[From Three-Toed Sloth via MetaFilter]
"They've traded more for cigarettes / than I've managed to express"; or, Dives, Lazarus, and Alice
Let us consider a simple economy with three individuals. Alice is a restaurateur; she has fed herself, and has just prepared a delicious turkey dinner, at some cost in materials, fuel, and her time.
Dives is a wealthy conceptual artist1, who has eaten and is not hungry, but would like to buy the turkey dinner so he can "feed" it to the transparent machine he has built, and film it being "digested" and eventually excreted2. To achieve this, he is willing and able to spend up to $5000. Dives does not care, at all, about what happens to anyone else; indeed, as an exponent of art for art's sake, he does not even care whether his film will have an audience.
Huddled miserably in a corner of the gate of Dives's condo is Lazarus, who is starving, on the brink of death, but could be kept alive for another day by eating the turkey. The sum total of Lazarus's worldly possession consist of filthy rags, of no value to any one else, and one thin dime. Since, however, he is starving, there is no amount of money which could persuade Lazarus to part with the turkey, should he gain possession of it.
