[hellojesus]

Efficiency is measured exactly by people maximizing their utility subject to their preferences and constraints.

What you see as vanity, such as hair extensions, may be a high utility item for others. Consider the hair extensions make them a more attractive mate and provide them the opportunity to breed with a better stock, for example.

Similarly, consider that 20k ft sq mansion in context: all the prior owner(s) of that property were traded revenue for the land. And the construction workers were paid. And now the gov gets taxes.

At every step, each contributor to the end product voluntarily participated and maximized their outcomes. That is maximally efficient, economically speaking.

[bccdee]

> That is maximally efficient, economically speaking.

It is not. The resources which went towards that mansion would be (by your definition) much more efficiently spent elsewhere. The utility which one wealthy person gets from a 20k sqft mansion is much smaller than the total utility which 20 homeless people would get from a 1k sqft apartment.

[hellojesus]

What utility is the person from whom you stole wealth getting from homeless people being housed vs their mansion?

My answer is economically efficient. Yours is utilitarian. I believe in private property.

[apantel]

Yeah I’m all for these things that I was calling “vanity”. I was only using the word vanity because the comment I was responding to used it pejoratively: “vanity projects”.