People make lawyer jokes because they are disgusted with themselves. Lawyers offer only two services, really: conflict resolution, and interpretation of legislation which these days is written mostly in plain english. Seeing a lawyer is an admission that, as a person, you've failed at one of these tasks.
This is in the context of litigation. Of course there are exceptions - in cases of uneven power, for example a person vs a company. Or when you're dealing with a truly insane person, for whatever reason, but in that likelihood that person should already be in a mental institution =p
The OP then uses this as an analogy to why people dislike speculators.
The nature of speculation is to apply greater financial resources, combined with a certain degree of risk, to essentially make money at the expense of others without adding value to the economy.
- and goes on to explain that resentment towards speculators is based on the fact that someone is getting rich doing things which any person can do, if he was dedicated enough. the fact that it's "easy money" and seems to be created out nothing is what fuels the resentment, making it somehow immoral.
This deals somewhat with the ethics of speculation. The basic premise is that you buy low sell high. One way you could argue is that nothing of value is being created - the item being bought and sold is essentially the same before and after, and yet there are costs to be paid for each transaction, so essentially speculators add nothing to an economy and in fact are just a drain and waste of resources.
The other way you can argue it is - none of the transactions were forced : both parties at each step of transaction definitely feel that they are getting "value" out of it.
In a sense the more transactions there are in an economy, the higher the total wealth the society has. Lets give a hypothetical example, a farmer plants wheat and sells it to a baker for 100 dollars. The wheat is obviously worth less than 100 dollars to the farmer, and more than 100 dollars to the baker, so "value" is created. With the 100 dollars he has the farmer buys a television. To the farmer the television is worth more than 100 dollars - to the television seller, it's worth less than 100 dollars.
With each transaction you could argue that value is indeed being created, just by the goods changing hands, because the goods are valued differently according to each person's judgement.
3 comments:
hmmm...
What about the man who buys the tv set from the factory and sells it to the television shop.
To the factory it's worth less than 100 to the shop it's worth more than 100.
But to the guy in between it is 100 dollars :D for free.
But how about many real situations. Such as people who collect from fishermen the fish. Now these people have the lorries and the contacts to sell the fish. But the fishermen don't. So, these people force them to sell the fish at some ridiculous price such that the fishermen is getting less than what he believes it is worth. And since there are so many fishermen, all hungry and desperate, he can't fight the transactors cos they can always go to another fisherman. Thus, is value not lost among the way? (not to mention the ammorality of it all - notice amoral not immoral)
o_0
i fail to understand what you mean in the television example... yes there is profit involved in trading, otherwise no one would engage in it, and markets and shops wouldn't exist.
the middleman in your fishermen example are indeed adding value, as you said they own the lorries (physical transport) and have the contacts (knowledge).
as always, the transaction isn't forced. yes they can go to another fisherman if they refuse, but can't the fisherman himself also go to another middleman with a more reasonable deal?
consider the case where the middleman is making an unreasonably high profit. in a free economy, people will take notice, and other middleman will set up business and begin to undercut.
in an ideal / free economy, every company makes what is called normal profit, because the moment there is a business where there are abnormally high profits, newcomers will attempt to shoehorn their way in to take advantage of it.
yes your theoretical fisherman example could exist : in the case that perhaps, the government only allows one person to act as a middleman -> or only one person owns all the lorries in the country -> but such situations are rare indeed.
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