[dado5]

I'm a little mystified by your claim that all objectivists are anti-market. As you well know, a market presupposes perfect information......

The economic equivalent of the Humor/Disease or Caloric/Heat theories. It was a backstep from the subjectivist revolution (Menger/Jevons) and a return to worst aspects of the Classical school. Mises, Hayek, Kirzner, Rothbard and many others have pointed out the errors of the 'perfect competition' model since Marshall proposed it and the economic 'mainstream' finally acknowledged the model's futility with the 2001 Nobel prize. I think that was pedantic enough, but I certainly can try harder if anyone wants.

Objectivists (again for clarity, I am only referring to those who publish against 'exotic' audio gear) clearly believe that a segment of the audio market should not be allowed to practice business as it does. If Objectivists really believed that people should be free to produce and purchase according to their own needs and wants then they would not publish in the first place.

Many purveyors of voodoo pebbles.......

This is another instance of universalization of personal value scales (everyone does it...I am not trying to be insulting here). It looks like you place a relatively high value on the scientific accuracy or falsifiability of marketing claims. Other people may not. To make such requirements a requisite upon entry into the market though, is to limit choice.

If the claim were that this is like the watch market .....

Folks can burst as many bubbles as they like but if their goal is limitation or destruction of the offending market segment, I'm gonna call them on it.

[dado5]

Chairdude,

Please delete this thread.  This was a mispost for a reply to the ongoing Audio Critic thread

Thanks,
Rob

[totoro]

I'm not an economist, but I really can't see how information asymmetry can be considered a _good_ thing.

If the maker of the hypothetical voodoo pebbles makes a claim that his pebbles make your system _sound_ better, then he should be amenable to proper testing of this claim.

If he is not, or such testing proves that people actually can't hear any difference (and, for the sake of argument, they don't do anything measurable, either), then I don't see why you would have a problem with him being prevented from making such false claims.

If he simply refuses to submit to such a test, and a reviewer calls him, what is your problem, exactly?

Not to be inflammatory, but this argument seems to me to lead to the conclusion that, eg, the marketing of quack treatments of cancer is ok, as well, and that any attempt to destroy the market for them is bad on ideological grounds.

I think the main point the objectivists are making is that some of these manufacturers are making clearly dishonest claims, and that technically unsavvy people are not being given the information they could use to evaluate this.
If better information kills the market in voodoo pebbles, why is this bad? If they can sell the pebbles purely on the basis of prestige or exclusivity or whatever, fine.

But that often does not seem to be the case. Again, if they are making essentially fraudulent claims, I cannot see the harm in this being pointed out. I think the destruction of the Laetrile market was a good thing....

[totoro]

Just in case I came across as someone who thinks voodoo pebbles are as bad as Laetrile: I don't. And I view these kinds of discussions as a bunch of dorky guys (myself included) having fun arguing, so I hope this doesn't come across as a personal attack . The only reason I brought it up was because it seemed to me that dado5 was making an argument which, taken to its logical conclusion, would lead us there.

Dado5: if you think that fraudulent claims wrt medical treatments are in principal different, then what is the test (again, I'm not claiming voodoo pebbles are in the same league) for which kinds of fraudulent claims should be prevented? It seems to me that your position would make it difficult not to end up on a slippery slope here.

Maybe I'm putting words in other people's mouths, but I think it is precisely the intrinsically _testable_ claims (like "voodoo pebbles make your sound better", which is at least testable insofar as we should be able to tell whether people can distinguish the difference in sound between a particular system with voodoo pebbles and without) being made without any testing that people are objecting to.

If the claim were "voodoo pebbles increase your enjoyment of your stereo through the stimulation of your spiritual being" or "voodoo pebbles increase your pride of ownership and enhance your self esteem", I think you would be on firmer ground, but an awful lot of really dubious products have had a lot of testable claims made about them with pretty much no justification for these claims.

Just to finish flogging (my probably  now long dead and seriously decomposed ) horse: it's not intrinsically untestable marketing claims I (and I think others) am objecting to here. The problem I have is with essentially dishonest misrepresentations about empirically testable claims. In some cases, this might be replaced with delusion, but I think we all know there is a fair amount of this stuff going on.