I don’t think we currently tax positional goods in general. I have only intuitions whether that would happen in worlds where kidney markets are introduced, and those intuitions say “no”.
Why not say that, then? Like you could go “hey quetzal_rainbow, I think you are misrepresenting your own opinion and are actually worried about people selling their kidneys for food”? Instead of your original comment buying into the student loans example.
I hadn’t considered the fact that student loans are positional goods, and that allowing more expenditure of resources on positional goods wastes them. I had treated “student loans” similar to normal goods that can be purchased. I don’t know what @quetzal_rainbow intended their comment to mean.
I don’t think we currently tax positional goods in general. I have only intuitions whether that would happen in worlds where kidney markets are introduced, and those intuitions say “no”.
So if your intuitions say that there would be no taxes on positional goods in a world with kidney markets, doesn’t that make the possibility of taxing positional goods irrelevant? It seems like the effects of those markets should be judged based on the non-taxed case, not the taxed case?
I don’t think we currently tax positional goods in general. I have only intuitions whether that would happen in worlds where kidney markets are introduced, and those intuitions say “no”.
I hadn’t considered the fact that student loans are positional goods, and that allowing more expenditure of resources on positional goods wastes them. I had treated “student loans” similar to normal goods that can be purchased. I don’t know what @quetzal_rainbow intended their comment to mean.
So if your intuitions say that there would be no taxes on positional goods in a world with kidney markets, doesn’t that make the possibility of taxing positional goods irrelevant? It seems like the effects of those markets should be judged based on the non-taxed case, not the taxed case?