And yet, we’ve had questions about airplanes on treadmills… qualifiers didn’t stop Cecil from picking that question for some ignorance fightin’. Do you suppose there’s other interesting lessons here besides the one you chose?
BTW, I read the assumptions of the OP as this:
Assume “unlimited funds” without nitpicking that this is impossible.
Assume people sell at reasonable prices (no “my photo album is worth $1 trillion”)
Assume people sell at “market rates”… take yesterday’s price so scarcity doesn’t skew everything.
Wasn’t there a semi-serious plan to do something similar in Vietnam? Have the US (and possibly others) simply buy the communists out, as it would be cheaper than trying to shoot them out?
The question is hypothetical. Hypothetical != meaningless. Nobody says or believes that the situation posited in the OP is realistically possible, but discussing hypothetical situations can help improve one’s understanding of an issue in a way that is significant, or if you will, meaningful.
I have tried. Mightily. The basic understanding one needs in economics is the concept of value. It is more basic even than money. If you pick up nothing else at all from this thread, please get that much out of it.
The way the OP’s question is worded makes it a hypothetical that is also meaningless. Too bad, but it can’t be helped. Not all hypotheticals are meaningless, but some of them are. This happens to be one.
Again, if you think it is not meaningless, then answer the OP. Just explain how you plan to do it.
Based on this line, it seems that you are identifying the question as meaningless because we can’t give a terribly good answer. I don’t think that makes very much sense, though.
It’s certainly the case, first of all, that it is possible that someone could purchase all of the assets in the United States. There’s no physical barrier to it.
It’s also the case that we could conceivably try to estimate the value of all assets in the US - indeed, here’s a scholarly article devoted to just that (albeit from 1908): The Assets of the United States
Now, maybe we can’t come up with a very accurate estimation of the final purchase price because of those market forces you mention. That doesn’t, however, mean that we are unable of finding any estimate at all. We can, it’s just not a very good one.
Nothing to add, but perhaps discussion could progress if the OP was temporarily reduced in scope. Perhaps something like “What if the U.S. wanted to buy Iceland?” The issues Exapno Mapcase raises won’t disappear, but there might be some middle ground where those issues can be more cleanly tackled.
Clearly there’s some political entity small enough that the idea of buying it isn’t outlandish. Start there, and take baby steps up to the U.S. if possible. In fact, Iceland’s too big. Start with, like, Dubuque, and see what happens.
