Skip to main content

Subjective Value through Non-Austrians

James Buchanan in his book The Reason of Rules(10.2.9) states:
The individual is the unique unit of consciousness from which all evaluation begins. Note that this conception does not in any way reject the influence of community or society on the individual. The value structure of an isolated human being may be totally divergent from that of such a person described by membership in one or many social relationships. The presupposition requires only that societal or communitarian influences enter through modifications in the values that are potentially expressed by the individual and not externally.
Armen Alchian and William Allen in Exchange and Production: Competition, Coordination, and Control:
Groups, organizations, communities, nations, and societies are best understood by focusing on the incentives and actions of their members. A business, union, or family may be formed to further some common interest of its members, but group actions are still the results of decisions of individuals. Therefore, do not ask, "Why does the U.S. government, or General Motors, or some union behave as it does?" Ask instead, "Why does the decision-maker decide as he does?"
It is followed with some postulates that I list below:
  1. For each person, some goods are scarce
  2. Each person desires many goods and goals
  3. Each person is willing to forsake some of an economic good to get more of other economic goods
  4. The more one has of any good, the lower its personal marginal valuation
  5. Not all people have identical tastes and preferences
  6. People are innovative and rational
Value must be subjective otherwise a planned economy would be the easiest solution, but as Postulate 5 shows, tastes and preferences differ b/w individuals even b/w identical twins.

Comments

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ian,

    As I said the understanding of value as subjective is not an easy concept for all of us grasp. It was not easy for me at first. However, with some training and reading I can now understand now why and how value is subjective.

    There are many Catholics in the world that do not understand value as a subjective. However, they believe that they are very moral. I think there is a link between morality and the understanding of value as subjective.

    But as we know, the value of things is not the same for all of us. Therefore, to me the understanding of how value is subjective is very high, but is not as high as to other people who do not think or believe in the same ways we do.

    I think there is still people who need the same influence, in these matters of libertarianism, that we had before we knew where we stand in the political spectrum.

    -jaime

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

De-dollarizing an Economy is not an Easy Task but in the Case of Ecuador it Makes No Sense

Ecuador adopted the US Dollar as its currency on January, 2000. The country at the time had almost a 100% rate of inflation and it used the US currency for major transactions such as: house, cars, and importations purchases, to name a few. However, there was a huge social cost of implementing the US Dollar in Ecuador. The political cost took a big hit when President Mahuad was ousted due to his decision in 2000.      Former President Jamil Mahuad in his book called: "This is how we dollarize Ecuador" (2021), makes a detailed account of the economic conditions in which the country was prior to the execution of the executive decree to use the US dollar as the country's official currency.  Mainly, in its chapter IX "Hyperinflation and freezing." Mahuad mentions the following: “We then had a triple run: a bank run (due to the withdrawal of bank deposits), an exchange run (due to the loss of Central Bank reserves caused by the purchase of dollars) and a flight of cap

Lasso: you failed

     Guillermo Lasso was elected as President of Ecuador in 2021. Since May of that year, Lasso demonstrated difficulties in managing its own political party, networking and lobbying with the National Assembly, and most of all keeping close his alliance with the Partido Social Cristiano’s Leader, Jaime Nebot.      Lasso backed his presidency initial months with a successful Covid-19 vaccination campaign, which was supported mainly by international organizations. But further than that; Lasso’s government is a failure. In an earlier post of this blog, it’s mentioned the following: “ With this in mind and having elections for president in Ecuador in 2024; time is an enemy for Lasso’s presidency. Ecuador’s President needs to increase speed in changes, reforms, and lobbying through a divided Assembly (Congress) to obtain legislation that allows: economic freedom, stronger rule of law, and presenting a positive environment for foreign investment. All these changes must be done quickly en

An Unlikely Runoff: González vs. Noboa

Source: BBC News Mundo  ( Luisa González & Daniel Noboa) Ecuador’s Presidential election took place on August, 20 th , 2023. According to the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE) official information, with more than 98% of the ballots in, it shows that Luisa González and Daniel Noboa are headed to the runoff in October this year. González, a disciple and loyal follower of Rafael Correa, achieved the 33.6% of the electorate; while Noboa, a self-proclaimed “progressive” –left-leaning- entrepreneur and son of banana mogul, got 23.4% of the ballots on Sunday. In other words, only 5 out of ten people supported both candidates in this election. Hence, 50% of the other constituents voted for other candidate (one out of the other 6 candidates that run for office) that means the October runoff duo have much work to do to get bigger support within the next 50 days.      However, the story goes beyond the introducing data presented in the earlier paragraph. The results show that Rafael Correa’s p