Sellers want to reduce your options

Sellers have an incentive to reduce buyers' options.

People born in the United States who sell their labor to employers want to reduce employers' options of who to hire by making immigration more difficult. Ford tries to make it difficult for people buying cars to get Toyota cars, perhaps by lobbying for tariffs on foreign cars. iPhones don’t charge with Android chargers, thereby reducing charger options for iPhone users so they are willing to pay more for the Apple charger.

 

For a more stark example, think of a partnership of three people, and two partners want to get rid of the third. The judge may give them two options: 1) they can offer to buy the third partner's share at a price the third partner is willing to accept, or 2) if the third partner refuses their price then the whole business will be sold at an auction and and the profits are divided among the partners. With option 2 we need to know whether the judge will allow the two partners to participate in the auction. The third partner is going to encourage the judge to exclude all the partners from the auction. This may be surprising, because the two partners who want to stay would be willing to pay more than anybody else (since they're already familiar with the business), and hence the third partner would end up with more money than if the business sold to people besides his old partners. The reason is that depriving his partners of the opportunity to participate in the auction (option 2) gives the the third partner more leverage in option 1, which will induce the two partners (buyers) to pay the third partner (seller) more in option 1. See Prentiss v. Sheffel, Ariz. App., 1973.

 

The third partner's preference, however, is less efficient in that it makes it less likely that a good transaction will happen. For the third partner to be able to really get extra money out of the others, he has to be willing to say no to their offer if it isn't high enough. If he does say no, then the partnership will be sold to people who value the business less than the two partners and cannot run the business as well as the two partners.

Tyrants in some sense have to "sell" or promote their country as their people's land of residence. I imagine tyrants are pleased when other countries close themselves off as options for emigrants, so that their people have few options besides continuing in their current state of oppression.

 

Quentin L. Cook points out that the "[adversary] and his emissaries declare that the real choice we have is between happiness and pleasure now in this life and happiness in a life to come (which the adversary asserts may not exist." Satan wants us to pay him a high price, our souls, so he tells us that we have two options: happiness now or misery now with a small chance of happiness in the uncertain future.

Of course, not every combination of choice and result is possible. We can't consume any drug while avoiding any addiction. Hence God teaches about true impossibilities, whereas Satan teaches lies that make our options seem fewer than they are.

 

Thomas S. Monson also taught about how Satan makes good choices seem undesirable, thereby making us more willing to sacrifice our well-being to follow Satan. "He cunningly calls: Just this once won't matter; everyone is doing it; don't be old-fashioned; times have changed; it can't hurt anyone; your life is yours to live. The adversary knows us, and he knows the temptations which will be difficult for us to ignore. How vital it is that we exercise constant vigilance in order to avoid giving in to such lies and temptations." The adversary wants us to think that having friends and avoiding sin at the same time is not an option, neither is being both up-to-date and principled nor being both free and righteous. If we think those are not options, we become more willing to give up good principles.

The key is remembering that we in fact have a lot of options even while avoiding sin. When I look at the world clearly, I see that there are all sorts of social people who avoid sin, up-to-date people who hold to certain principles, and people who have accomplished many goals of their own choosing while still making righteous living their first priority.

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