Skip to main content

The Margin for Error


Obviously utility is ordinal, not cardinal. Of all those links below the WikiHow one is best at making that clear by avoiding utils and just using prices. After all utility is just one less word and one more syllable for use value, which was a concept that, even before the Marginal Revolution, was in circulation used by folks like Bastiat and Marx.

Marx, for example, thought that use value was a prerequisite for labour-produced stuff to become commodities, as mud pies are not valued prior to being offered by their producer for exchange. Even Menger employed the term use value in his formulation of radical subjectivism.

The use value that Marx talked about was objective. As for Menger? Well, it's actually debatable.

But anyway, onto the porn.

Economics Concepts offer a utils-heavy explication of marginal utility theory. [1] The Khan Academy has fantastic videos. The one linked is great at explicating total and marginal utility and substitution. But, yet again, it uses utils. Utility does not have units! Economics does not have units! That's precisely why econ is not a hard science. [2] Several others give short explanations summarising key points. [3][4][5][6]

WikiHow offers the one I like best. It manages to avoid utils until the third of its three parts. For its first and second parts it simply uses money prices. [7] We finish off with The Incidental Economist and Learnerator. [8][9]

Give them all a go!

~~~ ~~~ ~~~

[1]
http://economicsconcepts.com/total_utility_and_marginal_utility.htm

[2]
https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microeconomics/choices-opp-cost-tutorial/marginal-utility-tutorial/v/marginal-utility#!

[3]
http://www.cengage.com/resource_uploads/downloads/1426648359_171999.pdf

[4]
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/lawofdiminishingutility.asp

[5]
http://econweb.tamu.edu/npakhotina/ECON323/Practice%20questions%20Ch4%20UPDATED.pdf

[6]
http://classroom.synonym.com/calculate-marginal-utility-2850.html

[7]
http://www.wikihow.com/Calculate-Marginal-Utility

[8]
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/about/about-austin/the-law-of-diminishing-marginal-utility/

[9]
http://www.learnerator.com/ap-microeconomics/q/327/maximizing-utility

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Iain McKay, Bryan Caplan & the Case of the "Anarchist" Anarchist

In the past I have written blog posts disputing claims contained in the online document called An Anarchist FAQ principally written by Iain McKay. I spent those posts trying to contend with Iain's claims re  the ancap question  and  the mode of production called capitalism . McKay has a bee in his bonnet re anarcho-capitalists' insistence on referring to themselves as anarchists, that much is obvious. Every reference to ancapism runs something along the lines of "an"cap or "anarcho"-capitalism. I find this very amusing because 'anarchist' or 'anarchism' are words (articulate mouth-sounds) first and specific concepts second.  Ditto 'socialist' and 'socialism' friends. Speaking of socialism... In  the comment section of one of his videos  the Youtuber called StatelessLiberty responded to a criticism by linking to Caplan's work  on the Anarchist adventure in Spain in the 1930's . The critic shot back with a  critic...
1 comment
Read more

Commentaryism - The Death Toll of Capitalism

How many people have died because capitalism exists? How many would still be alive if it had never existed? Let's dig in! We will take two approaches over the course of this blog post by looking at the the death tolls attributed to the word in its broad popular definition - everything socialists don't like - versus the toll that fits the definition offered previously on this blog. By the same token I will not lay any outsized figures at any other mode of production's door except where that mode of production demonstrably caused the problem that killed people. It's political ideologies that really matter here, and this is where the first big problem with even trying to lay a specific body count before capitalism runs into problems - there is no political ideology called capitalism. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Now then, Alfonso Gutierrez says  in a comment thread that "capitalism and free-markets have murdered billions of people" which is a risky cla...
Post a Comment
Read more

Zeitardation

A Youtuber called axe863 made a video in which he used scientific, mathematical and statistical common-sense to deliver the KO that the Venus Project and Zeitgeist Movement so richly deserved. If his approach seems weird and unconventional it's because he's not attacking from a tradition neoclassical or Keynesian perspective. Axe863's poison is complexity economics, something a good deal more dangerous to ideas like TVP and TZM. [ 2 ] Now to a couple of comment threads from below the video that I thought could od with being replicated just in case they get deleted at source! ~~~ AstralLuminary 1 year ago Why can't we generalize the consumption patterns of middle-income people in the western world, set our constraints equal to the amount of localized resources, and the rate of resource recovery, derive a population growth model that would be sustainable to said consumption patterns, and derive the necessary quantifiable amount of work required to expen...
Post a Comment
Read more