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| Joined: | Mon Nov 21st, 2005 |
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If costs are prices and prices are costs then is it accurate to observe that cost can be the limit of price as a principled approach toward calculating economy?
Example:
The barn raising entrepreneur calculates costs and arrives at a number of costs required to produce the barn. The barn is built after all costs are paid and now the barn is ready for sale. Does the barn owner fix the price at cost and if not, then, have we arrived at that elusive principle that has not yet be clarified?
This:
Price is what a thing on the market will bring.
In other words: Does the entrepreneur fix the price at cost since costs are prices and prices are costs or does the entrepreneur add more costs to be paid by the potential new owner of the barn?
If so, then, what is the principle used to calculate those additional costs that are over and above the cost of the barn?
My confusion is not specious from my perspective because the principle of fixing price to cost has been tested as a means by which commerce can be actively improved toward equity whereby one can manage to exchange with another one based upon sound moral principle rather than the more common unprincipled and exclusionary practice. Furthermore: those experiments in equitable commerce have documented significant additional principles that reinforce the utility, practicality, and efficiency of the cost principle.
I can offer greater clarity, utility perhaps, if one is inclined to inspect the cost principle closer and compare the cost principle to whatever other principle, or lack of principle, is used to pass costs from one, the barn owner, to the other, the prospective barn owner.
In the effort to reinforce past communication it may help to note that the barn seller can utilize resent and similar exchanges between barn producers and barn consumers, whatever, when calculating a more accurate cost in determining the cost that will be paid by the consumer.
The principle that remains not clearly identified in this current exchange concerns a common practice utilized by human beings for some time now and perhaps as far back as recorded history is discernible whereby a seller adds a cost to the price that is over and above any costs determined by the sellers stated, recorded, calculated, and advertised cost. In other words: What is the principle used to increase price above any costs assumed by the seller that is, instead, an added cost based upon the buyers ability to pay costs?
Perhaps I am not utilizing language accurately. It would help greatly if any interested party reading this and understanding my concern, if they, would speak up.
Please allow me to reinforce my concern with a relevant issue:
From here:
http://thechinadesk.blogspot.com/2006/05/real-rather-than-imaginary-threat.html
Comment: Neoconservative China Threat theorists responsible for America's strategic policy are determined to cast a non-aggressive, free market capitalist China as a "New Evil Empire," and the long-suffering Chinese people as 21st century counterparts of Genghis Khan's Mongol hordes.
(Bevin Chu)
Note: "free market capitalist'
It may be a good idea to be more accurate in defining just exactly what is or is not free market commerce. Capitalism has adopted a few orphans who have not marketed freely by any stretch of even the most active imaginations unless one is apt to include the freedom to deceive and the freedom to harm as an integral and necessary function, or principle, within the scope of free market commerce or free market capitalism.
My point of vagueness:
Commerce or Capitalism
Principled economics or unprincipled economics
Accuracy or expediency
A historical concern (adopted orphans of “capitalist” economics):
http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/
My point of vagueness:
What are the principles used to calculate costs paid by the buyer that are costs not paid by the seller?