Bus 1050 1st Edition Lecture 14 Outline of Last Lecture I Film clip Miracle on 34th Street A Honesty vs Deception II Cicero from De Officiis A Grain Dealer example B House seller example C Diogenes v Antipater Outline of Current Lecture III Aquinas of Cheating Which is Committed in Buying and Selling from The Summa Theologica A First Article B Second Article Current Lecture Aquinas This piece is about marketing Aquinas was a schoolman A commutation is an exchange Information asymmetry is when one individual knows more than the other First Article The first article is about whether it is lawful to sell a thing for more than its worth The answer is no because value is intrinsic just price There is a range of relatively narrow values The modern definition of value is determined by how much someone is willing to pay for it Things are worth as much as someone is willing to pay and nowadays this is how we determine worth Based off of this concept one cannot sell something for more than it s worth because something is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it In other words the person who purchased it believed it was worth that much These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute But Aquinas was talking about something different He believed that things had an intrinsic value Pg 252 responds to question one on the slides Under civil law and throughout regular transactions people end up taking advantage of others A bottle is worth 1 and that is its intrinsic value Aquinas would consider it fair if I sold it for 1 10 or 90 and he wouldn t categorize this as unlawful But if someone purchased the bottle for 10 then it would be unlawful because that value is too far from the water bottles intrinsic value The same thing applies if someone were to sell the bottle for 500 because it s far beyond the bottles intrinsic value In other words if the item is sold within a reasonable range from its intrinsic value then it s not unlawful The intrinsic value is the generally perceived value of something Second Article Whether a sale is rendered unlawful through a fault in the thing sold When one purchases a car one expects it to work properly If after the purchase the car does not start then this is an unlawful transaction and compensation is required for the loss incurred When it comes down to quantity lets use the scale example If there was a rigged scale that sold 10lbs for 8lbs then this would be considered unlawful and the person selling this would be damned to hell But if the scale happens to be broken then the transaction would be considered unlawful and the person who paid for the 10lbs must have a refund or give the buyer 2lbs If the seller compensates the seller then the seller doesn t go to hell There must be equality of justice in the transaction We don t want buyers or sellers cheating one another even if it wasn t their intention to do so The only way to have justice is if the person taken advantage of is given some retribution There is also the diamond example where one buys an expensive ring that s counterfeit This follows the same logic as the rigged scale If there is injustice in the transaction for example if something fake was sold as real or vice versa then it s unjust unlawful and there must be some sort of retribution to the person who was cheated If there is no retribution then the one that goes through the transaction goes to hell One must correct the injustice to gain salvation Once there is knowledge of the injustice there must be retribution to correct it There is a basic philosophy and that is to not take advantage of other s lack of knowledge