LOL
Love the book name-dropping, reminded me of the face-off Matt Damon has in Goodwill Hunting 2-Hunting season (within Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back).
Hmm. Does that count as film name-dropping? I mean, I've also seen Spartacus and the original "The Fly" lol (Not seen Citizen Kane though, so lacking true film buff status
)
Back to the topic; I remembered now what my main point is regarding trading. I'm here to play, to hunt and to skill. I expect to lose money on every throw of the dice. I don't find trading enjoyable, I can't be bothered to make the search for profit part of my game; that's the parts of RL that piss me off after all. I've never liked businessmen or salesmen, mostly folk lacking integrity or sincerity and purely after whatever they can get from you. I have no wish to emulate or encourage such activity in the virtual universe I visit to enjoy myself. That's why I TT a lot of things; I don't want greedy people getting rich on my efforts, and I can't be arsed to work the auctions and get good returns etc... that is work, not play. I'm making friends in EU who I reckon are good people, and they get my TT-ables if they need them. Empire-Builders need not apply
Hurrikane
Well then. I was talking to him about the books I'd read because he expressed an interest and mentioned it was a good thing; generally people who feel reading is good are by definition well-read and thus I wanted to lay out most of the books outside of textbooks that could have worked to shape directly or indirectly the way I think, so that if he DID mention any books he'd recommend we wouldn't waste time in a "oh yeah, that was good, read that" line of discussion. In case you didn't catch it from my lengthy posts earlier-I'm not one to quote theory often or rely on other people's assumptions-I flesh out the logic of my arguments and leave it at that.
Two other things: 1) the market need not be a place without conscience. If the market had no good side, there'd be very little research and development. After all, if every company out there were cynical, they'd all collaborate (which, with heavy campaign contributions, they might get away with) leave everything static and never develop new and useful drugs or alternative fuels or reduced toxic waste or anything like that. To be blunt and a tiny bit unfair-"state run" industry gives you Cherynobl-a market economy gives you laptops.
And while I resent that pointing out the way the market works and the reasons for its supreme efficiency most likely lumps me into that "lacking ethics" crowd in your book, I myself believe quite the opposite. I'm studying to become a development economist-my future JOB will be "teaching a country to fish" as it were. I tout the efficiencies of the free market because it's the system with the best chance to help out people on earth BECAUSE it guards against the concentration of power in an individual, corrupt person's hands at a much better rate than Communism or top-down state enterprise or any other system out there. Just because it's easier to see the "evil profit-seekers" in a free market doesn't mean that there's more of them-just that their attempts will either land them in jail or land them in a fierce competition for the unwitting betterment of society in most cases.
After all, after almost three thousand years of humanity knowing OF poorer countries and either enslaving their people or ignoring them; it's only been with the increased adoption of free market economies that the world came together and established the IADB, World Bank, and other developmental institutions. I doubt I've swayed your opinion, but I just wanted to let you know that other opinions exist that DON'T assume a high majority of people in the wealthiest countries on earth are 'immoral.'
By TT'ing goods, you're essentially keeping your funds directly in MA's house. They control how much you succeed, they control how much you yield. I wont bother launching into the argument I've already launched a few times on this thread but, long story short, unlike Dion's system advocating a market based on no incentives; you, in your cynical way, perceive an extremely high time value of money for yourself (pretty much) and therefore wish to merely recover some value for a good but not to take time to recover all of it. When you TT it, you're essentially selling back a security to MA before it's "due" and taking the hit on potential returns; alternatively, selling it to other people means that, again, you have a high time value of money and are willing to sell at cost for the sake of resuming your other activites. While you yourself may or may not be misallocating the value of your time (probably accurately, your disdain shows a high cost for anything not related to shooting or mining), you're still serving a market purpose as people with more time than you can then sell the good at substantial profit, thus allowing you to reap the time and them to reap the money.
