Carl Menger did what no economist before him had managed: he located value inside the human mind rather than inside the object being traded. Vienna, 1871. His Principles of Economics landed quietly, then detonated slowly across the discipline.
Before Menger, economists tortured
时政
(
twitter.com
)
Carl Menger did what no economist before him had managed: he located value inside the human mind rather than inside the object being traded. Vienna, 1871. His Principles of Economics landed quietly, then detonated slowly across the discipline.
Before Menger, economists tortured themselves trying to explain why diamonds cost more than water when water keeps you alive. Menger dissolved the paradox in a sentence. Value is marginal and subjective. The tenth glass of water you drink today carries almost no value to you; the first glass you drink after three days without it carries everything. The object does not contain the value. You assign it, based on your circumstances, your preferences, your next most pressing want.
This wrecked the labor theory of value completely, clearing the ground for honest price analysis.
Prices, Menger showed, are not arbitrary signals or social constructs. They are compressed information about millions of individual valuations, each person acting on knowledge no central planner could ever collect. Bureaucrats in Brussels and Washington still haven't absorbed this. They control prices and watch shortages materialize on schedule, baffled every time.
Menger built the foundation. Everything built on it since has held.
点击图片查看原图
