ON THE FALLACY OF UTILITY AND VALUE
Art Carden fails at 0:46 when he claims, falsely, of course, that "value of a resource is determined by what you can do with one more unit of the good." Art Carden accepts and perpetuates fallacy when he spews such foolery. Value does not arise from use.Value is not a quality, an aspect of a thing residing absolutely within it. Nor does value arise from utility as Carden foolishly claims nor cost of production or any other claimed intrinsic quality.
Value results solely in the trade rate of property each of two things. Value expresses a ratio of importance each trader has for the two things traded.
When one of two things in trade is cash or credit denominated in cash, we give value another name. We call it price.
It's a specious claim that utility stands as the cause of value. Holding that utility makes the cause of value forces the belief in intrinsic, absolute value owing to some quality inherent in a thing. While the qualities of a thing remain the same, such a thing can be useful during some times and yet not during others.
Numerous examples abound. Cigarettes are useful only for those who smoke and when they smoke. Alcohol is useful only for those who drink and when they drink. Medical drugs are useful only for when someone is sick and never when someone isn't. A rowboat is useful for a river or a lake but has no use when in the desert. A broom that sits idle has no usefulness in the now.
If utility were the cause of value, then things ought to be valuable in proportion to their utility. Water has the greatest utility, yet where it's abundant, it has little value. Food has the greatest utility, yet where crops grow abundant and men have no means to transport such to markets or even to tell others about the bounty, such crops have little value.
Art Carden falls for the fallacy of utility imputes value. He looks every bit the fool when he says diamonds are "worth a lot [because] we can do a lot with them." That is laughable.
Diamonds get their worth simply because of the bid rate some are willing pay to gain property in diamonds. Value arises in only trade of property in cash or credit for property in something else. Value has nothing to do with what happens "at the margin."
For someone could spend millions to hire men and buy huge machines to mine a ounce of gold buried miles within a mountain. And yet, another could stroll along a river descending from the Sierra Nevada and find an ounce of gold sitting on the riverbank.
Both could go to market and buy cash, each by selling their respective ounces of gold and both would get the exact same sum, $1,649.92, if they sold their ounces for U.S. dollars.
The infrangible Law of Prices girds under the whole of economics. Carden, like all others who accept pseudo-science Gossen marginalism, conflates the last winning bid, which sets the price with "at the margin."
ON THE FALLACY OF SCARCITY
Scarcity is a bogus concept. Scarcity is chimera. Scarcity is a concept to justify political action — confiscation of output and redistribution to those of favored groups. Those who parrot the false belief that economics has anything to do with scarcity have accepted rhetoric and thus have let false beliefs get inculcated into their minds.
To believe in scarcity is to disavow the one, true, and only law in the whole of commece — the Law of Prices — and thus to reject reality. The Law of Prices holds that the winning bids of purchase and sale in the face of offers set the price. All should come to see at once the great working of the Law of Prices as the one true law that girds under the whole of trade, also said as commerce, both of which are authentic economics..
The highest bidders win the day for whatever is being offered. It's through superior buying power that highest bidders win the day. In short, it is a lack of cash and credit that makes losers go without.
Excuse makers express their false beliefs and blame the false concept of scarcity rather than their skill at winning economic quantities of purchasing (cash and credit) to gain what they want. It is buying power — property in cash and credit — that constrains choice. Scarcity has nothing to do with it.
The woman with $15,000 has few choices. She can buy only a handful cars like a Honda Fit or maybe a Ford Focus. This poor woman has little buying power.
58,264,344 new cars were manufactured in 2010. That is many choices, the opposite of scarcity! However, the $15,000 woman faces few choices.
If only one thingamabob exists on the whole of the earth and someone is willing to pay a trillion dollars while everyone else is willing to pay something less than a trillion, that only one thingamabob exists doesn't make it scarce. The rest of those who would like to possess it simply haven't the means for the winning bid.
ON THE AUSTRIAN SCHOOL
The Austrian School of Neoclassical Economics is flawed as all schools of Neoclassical Economics are. All schools of Neoclassical Economics base their doctrines on two things: [1] pseudoscience psychology [2] Smithian, Ricardian and Millian fallacies, of which there are numerous.
The Austrian School of Neoclassical Economics rests on two major false beliefs: marginal utility and time preference (see: INTEREST, CAPITALISTS AND FUTURISTIC TIME COPS). Both beliefs arise from faulty pseudoscience psychology never proven scientifically and thus must be rejected by all. This is why the Austrian School once was known as the Psychology School.
Only one law exists for the whole subject of commece, the Law of Prices. Any explanation that renders exception to this law automatically fails.
Gab It
