Value and Exchange

We’re often told that some prices should be high, and some others should be low. But the real goal should not be high prices or low prices, but a price system that communicates what is valued in society.

If all work and all workers were homogenous, we might be able to say that the gender wage gap is caused by sexism, but the gap is better explained by big differences in the life goals and chosen industries of men and women.

Political dependence and economic dependence are two very different things. Political dependence is fostered by coercion and monopoly power, but economic dependence is simply a choice we make when we especially like one thing more than the alternatives.

Volume 17, No. 4 (Winter 2014)

Eswar S. Prasad
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014, 432 pages

Our daily lives are determined by our choices as individual economic actors.

Our daily lives are determined by our choices as individual economic actors. When governments intervene in our personal economics, they intervene in our personal preferences and choices.

Some music aficionados are complaining that the market's efforts to better deliver what people want are encouraging "bad music." In truth, music markets are providing more opportunities for the making of new music than ever before.

True welfare and value can only be achieved through exchange when it is fully voluntary.

True welfare and value can only be achieved through exchange when it is fully voluntary. When the state intervenes to "improve" trade, it destroys value, all the government stats notwithstanding.