A friend from Argentina once told me Argentina keeps its best wines for themselves and exports the mediocre stuff, even at the sake of profits.
Similarly, a friend from Turkey once said he couldn’t find good Turkish olives outside of Turkey because “Turks are terrible businessmen and keep the best olives to themselves.”
These are anecdotal and might be untrue but I liked the idea.
At an individual level, it’s irrational to cooperate in a prisoner’s dilemma yet experiments show people cooperate.
Contributing to open source projects may fall into this category.
Have you observed any obvious behavior that goes counter to profit maximization? Any cool examples?
I’m sure you could write an entire collection of books on the irrationality of Brexit.
As James O’Brien graciously puts it: “We are the first country in history to have placed economic sanctions upon itself”
Gawd forbid people actually enjoy the things they produce rather than sell them abroad.for maximum profit.
This.
It’s irrational to consider maximum monetary gain to be the only best outcome. Why? What’s the goal? Money is only means to an end, not intrinsically worth anything.
Put another way, if the Argentinians cherish good wine, how are they better off with slightly more money and mediocre wine? (I guess they could use the profits to buy good wine?)
Totally agree. That’s why I love it so much. Like a big “fuck you” to economic theory and profit maximization.
Besides the dumbass tariffs imposed by the US on everyone, including an island that only has penguins?
Germany does the same with wine to the point where Brits go to Germany and wonder why they’re sending us all the shit stuff
Modding in general, most of us never profit from it at all.
Thank you for the fun times. I don’t mod games, but other creative work I’ve done still feels real good.
Other than self entitled twat end users shitting up a comment section. Very loud minority.
No problem!
I’ve only done this for about half a year but nearly all the interactions I’ve had with the users have been great, I really can’t complain.
I will never, ever respect someone who looks at the creativity and altruism of modding communities and says “That is irrational”. Absolutely soulless talk. No value in the world that isn’t monetary to those assholes.
Absolutely, life isn’t about making money, modding is a hobby like any other.
I think a lot of people think that anything that can make money should.
A friend from Italy told me that they keep the best cheese for themselves and export the rest.
While Italy does have very good cheese, I can’t help but to be reminded that they also consider maggot infested cheese to be excellent.
Many governments cut social programs that would result in net benefits economically for society (e.g. disability services that mean more people can maintain jobs, education, family planning, public transit, all mean more money is being made overall including more taxes going to the government). But it isn’t a direct enough benefit and it’s hard to quantify, whereas slashing funding feels like immediate savings.
Imagine no longer paying for your phone service in order to save money, then being confused about why none of the jobs you applied to are calling you back. Same logic.
Well said. Using the US as a super obvious example, there’s been data for a long time that offering free publicly available birth control had a MASSIVE ROI. And yet we have piles of idiots out here saying “I don’t want my taxes going up for pay for some stranger’s birth control!”.
We can even set aside considering a “decent human” aspect where we’re happy to save women and men from PILES of stress, strife, and burden. It just makes a fuckload of economic sense if you’re not dumb or some evil Handmaiden’s Tale-style piece of shit.
Both of those seems very rational in term of maximazing value.
The UK under Thatcher utterly anihilated its own manufacturing sector at a huge longterm economic detriment seemingly just to destroy labour unions.
The UK manufacturing sector for raw materials and basic products was on the way out anyway due to costs being so low in Asia, so it was more to be able to shut it down and save the government from needing to bail it out while also destroying labour unions while they were at it, hence why the advanced manufacturers (JCB, Rolls Royce, etc.) were largely unaffected
I can go to Starbucks and pay $5 for a coffee, or I can make better & get higher on at home for 25 cents.
That’s rational though, isn’t it?
Gambling.
Trump.
Heard the same (keep the best for themselves, only sell the inferior stuff) about Spanish olive oil, Italian pasta, and Chinese everything.
Buying locally will always be better than what you get in the supermarket. I think that’s true for any country.
It’s the stuff that’s produced on a smaller scale and can be harvestet ripe.
