Latest news with #TheWealthofNations'
New York Post
17-06-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Las Vegas hotel slammed after guest stuck with outrageous bill for a bottle of water
It's not just slot machines that are fleecing people. A Las Vegas hotel is being lambasted mercilessly online after charging nearly $30 for a bottle of water from room minibars. The apparent H20 highway robberies came to light via photos and a fan submission shared by the travel blog A View From the Wing. The unidentified guest had reportedly been staying at the Aria Resort & Casino — one of over 30 MGM resorts — where room rates start at $280 per night. Advertisement According to the post, an employee had been restocking and cleaning out their room's minibar, which the visitor noted had 'food crammed in the fridge from two guests ago.' 4 One Facebook user noted that the other seemingly fancier minibar items weren't nearly as expensive. tarapatta – The worker informed the visitor that water costs $26, but only told them after the guest had consumed a full bottle, the poster wrote. That constituted more than 10% of the person's total bill of $259, according to a screenshot of their invoice. Advertisement To make matters worse, the same water reportedly costs just $7.45 at a Starbucks downstairs. While hotel minibars are known for their extortionate markups, some Aria guests noted that the other items in the fridge were not nearly as steep. 4 The Aria Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. SvetlanaSF – In April, Facebook user Lasvegasbloggerandi, shared a photo of a hotel minibar menu showing a Coca-Cola Deluxe that cost $13.75, nearly half as much as the Fiji Water, which set guests back a whopping $24.75. Advertisement 'Do you think it's fair to pay for the convenience, or this is price gouging?' the traveler spluttered in the caption. Commenters were similarly perplexed over the price tags, with one writing, 'Was just there. I was floored.' 4 A bottle of Fiji water was nearly twice as expensive as some other beverages in a hotel room refrigerator, according to another poster. Facebook / Lasvegasbloggerandi 4 'This is the perfect example of the kind of out of sample cost that makes people feel cheated on a Las Vegas trip, leaving customers with a bad taste in their mouth,' said A View From The Wing writer Gary Leff. Mangostar – Advertisement 'Vegas is dying so they have to charge a buttload to survive,' declared another, referencing declining tourist numbers at the gambling mecca. 'They depend on the drunk visitors that don't care about their prices at 2 a.m. when they get back to their room,' said a third. A View From the Wing contributor Gary Leff accused Aria of flouting the 'diamonds-water paradox' floated by 'The Wealth of Nations' author Adam Smith, who wrote that water is necessary but cheap, while diamonds are useless for survival but expensive due to their scarcity. 'Aria in Las Vegas proves there really was no paradox after all,' Leff quipped. 'Water in the desert is crucial to survival and incredibly expensive for guests staying there!' He declared that Sin City had 'clearly given up on any idea of hospitality.' 'I would think, though, that a $36.28 per night resort fee (inclusive of tax) might be high enough to offer a single bottle of water as one of its inclusions. I guess not!' Leff griped. Advertisement 'This is the perfect example of the kind of out of sample cost that makes people feel cheated on a Las Vegas trip, leaving customers with a bad taste in their mouth. And that is dangerous heading into a Las Vegas downturn.'
Epoch Times
19-05-2025
- Politics
- Epoch Times
The 3 Pillars of the American Idea
Commentary Unalienable rights and self-evident truths are Expand the number of core ideas under consideration to three and you get unalienable rights, self-evident truths, and free market economics. You could call them the three pillars of the American Idea. These three pillars are the direct gifts to America of three great thinkers of the Scottish Enlightenment: Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Thomas Reid. Their thinking—known today as 'common sense realism'—took America by storm at precisely the right time to shape America fundamentally. Francis Hutcheson Francis Hutcheson: 'Our rights are either alienable or unalienable …' Related Stories 5/12/2025 5/11/2025 A revolution in thinking about our rights preceded the American Revolution. In the words of George Washington, America's founding took place during a time 'when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined than at any former period.' Hutcheson's analysis of our rights showed the way. The meaning of Hutcheson's distinction was sharp and clear in the founders' time but to understand it today you and I must first be clear about the meaning of 'alienable.' Here is its complete definition in my dictionary: ' adj. Law. Capable of being transferred to the ownership of another.' Your right to your car is an alienable right; because your car is your property, you can sell your car or give it away—but our rights to our lives and our liberty are unalienable, that is, not property, not capable of being transferred to the ownership of another. Hutcheson was challenging John Locke's account of our rights—and in so doing he helped ignite the American Revolution. Locke, you see, had Hutcheson's distinction provided the intellectual foundation for two of the greatest achievements in world history, Adam Smith's 'The Wealth of Nations' and the Declaration of Independence. Adam Smith's focus was our alienable rights; the American founders focused on our unalienable rights. The Declaration and 'Wealth' both entered the world they were to transform in the same year, 1776. 1776 marks the economic and political boundary between the world in which you and I live and all that had gone before. Adam Smith Francis Hutcheson mentored Adam Smith. Upon Hutcheson's death, Smith was appointed to the prestigious professorship at the University of Glasgow Hutcheson had held. Smith's epoch-making 'Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations' is the foundation of free market economics. Hutcheson's analysis of our rights set the direction Smith took. In 'Wealth' Smith famously demonstrated that the division of labor is the source of the wealth of nations. In one of the most frequently quoted passages from 'Wealth,' Smith makes clear the source in human nature of the all-important division of labor: 'This division of labour … is the necessary … consequence of a certain propensity in human nature … ; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.' The division of labor depends on the right to exchange (alienate) our property and labor. We can 'truck, barter, and exchange' because our right to our property is, as Hutcheson had shown, 'naturally alienable.' The social order that resulted from the new thinking of the Scottish and the American Enlightenments was a far cry from the world that assigned supremacy to hereditary monarchs and hereditary aristocrats. The great economist Ludwig von Mises described that new social order like this: It 'assigned supremacy to the common man. In his capacity as a consumer, the 'regular fellow' was called upon to determine ultimately what should be produced, in what quantity, and of what quality, by whom, how, and where; in his capacity as a voter, he was sovereign in directing the nation's policies.' Thomas Reid When Jefferson wrote 'We hold these truths to be self-evident …' he was relying on the thinking of Thomas Reid. Reid's 'An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense' was published in 1764, the same year he was awarded the prestigious professorship formerly occupied by Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith. As I write in my book 'Reclaiming Common Sense': 'Reid's philosophical purpose was to provide a foundation for morality and for knowledge. He argued that there is an endowment of human nature that makes both morality and knowledge possible, and he called it common sense … With it we are able to make rational judgments and moral judgments. Common sense is the human attribute that makes it possible for us to be rational creatures and moral agents. Reid's fundamental insight was that our ability to make sense of our experience presupposes certain first principles. Because these principles are implicit in our conduct and our thought, they cannot be proved; there are no other truths from which they can be derived. However, to deny or even to doubt any of them is to involve ourselves in absurdity. Consequently, the principles of common sense have the special authority of first principles: we cannot operate without them.' The Progressives From their beginning, the purpose of the Progressives has been the step-by-step—that is, the progressive—undoing of the America of the founders. Their relentless campaign has done tremendous damage. If you and I are to do our part in helping to restore America, we need to go into action armed with a clear understanding of the American Idea. That is why I wrote the two common sense books listed below. From Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Wall Street Journal
23-04-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
Is the Labor Theory of Value Worth Anything?
George Gilder and Gale Pooley rightly note that a useful measure of how much things cost is how long we must work to earn enough to purchase them ('We Should Measure Prices in Time,' op-ed, April 17). They cite William Nordhaus as the 'original proponent' of the idea in the 1990s, but the idea is much older. Nordhaus offers a modern version of the labor theory of value, which in various versions dates at least to Adam Smith's 'The Wealth of Nations' (1776), often taken to be the beginning of modern economics. The labor theory of value figured prominently in the work of such thinkers as Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx. The labor theory of value was largely abandoned in the mid-19th century by the immediate forerunners of current mainstream economics, because of its inattention to the role of consumer preferences in determining demand and its inability to explain accurately the different relative prices of goods and services. But there are several versions of the labor theory, and perhaps Messrs. Gilder and Pooley point to an application in which it should be revived.
