It's certainly possible for a trade to benefit both people, though its not given.
But even within a trade that benefits both people, each side wants to maximize their surplus.
If it costs me $5 to make something and it's worth $10 to that person, I want to charge $10 and they want to pay $5. In fact as best you can you wouldn't mind if you…
It's certainly possible for a trade to benefit both people, though its not given.
But even within a trade that benefits both people, each side wants to maximize their surplus.
If it costs me $5 to make something and it's worth $10 to that person, I want to charge $10 and they want to pay $5. In fact as best you can you wouldn't mind if you tricked the person into paying $11 or to charge you $4.
It's very common in business to disagree over what something will cost or what the value of the benefits it brings. Some people will be right and some people will be wrong.
Let me take a simple example. While some people justify DEI on social justice grounds, it was quite common to hear rhetoric about how DEI would actually help profit margins. Is that claims correct or incorrect? What metrics would one use to argue either way? I'd rather have someone present a firm POV on that with some hard evidence than a bunch of wishy washy language that can't be verified.
Simply saying to me "well firms are voluntarily buying DEI so it must be benefiting them" isn't very convincing. There are a million possible reasons for a corporation to make certain decisions beside a perfect objective view of whether it helps the bottom line.
I already acknowledged that some trades have "winners", but your original statement was that every trade does, and I don't believe that to be the case. I make thousands of purchases every year, and am perfectly satisfied with almost all of them.
You are of course correct. Forumposter explains his internal flaw in his first post:
Perhaps this is a finance/business thing rather than a politics thing, but even handedness kind of repels me. Taking bold stances and being willing to bowl over opposing views you think are wrong has served me well in my career. Put another way, every single trade has two sides and they can't both be right.
To rephrase it somewhat, he takes a stance he thinks is right and then refuses to acknowledge that he was wrong. So despite saying something clearly false in "every single trade has two sides and they can't both be right", when it is pointed out to him he doesn't say "Oh, yea that's true, I was thinking in terms of stock trading, though," but instead doubles down and talks about how sometimes people are wrong, despite the fact that it still means his original statement was false because he claimed "every single trade".
Now, he is correct that this is a useful way to think in corporate politics where what is true is much less important than who gets credit, but it is also a very dysfunctional problem with corporate politics that it is true. As in politics, accuracy and recognition of uncertainty is not rewarded, but instead simple minded certainty that brooks no possibility of error.
It's certainly possible for a trade to benefit both people, though its not given.
But even within a trade that benefits both people, each side wants to maximize their surplus.
If it costs me $5 to make something and it's worth $10 to that person, I want to charge $10 and they want to pay $5. In fact as best you can you wouldn't mind if you tricked the person into paying $11 or to charge you $4.
It's very common in business to disagree over what something will cost or what the value of the benefits it brings. Some people will be right and some people will be wrong.
Let me take a simple example. While some people justify DEI on social justice grounds, it was quite common to hear rhetoric about how DEI would actually help profit margins. Is that claims correct or incorrect? What metrics would one use to argue either way? I'd rather have someone present a firm POV on that with some hard evidence than a bunch of wishy washy language that can't be verified.
Simply saying to me "well firms are voluntarily buying DEI so it must be benefiting them" isn't very convincing. There are a million possible reasons for a corporation to make certain decisions beside a perfect objective view of whether it helps the bottom line.
I already acknowledged that some trades have "winners", but your original statement was that every trade does, and I don't believe that to be the case. I make thousands of purchases every year, and am perfectly satisfied with almost all of them.
You are of course correct. Forumposter explains his internal flaw in his first post:
Perhaps this is a finance/business thing rather than a politics thing, but even handedness kind of repels me. Taking bold stances and being willing to bowl over opposing views you think are wrong has served me well in my career. Put another way, every single trade has two sides and they can't both be right.
To rephrase it somewhat, he takes a stance he thinks is right and then refuses to acknowledge that he was wrong. So despite saying something clearly false in "every single trade has two sides and they can't both be right", when it is pointed out to him he doesn't say "Oh, yea that's true, I was thinking in terms of stock trading, though," but instead doubles down and talks about how sometimes people are wrong, despite the fact that it still means his original statement was false because he claimed "every single trade".
Now, he is correct that this is a useful way to think in corporate politics where what is true is much less important than who gets credit, but it is also a very dysfunctional problem with corporate politics that it is true. As in politics, accuracy and recognition of uncertainty is not rewarded, but instead simple minded certainty that brooks no possibility of error.