Form: Quote Commentary

(worth repeating) (from elsewhere) (archived)

https://mises.org/…/economics-and-its-ethical-assumptions

Subjective Value is descriptive, in that the decision of the personal utility of acting on a want or fear (value) is limited to the judgement (intuition) of the individual (subjective). The individual’s willingness to act to obtain, or act to avoid something is determined by his his intuitions, desires, preferences, wants, and fears alone. Value: willingness to bear cost in exchange.

This concept is obvious. However, the implications for economics are not: that the individual’s perception of his willingness to bear a cost, and his judgement of the cost that he put into something, are not something he perceives rationally when interacting with others. Instead, he anticipates that his desires for consumption are objective, and that his desires for exchange are objective, but that his opponent’s interests are subjective. In other words, he cognitively biases both incoming and outgoing assets in his favor. (This is probably a form of error correction on nature’s part, to make sure that the marginal difference between goods obtained via cooperation is actually in our benefit.)

Satisfaction and Frustration quotients vary between individuals (and families, and classes and tribes). So not only are we more or less willing to act (bear a cost) to have or avoid one thing or another, but our desire to fulfill another want, or avoid another stress is subjective as well. (Frustration ‘budgets’ being common.) And our desire to consume a satisfaction quickly or slowly is equally subjective.

Economics may or may not tell you what to desire, but it may help you with the means. But this “nonsense argument” puts us into conflict between our personal values, our moral intuitions and our institutional requirements for achieving both.

Mises’ “…So far as Economics is concerned…” (imaginary needs) thinks this is incorrect. But that is only if one assumes that trade is the starting point for cooperation, rather than the need to cooperate in the first place as necessary for rationally forgoing violence.

(More another time…..)

I think propertarianism (operationalism with property) is much clearer than classical arguments.