The Economic Principle of Opportunity Cost Refutes All Modern Politics

The problem is the Economic principle of Opportunity Cost. Every action has both negative and positive values. There is no neutrality. People that disagree with me are hurting me by the very nature of choice. Every time you choose to enfranchise something other than my way of life you are inherently in that choice disenfranchising my way of life. That's the problem with modern liberal and libertarian philosophy. The idea of live and let live is impossible.

 

It doesn't refute anything, it only strengthens the notion that we must use the political process to distribute power, because the only alternative is violence. Yes, everything ultimately comes down to "might makes right," but it is better for those expressions of power to take the form they currently do, rather than the direct use of violence.

Much of life is a zero sum game, but the political process is the best thing we have to deal with that reality.

 

I am not sure you actually addressed what I said. I do not have the freedom to live the way I want. The choices others have made have eliminated the way I want to live. The power to destroy someone else's way of life is not monopolized to the state or to violence but I'm the nature of choice itself.

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I think you are misunderstanding the concept of opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is simply the idea that when one acts to achieve one end, one must necessarily forego everything else that is not that end. For example, if I decide to go out for a beer, I forego every other thing I might possibly do, such as read a book, wash my car, play piano, etc.

 

The distinction you are making between the words forego and disenfrachise is the distinction without a difference fallacy.

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I didn't mention disenfranchise. The concept of opportunity cost is important to economics because economics is about how people act using scarce means to achieve their ends. Ends are mutually exclusive, so a choice must be made between them. The opportunity cost of pursuing end A is the value of the next highest valued choice, say B.

I think you are trying to say that choices that others have made restrict your array of possible ends, but that has nothing to do with opportunity cost.

 

Oh but I did use the word disenfranchise in the op.

"I think you are trying to say that choices that others have made restrict your array of possible ends,"

>>>No. The choices others make restrict my choices. For instance, I want to have a family, but because of the decisions made by the women of the previous generation and the present, there are no marriageable family women to choose from.