Comments Elsewhere

Cal: The attempt does not, at all, in any way, presuppose anything about the fundamental nature of the formation of value.

I didn’t say that your attempted distinction presupposed something about “the fundamental nature of the formation of value.” I certainly realize that Mises didn’t say anything in the passage I quoted about value-formation, but then, neither have I. What I said was about Mises’s view on what it means to say that Jones economically values X. Not his view on how Jones forms that value for X.

Cal: Mises is not saying value is comparative, he is saying that it is revealed comparatively (ordinally) and subjectively.

You’re asserting this, but where’s your argument? I gave you specific passages of text in which Mises straightforwardly says that for the purposes of economics value does not exist independently of the revealing of comparative preferences in action. Not that it isn’t known by third parties; that it has no independent existence. For Mises, there just is nothing for economics to talk about separate from actual or hypothetical revealed values. (Which, necessarily, express a consistent ordinal ranking. Among other things.) Of course, you can agree or disagree with Mises’s views about the conceptual analysis of value — it certainly sounds like you are more interested in the sort of psychologistic perspective that Mises rejected — but then you should perhaps speak only for yourself, and not for “all modern economics,” or for all proponents of the subjective theory of value.

As for explaining marginalism 101 to me, you can save yourself the effort. I already understand how that works. My comments here have nothing to do with rejecting marginal utility theory.

Cal: No, Marja, labor-entailment does not necessarily affect subjective valuation.

1. She didn’t say it “necessarily affects subjective valuation.” She said it does affect it. Note the difference in modality. One can correctly assert that a general tendency obtains without claiming that it is a necessary or conceptual truth.

2. However, I will also note that, given the meaning of the term “cost,” basic requirements of rationality do require that costs have a certain bearing on value-ordering. (For something to count as a cost is for it to lower a state of affairs in an actor’s preference order, ceteris paribus. If it did not, then it must not really be a cost for that economic subject.) Hence there are at least some factors that necessarily affect subjective valuations — among them costs — because they are themselves already part of subjective valuations, and valuations, to count as valuations, must be part of a consistent ordering.