Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Utility and Value, Part II

One of the interesting things about teaching economics is that it allows students to see that it is the individual in society that makes up the composite--that the national data that is reported is nothing less than millions upon millions of individual choices that have been made and acted upon.

The blog Asymmetrical Information (link to this post is no longer available) once hosted an interesting discussion. The author posted her thoughts on handling money on December 9, 2005. There were a large number of comments, many of them attacking her (unjustifiably, I thought) for her allegedly New York-centric view of what constitutes the good life.

But subsequent entries (and comments) showed that her view was that value (as she defined it) arose from utility--what made things, places, events most useful to her. The postings and comments can lead your students down an interesting path about what constitutes value and whether value is determined in the production or the
consumption of a good or service.

As Rod Serling used to say, "submitted for your approval."

Posted by TSchilling at 6:05 PM Comments (0)

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