[davemel37]

"a responsibility to route society's resources to efficient producers."

I have no idea what that means.

Assuming it is true, would you agree that your "perceived responsibility" in this case has more to do with your emotional needs than it does to your business needs.

your belief is that there are finite resources within the context of wealth, and the transfer of money is a zero sum game, where someone wins and someones else loses.

Your responsibility is to get the most value out of your resources, but you agree that your responsibility is to spend that money, and that money's function is to move around and create wealth.

Your "responsibility" to route "society's" resources to efficient producers, has nothing to do with actually accomplishing that, but rather how you value things and how you feel.

Besides, my point is... you are not getting "ripped off" if you perceive the value to be greater than what you pay. That money will move around, creating wealth along the way, and withholding that money for what you consider a more efficient usage of it is certainly your right, but far from making any difference in how efficiently society produces...

[prodigal_erik]

When I trade with someone who doesn't have a stronger competitive advantage, I have to give them more of our finite resources than others would need to do that job, and that's a lost opportunity for society to create more wealth. We all benefit when good producers can expand and bad ones are stopped.

[davemel37]

While I see what you are getting at, I think this is a very linear view of wealth building and the world, and based on one too many assumptions about things like what constitutes a competitive advantage, and that giving money to more efficient producers in turn creates more wealth...

I do agree that you have a responsibility to yourself to utilize your resources as efficiently as possible, but I hardly think that responsibility extends to everyone participating in the market.

The simple reality is that people make purchase decisions based on emotions and justify their purchase after the decision is made with logic and reasoning.

Whatever logic helps you sleep at night is fine with me, but the reality is we are beasts of emotion and make our decisions based on those emotions.