Read any anthropology?
You have virtually reduced the range of human 'values' to $$-prices. I believe that this is an example of a scale problem and maybe the looking for the dropped coin by the streetlamp - even though you dropped it in the dark - the ones humans have proven so considerably inept at dealing with:
global warming (or not), comets, asteroids (or not) National Health, etc. - because we much prefer to deal with problems we can put numbers on. And spreadsheets - the new curse of Organization Man.
I don't know where to begin with 'proving' an economic thesis, when we are supposedly dealing with the viability of a society - whose rules for interpersonal behaviour only incidentally do (and must) provide for survival and a semblance of "sharing the wealth" as well as the work.
(See my reply to your post #95253 - I started at the bottom)
In brief - these are inextricably entwined - however nice it might seem to pretend that One Comes First and then you layer-on all the rest of human qualities. Isn't that a lot like
adding Security to Windoze (or networking, for that matter - to a design that was always single-user) ??
Sorry but.. I don't think much can be done with this postulate. It's not even Wrong. Hell.. maybe this last *is Why!* we worship Capitalism as the actual National God: it has so little to do with what an 'authentic life' might value!
(Corollary - whatever an 'authentic life might be' - it sure as hell isn't about "endless consumption"!) IMhO.
When I look at any society on the face of the earth, true non-selfish behavior only arises when ALL other needs are met. Life is inherently selfish.Altruism is everywhere. Why? Unanswerable - it creates endorphins, is the clinical answer. Without it, no child would reach maturity. In the death camps, there were those who gave much of their pittance to others. While there were also Me-Me aberrations - in that 0-economics environment, there was *sharing*. As also in the Warsaw Ghetto. ETC.
This has become too dreary. Next you would want proof (?!) Want a new postulate?
Econ theory simply fails to encapsulate human beings. Certain economic rule sets tend to exaggerate innate qualities; really lousy economic rules bring out the worst. We don't yet know what rule set might bring out the best - and we aren't trying to find that: we want to work backwards because it is about numbers and it's so very much simpler.
There: the Anti-Econ Postulate for the creation of a New Authentic Society. Someday, when we grow up.
Ashton
