Misc

In another economic fallacy, socialists think they've beaten free marketers with this study showing that aborigines exposed to free markets tend to value items they already possess more than equivalent items they don't, but aborigines not exposed to free markets do not. But who defines equivalent? Who defines rational? Is your first baseball glove equivalent to somebody else's first baseball glove? Is your grandmother's heirloom ring equivalent to a similar ring? Of course not. There's nothing irrational about valuing items for historical or legacy reasons. There's also nothing irrational about valuing a known quantity above a similar-looking but unknown quantity. I also doubt this study on its face. Who says the isolated aborigines don't have a free market amongst themselves? I bet they trade with each other. The sample size is also small.

"So the experimenters had two well-contrasted groups of Hadza (who were otherwise genetically and culturally identical)—45 people with "Low Exposure" to tour groups and 46 with "High Exposure." In both groups, each person was shown two packets of biscuits, told that one was now his/hers, and then asked if s/he'd like to trade for the other. Then the experiment was repeated with two lighters.
Statistical analysis found that the "Low Exposure" Hadza had about a 50-50 chance of trading "their" item for the other—in other words, this group was completely realistic, seeing there was no reason to prefer one of two identical objects over the other. On the other hand, the "High Exposure" Hadza had a 75 percent chance of keeping "their" item rather than trading it. A geographical analysis found that living near the trading village reduced a Hadza's probability of trading "his" item by nearly 30 percent."

I fail to see how one behavior is more rational than the other. If you accept this description of the experiment at face value, there is no reason to trade, nor is their reason not to trade.

"This is, the authors write, consistent with the notion that "isolated Hadza display no endowment effect and that some of the novel environmental cues in the HE region led to the emergence of the bias.""

This has nothing to do with whether one group was more rational than another. Maybe the population more familiar with trading recognized there was no value to trading. Maybe the population more familiar with trading recognized trading is about improving ones lot, not making zero-sum trades. Maybe the population more familiar with trading was more skeptical because someone had tried to cheat them before. These would all be rational behaviors.

"And markets are supposed to be efficient machines for finding the true value of the goods and services they trade, regardless of people's hopes and fears."

There's another economic fallacy. There is no "true value" of goods or services.

Amazon reportedly spends all its income on R&D, reporting no profit.

Since nobody has ever seen a black hole, how can somebody have observed an entangle particle pair at an event horizon of one?

The state is more dangerous than a free society.