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What's an example of economic irrationality you've observed in the world? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A friend from Argentina once told me Argentina keeps its best wines for themselves and exports the mediocre stuff, even at the sake of profits.

Similarly, a friend from Turkey once said he couldn’t find good Turkish olives outside of Turkey because “Turks are terrible businessmen and keep the best olives to themselves.”

These are anecdotal and might be untrue but I liked the idea.

At an individual level, it’s irrational to cooperate in a prisoner’s dilemma yet experiments show people cooperate.

Contributing to open source projects may fall into this category.

Have you observed any obvious behavior that goes counter to profit maximization? Any cool examples?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Actively ruining the ecosystem and the climate, two things we probably cannot survive as a species without them working smoothly, so we can all buy new phones and clothes and help less than a handful of us to become even richer than they already are.

Imho, that's an impressive demonstration of our stupidity and one of the most impressive species-level suicide I can think of. Even dinosaurs were not that stupid and they needed a meteor to hit the planet for them to be wiped out from its surface. Something we humans are working real hard to manage doing all by ourselves.

To our credit, I should say those few already very rich people will indeed be reaching unheard-of levels of richness. And while helping them do so we will get our new shiny phones and new fashionable clothing. Yeah, I suppose.