Frost wrote:About finishing it in 4 hours instead of 8? The monetary profit is identical, but the psychic profit may be different.
Why would the psychic profit would be different? All of the elements that were present and made the exchange possible the first time, have remained the same. What element has been added to the equation?
Frost wrote:So how did the kid determine $20 was worth mowing the lawn? How did the adult determine to pay the kid $20 vs. mowing it himself? Did they first compare it to the value of coffee beans? Or did they perform a survey of other kids that mow lawns? Why is it assumed that $20 is a "fair value"? Who determines this? I'm not following how each person actually decided to make the transaction.
Because this transaction occurs in a social network, where there are producers of the same commodities and there's competition among them. So both the association of lawn mowers and the rest of traders inside that society know from the sum of previous experiences what's the average fair value (the socially necessary labour) of mowing the lawn or producing coffee beans. They have not taken out a calculator to do the math or made surveys, but trade itself, through repeated transactions of different commodities, has established in that society the appropriate exchange ratios of those products and services.
Frost wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote:
But it isn't. Not even biology. More like sociology.
Not at all like sociology.
I disagree. Economics deal with human actions and Sociology looks at the same in the broadest sense. You cannot study a society's economy if you have not looked into its structures, their relationships, their history.
Frost wrote:
No, you're misrepresenting the subjective theory by conflating price with value. Prices are not a measure of value.
Are they a measure, an expression of something? What is it?
Frost wrote:
Your question is ambiguous. In a way, you're right. We don't need the vast majority of economists we have today and most of them just cause trouble. On the other hand, economists are needed to go through the complex chains of praxeological reasoning needed for analysis.
"Complex chains of praxeological reasoning" sounds a lot like the stuff people ignored (because they are outside their sphere of knowledge and influence) when making transactions. When advocating for the subjective theory of value, these things didn't matter for the people involved in the exchange, and yet, now they seem important. What prevents these people participating in the transactions from doing their own "praxeological reasoning" of the general praxeological reasoning in society, at the time of purchase?