After reading your and FlorianH’s comments, it seems to me that Econ 101 leaves it underspecified what it means to be an economical agent, and that those parts missing from the specification are the ones that matter here.
Naively, an economical agent is someone who accepts deals that increase the value they get. There seems to be nothing wrong with that; if we all become economical agents, our values will increase, which is a good thing.
But this is not the entire story. No agent accepts all hypothetical deals that would increase their value. Our attention and time are limited. We pick the seemingly best deals we are aware of. And there are probably other heuristics that successful agents follow, such as increasing their power, even if it does not increase the value in short term, because it will allow them to take more value in future.
People who insist on taking the Econ 101 perspective of “if the deal is not good for you, then simply don’t take it, duh” seem willfully blind to how the power is strategically gained and used.
This reminds me of Ayn Rand’s novels. Both the heroes and the villains could be called “economical agents” from certain perspective, but clearly they used different strategies. There is a difference between someone trying to get good deals without simultaneously crippling their trade partners, and someone for whom crippling their trade partners is an important component of how they get the good deals. Both of them are agents participating in the economy.
After reading your and FlorianH’s comments, it seems to me that Econ 101 leaves it underspecified what it means to be an economical agent, and that those parts missing from the specification are the ones that matter here.
Naively, an economical agent is someone who accepts deals that increase the value they get. There seems to be nothing wrong with that; if we all become economical agents, our values will increase, which is a good thing.
But this is not the entire story. No agent accepts all hypothetical deals that would increase their value. Our attention and time are limited. We pick the seemingly best deals we are aware of. And there are probably other heuristics that successful agents follow, such as increasing their power, even if it does not increase the value in short term, because it will allow them to take more value in future.
People who insist on taking the Econ 101 perspective of “if the deal is not good for you, then simply don’t take it, duh” seem willfully blind to how the power is strategically gained and used.
This reminds me of Ayn Rand’s novels. Both the heroes and the villains could be called “economical agents” from certain perspective, but clearly they used different strategies. There is a difference between someone trying to get good deals without simultaneously crippling their trade partners, and someone for whom crippling their trade partners is an important component of how they get the good deals. Both of them are agents participating in the economy.