View single post by danielmryan
 Posted: Sat May 20th, 2006 05:30 pm
PM Quote Reply Full Topic
danielmryan

 

Joined: 
Location:  
Posts: 
Status: 
Offline
Mana: 
The degree I got is in economics. The basic "unit" which economics uses is utility; price and quantity of a good is also used, but is considered derivative from utility.

As far as quantification of economics is concerned: I hew to the Austrian School, whose theory of value is the subjective theory, which states that value, resulting from preferences whose source is in people's heads, is not quantifiable - not even measurable directly. Thus, utility is not quantifiable.

What can be quantified is the result of transactions past. An example of this quantification can be found in the listing of prices and the quantity of shares traded of stocks in your newspaper. These transactions already having taken place, the record of them is now part of history, which won't change because it's impossible to change the past from the present.

But any results from this record-discovering and -keeping cannot be used to predict the prices and quantities of the future, because people's valuations can (and do) change, thus making it inevitable that the same good will be exchanged for a different price and in a different quantity. The unquantifiability of the sorce of utility of goods (and services) implies that there is no way that a function, whose initial values are derived from the past, can accurately predict buying and selling behavior of the future.