I am also an advocate for transparency of ownership of companies, but that Disney example seems like more of a case against transparency than for it?
Why should Disney be price gouged in that circumstance?
Why should Disney be price gouged in that circumstance?
For a market to function properly, information pertinent to traded value has to flow freely. The more you stifle that, the more rigged the market. Essentially, you sustain a monopoly that way.
Of course, people in possession of such "insider information" believe themselves in the right to profit from it. But that perspective is obviously biased and reveals a fundamental conflict between public good and private ownership. From the public perspective, the market works best when monopolies are dissolved quickly.
There is no assumption that you can’t trade on knowledge unavailable to the rest of the market just not information that should be available to other shareholders but isn’t.
It’s not about a working market it’s about preventing you from stealing from other people.
Lots of economists think insider trading should be legal, precisely because it would make the market more transparent, not less.
If you sustain a profitable information imbalance, you prevent the market from reaching a more efficient state. You steal from everybody else that way. And incur opportunity costs that will dwarf any profits made. Not necessarily on a short-term personal level, certainly on a societal one in the long run.
People have surprising difficulties understanding, they are that society.
The world isn't black and white, and nearly zero things as complex as pros and cons of allowing insider trading can be reduced to naive boolean logic.
It is a fact for a long time a lot of economists, perhaps even a majority, are for insider trading because it provides signal to markets and pricing quicker than only allowing investors to discover problems on a quarterly clock-tick, which results in a lot more damage from asset floodgates instead of smoother transitions.
Ever read any published paper on the topic? Use Google scholar, you'll find useful knowledge there.
If it were, shell games would be great as well? One like the other is simply fraud. You exploit others' lack of insight.
Doing so is unethical due to the implications it would have on a societal level if it were condoned. In particular, you likely imagine yourself regularly ending up on the better end of the bargain. You are wildly mistaken.
If you don't want to participate in it you don't have to, but why should other suffer because of your moral hangups about other people making money?
Because they have money and they're trying to buy out the whole market. This reads like a billionaire sobbing about not having access to a senior discount at the thrift store.
If your business strategy depends on deceiving people, what does that make you?
Heh. On swampland? The amount of money you need to do anything with it is just huge. They bought the land for exactly what others were willing to sell it for. Nothing more, nothing less. If they thought it was worth more, they would have held out for more.
You’re basically arguing for discrimination to be legal.
You confirmed that you’re dishonest by omission in your example. The fact that a counteroffer exists shows that it’s not implied you were forthwith with the price/value. Making/receiving a counteroffer implies that there was deceit, it’s just culturally acceptable deceit. If negotiations were completely honest, there would never be a counteroffer. Some Native American tribes were known for this sort of negotiation where the bottom line is stated and then accepted or rejected. They were often offended, by the implied dishonesty, by European’s counteroffers.
Extended to this situation, hiding an identity because it affects the business decisions of the other party is no different. (And I won’t continue the discussion if you want to defend your assertion that Disney is morally wrong here for being dishonest by omission.)
That being said, my views aren’t your problem. I’m asking for help understanding an alternative look on things and giving you the benefit of the doubt that you aren’t immature.
You’ve done nothing to back up your stance. By all means, feel free to provide a breakdown of your argument in the context of my point regarding deceit. I’m genuinely interested. The discrimination aspect of the discussion could use some research and, ultimately, is only a sideshow to the concept of dishonesty in business (and can be disregarded). As far as the logic of the “deceit” portion, there is a leap of faith in extending the deceit of basic haggling/negotiation to hiding one’s identity. As I said before, if we differ in this belief, there’s no reconciling. Otherwise, my logic is rock solid.
To clarify my point with anecdote: I recently negotiated the purchase of a car; at no point did I practice deceit. I simply stated the price I was looking for and then negotiated to lower the price by pitting sellers against each other. Regarding deceit, I’m referring to what is more along the lines of “haggling” — an attempt is made to get a better deal on a purchase/sale than the bottom line of what you are willing to offer. This haggling would be present in Disney’s purchase of the land where there are no other current buyers for the seller to pit against Disney.
I’m not 100% sure but I believe the model is what birthed HOA and Gated communities.
Permitting certain freedoms made swamp land more valuable.
If a company is going to great lengths to trick sellers into thinking it’s not being bought up for development, that’s deceit and a de facto admission you know the land is more valuable because of the comps you are engaging in
No one would call selling a rare misprint 1978 US Quarter to a collector for $45,000 instead of 25 cents price gouging. (Maybe you would, I don't know what the going rate is. But this is literally an eBay auction price from a google search just now, so let's just say that it's not an exorbitant price.)
Since when? Buying and selling anything is always a game of imperfect information.
There’s nothing special about the buyer being a large corporation or the item being land.
If the land trades for any value between X and Y, you are both made better off by the trade.
There is nothing wrong with you trying to capture as much of Y-X as you can, similarly there is nothing wrong with Disney trying to capture as much as they can. Neither of you are "owed" the money and there is no such thing as an objectively "fair" price.
Nope. And arbitrary or subjective standards like that are impossible to enforce anyway.
> or do you want people to play games and try to hide info to raise prices on people?
The example cited is the reverse with the price being lower than would be demanded if the seller knew the buyer had fat pockets.
In either case, caveat emptor[1] (or in this case, caveat venditor).
From an efficiency standpoint it is also preferable for the developer to capture the value, as naturally that increases incentives for development.
Isn't that true of any price increase due to increased demand? It seems like you're saying a seller shouldn't be allowed to raise their prices as demand increases, because they'd simply be benefiting from a positive externality created by the buyer.
The word "no" is a complete answer to a request for more information.
There would be no such thing as fraud if “accepted transaction == definitionally fair.”
There's a difference between false information and no information.
Q: Who is buying this land?
A: XYZ Shell Corp (no connection to who is actually effectively buying and coming into control of this land)?
Obviously your argument will be "it's not false that XYZ Shell Corp is buying it," and sure, but it's obviously misleading in a way that affects the transaction, as it is specifically designed to do.
On the other hand, if the buyer is called XYZ Fun Center and tells you that they're going to put in a nonprofit for Orphans, that would be deception.
It all comes back to the idea that saying I won't tell you what I'm going to do with the purchase is not a lie. It's perfectly honest
I think the argument is really over whether parties on either side are entitled to privacy/anonymity. The answer seems to be 'yes' in the form of typically legal shell corps, anonymous LLCs, and the like.
I don't think the idea that benefiting one party's negotiation is such a compelling interest. In the case of Disney, it sounds good because it benefits the perceived Underdog, but It can just as easily cut the other way, especially if you extended to how bad you want something as some people in the thread advocate.
Maybe you want to buy a specific house cuz it's next to the Medical Center where you get treatment. That would probably influence how much you're willing to pay.
Fair prices when a buyer and seller agreed to as long as no one's lying. The fair price has nothing to do with how much money the buyer or seller make more lose.
And... yep.
I think consent and honesty make something Fair. Nobody has refuted this and The only other counter argument I've seen is that full disclosure would mean the seller gets more money. What is getting more money have to do with fair.?
[EDIT] I retract the "circular" claim—you're right that it's not that, it's the definitions of "lying" and "honest" that are making the difference.
When I buy a 20 cent bolt for my car, I don't tell them that it's worth $20,000 to me because my car won't run without it