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Why Socialism?

ebola? said:
"I have x dollars to dispose over y time-span. There are (a, b, c, d, e, f, . . .) products available for purchase. The expected yielded pleasure from each possible selection from the set of possible purchases is as follows: . . ." We can't even answer this question in ordinal terms. This approach is obviously intractable, as these products provide qualitatively different effects on affect, also dependent on interrelation to consumption of other goods, but also psychological state, social context, immediate environment, etc.** That, and nearly no one things thinks out in this way.
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I think that people generally do think like you've described here. I'm surprised that anyone would think differently. The way you've described is certainly a bit long-winded, but I think it definitely does happen.

Perfect example of this would be today, as I was shopping for a Christmas gift for my younger brother. I was deciding between two gifts, one which was cheaper than the other and both of which I could see my younger brother enjoying thoroughly. There was a big part of me telling me to go for the cheaper gift as it obviously would provide the maximum utility of cost: benefit (especially important due to my limited income), however another feeling quickly emerged when I pictured my step-mother's reaction to seeing each of the gifts. I instantly realized that the utility of the more expensive gift was far superior to the less expensive gift due to the fact that she would be more impressed by it, and so I committed to purchasing it. This may sound complex when explained in detail after the fact, but in the moment it was simply train-of-thought decision making. I wouldn't even consider it a great deal of thought that I was putting in here. It was more or less just emotions that came to surface naturally during the shopping experience. Really, I am under the impression that this is what goes through everyone's heads while shopping. I have to wonder what else is it that people could be thinking about when making purchasing decisions?

Regarding trying to model such thought processes on a large scale for economic consideration, I agree that it seems difficult.
 
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ebola- thank you for that well thought-out response, but I'm just going to apologize though, because I'm gonna bow-out of this thread at this point.

Happy holidays/festivus/day's-off, everybody :)
 
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