alt Hacker News>This idea of market participants' choices being entirely free rests on the efficient market fallacy
in an inefficient market, you can still choose to transact or not, and you will only do so if you feel you will benefit.
in an efficient market, the net benefit across society will be higher, but nothing in what I said requires an efficient market.
so you are simply wrong.
Replies
No, you cannot necessarily to choose whether to transact or not. For life's necessities (eg food, shelter) this is straightforwardly obvious. And you are making this claim in the context of the employment market, which is one step removed from that.
But even in the general case your argument still does not make sense. When we talk of a business providing societal utility, we don't include the business owner themselves in the integral. For example your assertion lets you conclude things like a casino owner who has made a pile of money but impoverished the community has made society better.
>in an inefficient market, you can still choose to transact or not
And if everybody chooses to not transact, you have a market crash. So... waves at 2026/2027