Comments on: On Value, Subjective

By: Don

Don — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:08:46 +0000

@Rights:
The term “Subjective value” just doesn’t sound right to me. It seems to imply that market values can be arbitrary,
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Maybe you’re just not used to seeing it phrased that way, but it is a fact.

No two individuals will value the same thing identically.

Watch Mecums Auto Auction on TV sometime for proof.
One guy thinks a cherry 57 Chevy is worth $80k but another guy thinks its worth $120k. Same car, different valuers.

This is at the heart of a truly free market where each actor gets to establish his own values which is absent in one-size-fits-all statism.

By: Don

Don — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:02:35 +0000

I once told an online socialist that I value my dog more than I value his child and he almost had a heart attack.

He sputtered about, failing to realize my assertion was exactly the same as his.

By: David Z

David Z — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 13:07:20 +0000

But “subjective” isn’t arbitrary (although many of the theory’s detractors suggest that market prices are arbitrary), it just means that the determination of how valuable a thing is depends on individual scale of preferences, wants & needs. In the subjective sense it’s an opinion, like “beauty,” which according to the old adage, “is in the eye of the beholder”.

By: Rights

Rights — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:37:41 +0000

I get it, but if the theory is that there is some value inherent in an object seperate from a valuer, that it is “intrinsic value,” not objective. “Objective value” would require an evaluation of the facts of the object by a human consciousness, which sounds a lot like the second sentence in the Menger quote.

The term “Subjective value” just doesn’t sound right to me. It seems to imply that market values can be arbitrary, which would, for a statist, requre intervention to prevent capitalist bosses from exploiting in the name of “fairness.”

By: David Z

David Z — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 01:47:46 +0000

The connotation “subjective” contrasts classical economics, which maintained essentially that there was “an objective value” inherent in a product. Beyond subsistence, everyone’s value scales are different and subjective. It says that value is not some mystical flotsam & jetsam waiting to be divined, it is not related necessarily to the “cost” or the particular item, but rather to the opportunity cost of not having it, i.e., which needs or wants would go unmet/unsatisfied in its absence?

By: Rights

Rights — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:34:31 +0000

“The value of goods is therefore nothing arbitrary, but always the necessary consequence of human knowledge that the maintenance of life, of well-being, or of some ever so insignificant part of them, depends upon control of a good or a quantity of goods…”

Given that some goods are not valued arbitrarily or by whim, but as judged by man’s consciousness according to the facts of reality, why not call it Objective then?

By: George Donnelly

George Donnelly — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:03:38 +0000

Great explanation. Still don’t get those guys.