Does the Free Market Prove we have Souls?

[Purple Knight]

This is only in the context of believing that the free market actually does discover value. I... don't believe it always does. But if I did I suppose I'd have to believe there was something about a living person that goes beyond the rational.

Question for Debate: Assuming the free market does work properly to discover value, does it prove we have souls?

Why?

The cost of a slave is about the same as the cost of a car. Slave owners of the 1800s will not pay that for a dead slave.

The cost of a baby can be $50,000 on the black market, and a baby doesn't do any work. Prospective parents will not pay that for a dead baby or for a chemistry set full of the elements a baby is made out of.

On the face of it this is the stupidest thing I have ever posted. I admit I am laughing at it myself. Yet going by the maxim that the free market works to discover value, then there is a value to a living person that goes beyond the work it does or the elements it is composed of. This doesn't prove the souls go anywhere when they die, but it does prove that humans have an extra-rational value and I don't see why you wouldn't call that a soul. It also works just as well to prove animals have souls as a fine quality purebreed animal may be worth thousands, which it is not worth any longer when dead.

[Purple Knight]

Except when they don't.

I really should point out that for you and me, this is a pretty clear-cut 1 + 1 = 2, but it's because we're coming at it from an atheist perspective and dead = dead. To us, killing something and thus destroying it forever, is a huge deal. But from the religious perspective, the people who "had to go" for whatever reason, including those drowned in the flood, well, they don't know where those souls went. Many atheists have brought up (I think rightly) that religion thus vastly lowers the stakes on human life in many cases (but perhaps not all cases), and that's its own problem, but for the religious it's not the easy 1 and 1 make 2 in this particular case.

I think I had this conversation with JW about people who are raised bad, to be bad, and don't know anything else because they were never exposed to anything else.

The free market is a way of establishing monetary value; some things are precious, even priceless without carrying a market value.

The question is whether something can carry a high market value and be worthless. A baby is not worth the $50,000 market price it commands if it's just the screaming pooping sack of flesh it appears to be.

People can and do put a price on this and it's a high one. You can have pretty much three options to explain this behaviour.

1. People are fulfilling an urge, and that's it. They strive to reproduce and buying a baby tells them they have done so. It hits a switch in the brain that says happiness.

2. People are smart enough to understand that buying a baby does not equal reproductive success, and there thus must be some special value to the baby. A soul would explain that value.

3. The free market does not necessarily discover value.

Now, full disclosure I go for #3. But we live under capitalism so I'm in the minority. Most people are not so cynical as I am and do not think that people are dumb dogs led along by psychological leashes of big corporations and told what they want, eagerly gobbling up anything packaged as a treat and begging for more. So I'm curious as to how most people explain the $50,000 price of a baby. Now that I've offered up #1, people may go for it simply as an alternative to a religious explanation. I don't like #1 because if they're smart enough to understand the switch they're hitting, they ought to be smart enough to understand it's not their baby and break the illusion they're pulling over themselves.

I come at this from the opposite direction. Without a soul, without being made in the image of God, without having value because you know God died for you and that you are innately worthy of respect and value.

Without those concepts what value are you?

You came from the opposite side, but you got the same answer about value. Without that innate value, I don't think you believe a baby would command $50,000. I'm asking how a screaming pooping sack of flesh possibly can command that, and innate value is one reasonable answer.

It's that, or the free market doesn't work, or people are crazy. And maybe it's ad populum to be inclined to say people aren't just crazy.



This mouse places what may well be an irrational value on babies. I argue that the mouse has a rational reason to do this, though: She is clutch padding. I believe chickens and mice do this. If food is abundant but babies are likely to be taken from her, she will add extra babies to reduce the chances of her own being picked off. If she can easily feed the extras there is no penalty to taking this action. A human taking one baby when it has none of its own, cannot be the same deal.