> Payment doesn't balance out, but when you are buying something, you are ordering its continued production and sale
Here's a counter-example - the last legal sale of a product about to be banned.
In July 1989, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued the Asbestos Ban and Phase-Out Rule (overturned in 1991 by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans).
The rule banned the manufacture, import, and processing of asbestos product in three stages. The stage one ban included asbestos/cement flat sheet, like asbestos shingles, starting on August 27, 1990.
You don't even have to go to that level to know it's all nonsense.
Someone had to pay to put that toothpaste on the shelf.
In capitalist societies, it's the person who provided the capital to the business and what you're doing is repaying that investment when you buy the tube of toothpaste.
In modern socialist societies, you don't have to worry about it because there is no toothpaste on the shelf. Just kidding. You are paying the workers for the labor that went into the production of the toothpaste. In arrears.
I didn't read much past that because I started seeing how we are not working for money or something like that.
Here's a counter-example - the last legal sale of a product about to be banned.
In July 1989, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued the Asbestos Ban and Phase-Out Rule (overturned in 1991 by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans).
The rule banned the manufacture, import, and processing of asbestos product in three stages. The stage one ban included asbestos/cement flat sheet, like asbestos shingles, starting on August 27, 1990.
However, sales of existing stock were allowed to continue until August 25, 1992. (See https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/documents/nps57f.pdf for full details.)
People bought existing stock because, for example, replacing a few broken shingles is a lot cheaper than replacing all of the siding.
Yet clearly the purchase was not an order for continued production.
And the last legal sale (assuming the ban had stayed in place) would not have been an order for continued sales.
Since that last payment isn't ordering the continued production and sale of asbestos shingles, according to the Toothpaste Argument, what is it doing?
There are other banned products, like the prohibition of "Methylene Chloride in Paint and Coating Removal for Consumer Use" https://www.epa.gov/assessing-and-managing-chemicals-under-t... where the ban went into effect after November 22, 2019.
Someone was the last consumer to buy paint with methylene chloride.