Go to Ask.com


enter the fray: our reader discussion forum
Search in:
Advanced
View:FlatThreaded
Fool or foolish?
by MegHammond

Is it foolish to place your economic future at risk by purchasing an asset likely to fall in value? Yes.

Does that make you a fool? Only if you believe that poor judgment is an inherent character flaw, which, I believe, is not part of standard economic theory. Unfortunately, neither is emotion based decision making.

Much as I enjoy the insights economic theory offers on buying and selling behaviour, it is predicated on "rationality", not "real human beings processing information in multiple and conflicting domains (emotional, financial, physical, social)". Luckily we can boil all of that down to "irrational". Hooray! back to a model which reduces the variables to a manageable number!

Re: Fool or foolish?
by margaretnelsonwest

<link>

here is a high tech way to lower the price of home ownership with safe heat and air.

Re: Fool or foolish?
by Shenping

Are you saying that economists' belief in the rational consumer is irrational?

Actually, I think the rationality assumption is only supposed to hold when averaging or summing enough transactions that irrational decisions (which are supposed to be random) cancel each other out. If irrational decisions all go the same way and result in a net positive (ie, a "bubble"), than we're already outside the realm of classical economics.

Oh, well, I suppose we could go classical here and say that buying that particular house at this point in time has a particular utility that it won't have post-bubble, and that in fact there is no bubble and house prices are correct.

View as RSS news feed in XML