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From: baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: What is "capitalism"? (Explorations of "self-interest")
Message-ID: <319@spar.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Jun-85 00:50:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: spar.319
Posted: Wed Jun 12 00:50:11 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Jun-85 00:22:32 EDT
References: <298@spar.UUCP> <2380027@acf4.UUCP>
Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA
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>>/* baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS) /  4:28 pm  Jun  7, 1985 */
> 
>>You weren't talking about what people *want*.  You were talking about
>>what is "best" for people.  I, for one, recognize a distinction between
>>the two in human affairs.
> 
>They are not different.  X may have a set of goals, Z, that X wants to achieve
>and a certain value X places on the achievement of each of the goals in Z.
>X will achieve some subset of these goals.  X would like to achieve that subset
>of goals, Y, such that the sum of the values of the goals in Y is maximal over
>all possible subsets of Z.  Note that there may be certain goals in Z that
>cannot possibly be in the same subset.  The achievement of Y is clearly
>what X wants, though he/she may not be aware of it.  This is also what is best
>for X.

I'm not sure that it makes sense to talk about things that people want
without being aware of it.  I *am* sure that what I want is not always in
my best interest.  Consider cigarettes.  When I smoked, I was spending
large sums of money to poison myself because I *wanted* to.  I wanted to
because it was like scratching an itch.  The joke was that I had the itch
because I smoked in the first place.  This is *not* to say that I don't
think I should have been given the opportunity to smoke.  That's a separate,
if related, topic.  But it does offer an instantiation of my goals being
contrary to my self-interest in a way that was obvious to any reasoning
and informed being.

					Baba