In today's free lesson on How Reality Works, we examine the beliefs of a communist: "Time preference is the breathtakingly obvious assertion that people die in as little as 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. That's it." No.

• Take some isolated individuals, put them in an imaginary situation
• Ignore history and how society developed
• Ignore how production developed
• Project modern social relations onto all of time and history and pretend they're eternal laws of nature

"Wow, turns out when we take modern societal conditions and project them into our imaginary scenario, that people make choices within that framework. Must be human nature after all".

Human nature just turns out to be bourgeois property relations as appeared ~400 years ago. Lucky break.

This shit isn't new. Smith and Ricardo did it in the 18th century and it was just as dumb then as it is now.

u/specterofsandersism is stating an example of wise application of time preference; pressing needs should be attended to first to maximize beneficial outcomes. Nobody that I know blames those in abject poverty for attending to their base physiological requirements first. Moralized or not, once there is a surplus, there are inter-temporal decisions to be made on how that surplus is to be used. Most in the first world have the ability to save some of their income, and time preference is a strong indicator of whether or not they do that. The only moralizing I ever encounter is when people make choices that reflect an overwhelming preference for the present at the expense of the future, not when there would be no future should those needs not be attended to in the present.

>free lesson

>giving things away for free

you have betrayed the Rules of Acquisition, Quark

$40k in savings and both want the same $38k car. Vladimir spends his money to fulfil his desire for the car however John continues to save his money knowing that his savings will be depleted to $3k

First off, math. 40-38 != 3.

Second, time preference is this plus something more. There is a recognition that a dollar today is not worth the same as a dollar tomorrow (and no, I'm not talking about inflation). At its core, it is how much of a premium we place on being gratified today vs potential gratification tomorrow.

In any case, your observation about u/specterofsandersism is correct. He completely fails to understand time preference at all as his comment shows.

First of all, "BernieBot tankie" is an incoherent mishmash of anti-leftist buzzwords. If you are going to ad hominem, you should at least do it coherently.

A comment from the same thread:

This is a very good question. As with most things it's probably a mixture of genetics, environment and simply preference.

In other words, the high time preference of workers probably has some origins in their genetic inferiority relative to the ever patient and virtuous successful business entrepreneur (rather than their preference being reflective of their situation). He's right that the time preference argument is used that way. It literally was in a direct reply to you in that thread.

What one must weigh when determining how they wish to spend their limited time and available resources is a product of the society they are born into. It doesn't really make sense to say to the peasant born under the rule of Pharoahs to forgoe a liberal arts degree in favor of something in a STEM field, the same way it wouldn't make sense to tell a poor person today to save money they don't have to get out of poverty. Both are equally detached from the material circumstances of the individual, as well as the varied social and historical forces outside the individual's control which shape the conditions during their development.

Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his innate abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their conditions of life. Only the existence of these varied, frequently conflicting, strivings accounts for the special character of a man, and their specific combination determines the extent to which an individual can achieve an inner equilibrium and can contribute to the well-being of society. It is quite possible that the relative strength of these two drives is, in the main, fixed by inheritance. But the personality that finally emerges is largely formed by the environment in which a man happens to find himself during his development, by the structure of the society in which he grows up, by the tradition of that society, and by its appraisal of particular types of behavior. The abstract concept “society” means to the individual human being the sum total of his direct and indirect relations to his contemporaries and to all the people of earlier generations. The individual is able to think, feel, strive, and work by himself; but he depends so much upon society—in his physical, intellectual, and emotional existence—that it is impossible to think of him, or to understand him, outside the framework of society. It is “society” which provides man with food, clothing, a home, the tools of work, language, the forms of thought, and most of the content of thought; his life is made possible through the labor and the accomplishments of the many millions past and present who are all hidden behind the small word “society.”

It is evident, therefore, that the dependence of the individual upon society is a fact of nature which cannot be abolished—just as in the case of ants and bees. However, while the whole life process of ants and bees is fixed down to the smallest detail by rigid, hereditary instincts, the social pattern and interrelationships of human beings are very variable and susceptible to change. Memory, the capacity to make new combinations, the gift of oral communication have made possible developments among human being which are not dictated by biological necessities. Such developments manifest themselves in traditions, institutions, and organizations; in literature; in scientific and engineering accomplishments; in works of art. This explains how it happens that, in a certain sense, man can influence his life through his own conduct, and that in this process conscious thinking and wanting can play a part.

Man acquires at birth, through heredity, a biological constitution which we must consider fixed and unalterable, including the natural urges which are characteristic of the human species. In addition, during his lifetime, he acquires a cultural constitution which he adopts from society through communication and through many other types of influences. It is this cultural constitution which, with the passage of time, is subject to change and which determines to a very large extent the relationship between the individual and society. Modern anthropology has taught us, through comparative investigation of so-called primitive cultures, that the social behavior of human beings may differ greatly, depending upon prevailing cultural patterns and the types of organization which predominate in society. It is on this that those who are striving to improve the lot of man may ground their hopes: human beings are not condemned, because of their biological constitution, to annihilate each other or to be at the mercy of a cruel, self-inflicted fate.

--Albert Einstein, Why Socialism?

that many economic principles are nothing more than descriptions of very basic behavior extrapolated to a more complex organism, i.e. humans.

which is probably why economic principles fail so miserably at producing anything more than self-gratifying justifications of how things happened.

Long story short: wow, some commies will enter impressive cognitive wormholes in order to deny that many economic principles are nothing more than descriptions of very basic behavior extrapolated to a more complex organism, i.e. humans.

In fact, I've not denied that at all. In fact, I literally agree. As I said:

Time preference is the breathtakingly obvious assertion that people die in as little as 3 hours without shelter, 3 days without water, and 3 weeks without food. That's it.

Economists think they are geniuses because they have discovered people need food not to starve. This is the "economic principle" you've derived from "descriptions of very basic behavior"

how common of a belief is it among the left that the concept of Time Preference either A: Don't real as her first statement implies or B: Is just some fancy librul jargon for describing basic biological needs?

It presumes a context of debt and banking. It has nothing to do with biology.

So it "don't real" in societies which aren't bound by these constructs.