper continental way of "invisible" manners of waiting staff. But it would be good to have some basic respect for other cultures as well and not take your own manners as the etalon everybody in the world should aspire to. For instance Japanese people are polite, they do not like to be touched and in general like their space. People in Brasil on the other hand love to touch each other, so if somebody comes to me and taps me on my back he means no disrespect or sexual assault or whatnot.

if god forbid we go under some invisible sum of $spending per minute, then they actually slam the bill on the table and just kick me out as if I am some hobo. So much for friendliness.

The hell? I have literally never had this happen in my entire life in the US. Either there's some other layer to why you're having that experience, or you are the unluckiest person to ever visit a restaurant here.

Maybe you reacted to dozens of "rude" cues of waiters who want to remove you from the table - after paying the tip of course - so they can sit down somebody else who will consume some more. If you ignore those hints, then the service can get really nasty. Try it sometimes.

Yes, U.S. waiters are awful.

"Hi, I'm Stacy, and I'm going to be taking care of you today".

10 minutes after your food arrives: "You still working on that?"

French service is much better, generally.

There are also a bunch of intra-African stereotypes Westerners would find very surprising to hear, but they tend to reflect reasonably accurately how Africans experience other cultures

Well, please go on, I want to be surprised.

There is a sentiment I’ve heard many times from Americans abroad which boils down to, “don’t worry, I’m American, it’s fine to be informal”.

It’s well-meant but often comes off as demanding unearned intimacy, or worse as, “I’m not interested in playing your silly provincial status games”.

or worse as, “I’m not interested in playing your silly provincial status games”

That's one of the only privileges you have as a foreign worker if assimilation is not your goal. Just smile and trample every boundary.

There’s a difference between trying and getting it wrong, versus thinking you’re doing everyone a favour by failing to respect how people are supposed to behave. Trampling people’s boundaries is deeply disrespectful to them and shows poor character IMO.

I remember a tourist I met once at a Meetup; she immediately gave me a rather demeaning nickname, clearly intending it as a playful icebreaker. Frankly I was appalled. I tried to be nice and not hold it against her but I still remember it as a quintessential example of someone trying to leapfrog social customs and botching it.

Hmm, but then why do I hear stereotypes about various central American or SE Asian countries being very friendly? I'm sure there are many rude tourists there, but somehow they come away thinking everyone is nice.

The cultures are in some ways more compatible with the US, but there's also an element of those countries being poor and needing tourist $$$ more, so their tourist-facing norms ended up being shaped differently.

It probably has to do with money.

In poor countries, people will dance for you. In rich countries, they won't. I actually much prefer the detachment of the French waiter who is too good for my filthy American dollars.

In the Third World, I always feel like a leaky sack of money more than a human.

Edit: Thinking about this some more, Latin Americans really do seem to have a friendly and positive attitude.

Also hilarious when people assume that Southeast Asians are more progressive than Westerners based on essentially 'The resort staff in a very narrow slice of Bali didn't say anything negative about my gay relationship, therefore progressive country'

People from big countries and open spaces seem to be more open and positive than people in more cramped conditions.

Thanks to everyone who answered my hypothetical about the startup.

General opinion seems to come down to ‘you don’t owe them anything but a decent sum of money would be a gentlemanly / ladylike show of gratitude. Which seems about right to me.

One of the reasons I’m interested in the question is that much social conflict comes from the discrepancy between the market value of labour (determined primarily by the number and type of people able to do the work) and what you might call the utility value (determined by how important it is that the work gets done. For example, @PutAHelmetOn’s code saves hundreds of thousands in processing costs, farmers stop everyone dying of famine, longshoremen make it possible to have international trade (modulo automation).

I would say the primary economic conflict of the last two hundred years is that the employees think in terms of the utility of their work while customers and employers think in terms of the market value.

Trade unions and guilds have historically been used as a method of arbitrage between these two values, limiting competition to drive market value closer to utility value. And the communist states show pretty clearly to my that trying to base your society on something other than the market value causes problems. I suppose the welfare state is basically ‘we don’t owe you this money but we’re going to give some of it to you anyway’.

Would like to write an effort post but this is what I have for now.

(Meta: is it obnoxious to do multi-top-posts like this? I didn’t want to talk about these ideas right away because I felt it would bias the replies, but at the same time it seems like a waste to write this as a second level reply in an old thread just before the new CW thread opens up).

the discrepancy between the market value of labour and what you might call the utility value

The utility theory of pricing suggests that potable water (critical for life) should cost more than diamond necklaces (not important). That alone suggests it needs at least some nuance if it wants to make contact with reality.

I think if you want to be more coherent about theories of value, you should probably think a bit more about the margin and factor in include both substitutability & elasticity. Food as an entire category is essential, but on the margin the farmer's product can be substituted for the fisherman's or the shepherd's. Truckers as a category are essential, but on the margin if prices go way up people will ship less stuff. PUHO's super-performant code could be substituted instead for buying a bunch more hours on AWS.

I suppose the welfare state is basically ‘we don’t owe you this money but we’re going to give some of it to you anyway’.

I think there is a key question of filling in the reason why it's given anyway.

Some will say:

  • ... because we want you to get on your feet and go back to being a productive member of society

Others will say

  • ... because we care for you as an irreducible being worthy of grace

Yet others will say

  • ... because otherwise the poor will degrade the quality of life for everyone

And so forth.

I am not sure that the utility value concept is coherent.

So all the farmers quit one day and the rest of the economy stays the same, magically. People will likely decide that they want food more than they want shelter, move out of their rented buildings and spend their rent on what food there is to be had, establishing a utility value of food.

Except now the people running the waterworks also go on strike, and there is a water shortage. Very quickly, people decide that they would rather drink than eat. Nobody would waste precious water to irrigate crops.

And then some acute threat of violence looms, and people will trade their precious water so that they are not ripped apart by velociraptors in the next minute.

Depending on what their most urgent need is, that piece of bread is worth 1$, or a kings ransom, or nothing. So what should its utility value be?

The idea that utility value and market value are different is a fundamental economic misconception.

Market prices reflect real resource shortages and tradeoffs. "Important" jobs are often paid low because many people can do it.

I’m specifically differentiating the two concepts. My point is that the economically effective way of allocating value does not match fundamental moral intuitions many have about how to allocate value.

The Marxists put their fingers in their ears and say ‘akshually economic value is derived from labour’ and they’re wrong and it doesn’t work. But the concept is perennially popular because it’s fundamentally intuitive, and I suspect that until we find a way to make the two match a little better we will have permanent ongoing strife. The welfare system was an attempt to do this, but has the now-clear disadvantage that it’s a pyramid scheme that encourages dependency and bankrupts you. I’m interested in exploring the space of possible alternatives.

A pure market system with high liquidity and competition generally produces good results and humans hate, hate, hate being subject to it. Like evolution, market forces are an eldritch optimising machine. There are some people who seem to feel that market forces are morally good and I think this is a category error.

I see it as a sort of tragedy of the commons. You can have a better view and a better time at a baseball stadium by sitting down, but this is conditional on everyone else sitting down as well.

The politicization of economic value is super super tempting. I think it is inevitable to some degree and I'm fine with it happening. I think it would be best if it happens within Dunbar number limited groups of people of about 150. Let a small company or group of people determine among themselves how to politically split up economic value. But make them compete in a more global system where value is determined by the erldritch invisible hand.

There is a sweet spot of not being subject to the eldritch forces, but also it's a benevolent eldritch force that will ruthlessly optimize for the things we are willing to trade for. So I guess I agree with your assessment, I just dislike the people that band together to deny reality, aka Marxists.

I agree with pretty much everything here. I don’t think you can avoid politicising “how much is your work worth”, especially because liquid market conditions are something that has to be actively created and maintained through legal systems, economic systems, transport systems etc.

I think it works as an appeal to victimization and greed. The belief that you’re being exploited is something that comes up anytime you end up with any sort of hierarchy. It’s something that humans are just unwilling to accept unless it’s them at or near the top of the dominance hierarchy. So rather than accept that there’s a reason that they’re not at the top of that hierarchy. Incels certainly have theories about what kinds of external factors make them unfuckable. The kid cut from the football team will likely believe in some sort of favoritism hold him back. In the workplace we have a hard time accepting that we actually don’t deserve to be the boss.

The other appeal is greed. If those at the top are unfairly exploiting them, it’s “only fair” to ask that some of those ill-gotten gains go to them. So they stand to gain if they can leverage the power of the state to basically steal from their betters.

I mean, I agree directionally.

That said, there is such a thing as exploitation. The concept has been overused by the left but their dishonesty about it doesn't actually erase the subset of actual such cases.

The problem being trying to find out if you’re a real victim of exploitation or if you’re just unsatisfied with where you ended up. Most people will absolutely believe that they deserve more.

Absolutely. I did not mean at all to suggest that we can allow people to self-id as exploited.

That doesn't mean there are no such cases or the concept is completely devoid of realization.

In a perfectly efficient market, this would be the case. But it's easily disproven in practice by the fact that market prices can change by effects which have absolutely no impact on the utility value.

Ie, suppose we have a city with a bunch of plumbers, all of equal plumbing skill/ability, and a company that hires them and manages their distribution to clients, and pays between $80k and $120k depending on how skilled and aggressive the plumber is at negotiating (aggressive meaning they demonstrate an ability/willingness to quit and do a different job instead if they don't get the salary they want). We've assumed by axiom that they provide the same value, and yet get paid different amounts, let's assume the frequency is evenly distributed across this range, such that the average plumber is paid $100k. I suppose you could say that the "utility value" is the highest the company is willing to pay, $120k, and anyone being paid less is simply a bad negotiator, but I'm not sure if you'd say the "market value" is $120k given that most of the plumbers aren't earning that, and a new plumber entering the field is unlikely to get an offer that high.

Suppose then that the plumbers unionize and negotiate that all of them will receive the same pay of $110k. That's now the market value, unambiguously, that's what the market, as created by this single local monopolistic company (which is the only company offering reliable and consistent pay for plumbers in this city) and this one union (which all employees of the company must join) will pay. And yet the utility value of plumbing has not changed, because the union doesn't impact plumbing skill/ability in any way.

Suppose that the company actually takes in revenue of $140k for each plumbing employee it has, and keeps the difference as overhead/profit. There's a sense in which the utility value of a plumber is actually $140k since that's what clients are willing to pay, although if the overhead is necessary then I suppose the utility of the plumber themself is lessened by that. However if a plumbing emergency happens and the company gets a lot more business, earning $150k per employee one year, but takes the extra as profit and changes no salaries, then the utility value of plumbers goes up that year, the market price (from the client and owner's side) goes up, but the market price (from the employees side) remains unchanged.

And suppose that the employer uses local regulations, an army of lawyers, and relationships with local politicians to crush any new plumbers that try to form their own company or go independent in this area. It is not a free market, it is effectively a local monopoly. If you want to be a plumber, you negotiate here, or you leave the city and pay whatever transition costs it takes to uproot your life and your family and be a plumber somewhere else. The fact that this changes market prices but doesn't change the utility value of plumbers should clearly demonstrate that market prices are distinct from utility prices, even if an ideal perfectly efficient and free market would cause them to be equal. In practice, no market is perfectly free, therefore we should expect deviations in precisely the areas where these imperfections drive them apart.

There is an economic concept called "perfect competition" I want to be clear that this economic concept is not required for efficient prices.

And I am talking about efficient prices, not "perfect prices". Prices are a process and a search function for an optimal set of tradeoffs. One of the tradeoffs is information. To perfectly know all the inputs of a product, and to perfectly know the desire for that product would be a very costly search process. There is going to be some fudging of prices and that fudging should be expected given that information itself is not free or costless.

[Plumbers]

You've created a very long example that kind of assumes away many of the standard market fixes. I do generally like to use theoretical examples for most economic concepts, but I find that they tend to lead people astray when it comes to the nature of prices.

To me your example sounds a bit like this:

"Geologists say that older mountain ranges tend to be shorter and rounder than newer mountain ranges, because wind and erosion will gradually wear mountains down. But that's not always true, imagine there are two mountains. One mountain is 20k feet and in an old mountain ranges. And the other mountain is 10k feet in a newer mountain range. They are both subject to similar levels of erosion, and neither is a volcano. So older mountains can be taller."

You've assumed your position to be true in your example.

And yes the government is fully capable of distorting prices, or assisting companies in distorting prices. I usually bring this up as a reason why government should not have this power, or should at least have many restrictions on the use of this power. But this is also not evidence that prices don't reflect the real world, instead it is more evidence. After all if a government makes it hard to be in the plumber business we should expect the price paid for plumbing services to go up, because the supply of plumbers has been restricted. It would be strange if the government could intervene and not change prices.

Sure, but my example is basically a disproof by counterexample. In this example, prices don't match utility, therefore, the statement "prices always match utility" is logically false. It's really easy to disprove an "always" statement with a single example, even a hypothetical one, because an "always" statement is such a strong claim that it's almost never true. Utility value and market value are different things: sometimes they will be equal, sometimes they will not. I'm not saying they're never equal, I'm not saying they won't usually be close, especially in an efficient market. My point is that markets in the real world are not always efficient, therefore the two values are not always equal in the real world. This should not be controversial.

The only time I say "always" is in quoting a fake person that is doing a bad takedown on the concept of erosion with a bad hypothetical example.

I even mentioned fudging of prices. Which I would have thought helped clarify that prices are not some exact mathematical thing.

I'll say what I said again: Prices reflect reality.

Saying that they don't perfectly reflect reality is not a disproof of what I said. Just like finding one mountain that is coincidentally less eroded does not mean erosion is not true. Utility is part of reality and thus prices will tend to capture information about utility and reflect that information.

Marx's work doesn't say there is a slight mismatch sometimes between market prices and utility. It says there is almost always a mismatch, because employers exploit employees for their excess labor to make profits. That is the fundamental economic misconception.

If a price is wrong, then there is often a method to profit off of that incorrectness. If some segment of workers is underpaid then their is a profit opportunity to open a competing business and pay them more than they get now and less than the full value of their wage. The greater the discrepancy, the greater the opportunity.

Fine. It sounds like we don't disagree about any object level issues, just the meaning of certain words and phrases. I don't think what you said originally properly conveys the nuance of what you're saying now, but I understand you now and I don't disagree.

Market prices reflect real resource shortages and tradeoffs. "Important" jobs are often paid low because many people can do it.

Or as Dr. Kersten points out, there are many positions which are necessary but not important, like a gear in a watch -- vital yet easily replacable.

I think what Corvos is calling "utility value" is price at which consumer surplus reaches zero. That's definitely different than (and much higher than) "market value".

Yes, and it has to be this way because anyone providing me a necessary service must be paid less per person that I am paid. Otherwise I can’t afford those necessary services.

For example, I am dependent on food (farmers, truckers, shelf stackers etc.) to live. If those people are too well paid, I can’t afford to eat. So it seems that, most of the time, it’s a prerequisite for civilisation that people doing necessary jobs are paid less than people doing unnecessary jobs. Which is very awkward for society.

Yes, and it has to be this way because anyone providing me a necessary service must be paid less per person that I am paid. Otherwise I can’t afford those necessary services.

Err, no. This would only be true if those people were providing you AND ONLY YOU the necessary service. In actual fact, farmers, truckers, and shelf stackers provide services to many people.

Sorry, I’m thinking out load and so not always clearly. What I mean is that I physically can’t spend more than my total salary on basic necessities. Society requires that basic necessities be cheaper than skilled/intellectual work - if they aren’t cheap, society doesn’t function and everyone has to be a subsistence farmer.

The more fundamental the work, the more we have to drive the price down for our civilisation to remain functional. More physical work is resistant to automation is various ways (robots can’t interact with complex objects / human environments so no robot nurses, truckers, shelf stackers etc.) and the end result is that you have many low-paid physical labourers who notice that they are being paid badly for doing very necessary jobs while others are being paid better for sending emails. Before, of course, these jobs were done by peasants and slaves, so you had the same problem.

I can’t see a better solution but it always causes problems for social cohesion imo.

Society requires that basic necessities be cheaper than skilled/intellectual work - if they aren’t cheap, society doesn’t function and everyone has to be a subsistence farmer.

The requirement is that the cost of the basic necessities for a person is less than their pay. This says little, however, about the pay of those providing the basic necessities. And it is certainly not true that that work is particularly resistant to automation -- the work that remains perhaps is, but that's purely survivorship bias. We provide a lot more necessities with a lot fewer people (farmers especially) than we did in the past.