People do those transactions voluntarily, so the net value of working + consuming must be greater than that of leisure. When I pay someone to do work I’ve already decided that I value their work more than the money I paid them, and they value the money I pay them more than the work they do. When they spend the money, the same applies, no matter what they buy.
Basically the whole case comes down to the externalities of working+consuming though (both the case in favor and the case against). It seems the point stands that the externalities of working and consuming are both relevant, there’s not really an asymmetry there, and I don’t see how this is related to “getting distracted by the money flows.”
Like, I might produce value because some gets more surplus from hiring me than they would have gotten from hiring someone else (in the competitive limit that gap converges to 0 and they are indifferent, but presumably it won’t be 0 in the real world). And similarly I might produce value because someone gets more surplus from selling to me than they would have gotten from selling to me. But those things seem symmetrical.
People do those transactions voluntarily, so the net value of working + consuming must be greater than that of leisure. When I pay someone to do work I’ve already decided that I value their work more than the money I paid them, and they value the money I pay them more than the work they do. When they spend the money, the same applies, no matter what they buy.
Basically the whole case comes down to the externalities of working+consuming though (both the case in favor and the case against). It seems the point stands that the externalities of working and consuming are both relevant, there’s not really an asymmetry there, and I don’t see how this is related to “getting distracted by the money flows.”
Like, I might produce value because some gets more surplus from hiring me than they would have gotten from hiring someone else (in the competitive limit that gap converges to 0 and they are indifferent, but presumably it won’t be 0 in the real world). And similarly I might produce value because someone gets more surplus from selling to me than they would have gotten from selling to me. But those things seem symmetrical.