Nick Szabo  🔑

Writing a text exactly about that! Coming soon!

It imagine you are choosing between two types of gasoline to fuel your car. There’s an objective measure of use-value (octanes per volume, or something like that). You can objectively say that one is X better than the other. But you should talk to a chemical engineer.

I think Menger used the term "utility" to designate this objective aspect, might be more appropriate term to make a clear distinction from the subjective concept of "value".

I certainly have to dig deeper, but I think Menger used the word utility in a very different meaning from the one we do nowadays. The term utility was used by him as a property of any good (like air has utility). But only economic goods can have use-value.

Maybe the distinction between objective/subjective use-value/exchange-value came later, from B-Bawerk. But both Mises and Rothbard used it broadly. I remember getting lost in Theory of Money and Credit by how much Mises mentioned these concepts and assumed the reader knew them.

Not familiar enough with Bohm Bawerk's work, but I'm certain Menger made this distinction (though maybe not explicitly enough). I remember he called the disparity between this objective and subjective valuation "imaginary value", which I find pretty interesting.

Yes, and that's where some people say he actually contradicted himself. I don't have an opinion on that, too thorny for my pay grade. But I do find amazing that the most fundamental pillar of economic theory (the theory of value) is not as discussed as it maybe should be.

Qualities or properties of things are objective and are discovered through human knowledge. Qualities enable things to satisfy needs (utility). Needs are subjective. Utility and value denote the same concept. Useful things are goods. Scarce useful things are economic goods