Interesting insight. I'd add that almost everyone has had the experience of wishing he had not bought something, and is almost unable to conceive of the possibility of wishing he hadn't sold something. And, as you suggest, few people are actually sellers of anything. Even retail clerks are really only go-betweens. So ending up with the money is overwhelmingly seen as "always better." But the question in the survey is not about subjective feelings after the fact, but about deliberation prior to the moment of action. The respondents couldn't conceive of it that way, it seems.
This just show widespread anti market bias, it does not show that the transaction is mutually beneficial (as it is, otherwise it would have not happened). It depends on what these people have in their mind when they think of beneficial, that's why psychology it's not a science, hardly anything can be generalized and the same phenomenon can be explained with multiple frameworks
This is very easy to explain. Sellers expend significant time and money to convince buyers to purchase their products. Buyers rarely expend any effort to convince sellers to sell them things. People are not perfectly rational, and can be deceived into believing that a product will make them better off when it actually won’t. I imagine it would be difficult to quantify how often this happens; an economist might think it happens rarely while a normal person looking at all the shoes in her closet she never wears might think it happens often. But in any case, the people in this study clearly think that trades involving deception make up a significant fraction of the total; they may be wrong in that belief, but it’s not an absurd think to think that people can lose through trade even absent coercion.
This discussion seems to me obscure. People transact because they want to, at the moment. Whether they "come out ahead" varies: often they later (a moment, a day, a week, six months, ten years) regret their decision. To say voluntary trade is always beneficial to both parties is obviously limited to the immediate moment. And even then, is the drug addict benefitted by consummating a deal?
The claim is not that voluntary trade is always beneficial to both parties, but that both parties expect to benefit when they trade, or else they would not trade in the first place. The insight that is missing from the understandings of these people surveyed is that all people choose what they think is good, in all cases. No one chooses what he thinks is bad. Even the most heinous crimes or grievous sins are chosen because the criminal or sinner has decided the deed will benefit himself.
How the actor might evaluate the trade after the fact is not relevant, nor is whether he might actually be doing something harmful to himself (whether he comes to see it that way or not) in the long run. Neither of these questions is subject matter for economics, or more generally, for understanding choice and action.
You are quite right to realize that this analysis applies only "at the moment." After the moment of choice, one's evaluation might change, but then it's too late.
I cannot know for sure, but I suspect a lot of the people responding made a switch in their head to comparing whether the buyer or the seller came out farther ahead on the transaction, and since they considered that the seller had more benefit, then the buyer must have had a negative benefit, rather than simply a benefit that is smaller than that of the seller.
I know that is not what the question asked, but in asking similar questions of many different people, I find that a LARGE proportion cannot conceive that in a transaction BOTH parties benefit. They are totally zero-sum in their thinking, even if their actions show a different perspective.
"...all people choose what they think is good, in all cases." This seems to me to go too far, and farther than necessary. The free market is better than central planning because most people, most of the time, are more energetic and optimistic when they can 'do their own thing' ('I can do what I want') rather than 'being told what to do'.
Interesting to learn that some people "report" that their voluntary exchanges are not beneficial for them. Did Kahneman and Tversky have an explanation for this behavior? What say you Prof. Caplan? I'm personally always inclined to think the worst of behavior that is illogical.
I like the comment that suggested that if buyer surplus is $5 and seller surplus is $7, the respondent answers that the buyer lost, and is worse off.
Shortly after Communism fell, an economist returning from teaching in Russia said he was struck by how smart the students were, and how incapable of grasping the idea of Win-Win in markets.
Most people engage in many more buying transactions than selling. Sellers are an outgroup, and buyers are suspicious of them.
Interesting insight. I'd add that almost everyone has had the experience of wishing he had not bought something, and is almost unable to conceive of the possibility of wishing he hadn't sold something. And, as you suggest, few people are actually sellers of anything. Even retail clerks are really only go-betweens. So ending up with the money is overwhelmingly seen as "always better." But the question in the survey is not about subjective feelings after the fact, but about deliberation prior to the moment of action. The respondents couldn't conceive of it that way, it seems.
This just show widespread anti market bias, it does not show that the transaction is mutually beneficial (as it is, otherwise it would have not happened). It depends on what these people have in their mind when they think of beneficial, that's why psychology it's not a science, hardly anything can be generalized and the same phenomenon can be explained with multiple frameworks
This is very easy to explain. Sellers expend significant time and money to convince buyers to purchase their products. Buyers rarely expend any effort to convince sellers to sell them things. People are not perfectly rational, and can be deceived into believing that a product will make them better off when it actually won’t. I imagine it would be difficult to quantify how often this happens; an economist might think it happens rarely while a normal person looking at all the shoes in her closet she never wears might think it happens often. But in any case, the people in this study clearly think that trades involving deception make up a significant fraction of the total; they may be wrong in that belief, but it’s not an absurd think to think that people can lose through trade even absent coercion.
This discussion seems to me obscure. People transact because they want to, at the moment. Whether they "come out ahead" varies: often they later (a moment, a day, a week, six months, ten years) regret their decision. To say voluntary trade is always beneficial to both parties is obviously limited to the immediate moment. And even then, is the drug addict benefitted by consummating a deal?
The claim is not that voluntary trade is always beneficial to both parties, but that both parties expect to benefit when they trade, or else they would not trade in the first place. The insight that is missing from the understandings of these people surveyed is that all people choose what they think is good, in all cases. No one chooses what he thinks is bad. Even the most heinous crimes or grievous sins are chosen because the criminal or sinner has decided the deed will benefit himself.
How the actor might evaluate the trade after the fact is not relevant, nor is whether he might actually be doing something harmful to himself (whether he comes to see it that way or not) in the long run. Neither of these questions is subject matter for economics, or more generally, for understanding choice and action.
You are quite right to realize that this analysis applies only "at the moment." After the moment of choice, one's evaluation might change, but then it's too late.
I cannot know for sure, but I suspect a lot of the people responding made a switch in their head to comparing whether the buyer or the seller came out farther ahead on the transaction, and since they considered that the seller had more benefit, then the buyer must have had a negative benefit, rather than simply a benefit that is smaller than that of the seller.
I know that is not what the question asked, but in asking similar questions of many different people, I find that a LARGE proportion cannot conceive that in a transaction BOTH parties benefit. They are totally zero-sum in their thinking, even if their actions show a different perspective.
"...all people choose what they think is good, in all cases." This seems to me to go too far, and farther than necessary. The free market is better than central planning because most people, most of the time, are more energetic and optimistic when they can 'do their own thing' ('I can do what I want') rather than 'being told what to do'.
Interesting to learn that some people "report" that their voluntary exchanges are not beneficial for them. Did Kahneman and Tversky have an explanation for this behavior? What say you Prof. Caplan? I'm personally always inclined to think the worst of behavior that is illogical.
WTF? Kahneman and Tversky friends of yours (and Caplan's)?
Well, K and T are both dead. BC is a professional colleague I follow. We are both economists. Do you find that WTF material?
I like the comment that suggested that if buyer surplus is $5 and seller surplus is $7, the respondent answers that the buyer lost, and is worse off.
Shortly after Communism fell, an economist returning from teaching in Russia said he was struck by how smart the students were, and how incapable of grasping the idea of Win-Win in markets.
WTF?