Rothbard A to Z

VALUE

… value rests on acts of valuation by the consumers. In addition to being subjective, these degrees of valuation are relative, since the value of one good or service is always being compared against another. These values, or utilities, depend on all manner of wants, desires and knowledge on the part of individuals …

Classical Economics, pp. 18–19

… the value of factors is determined by the value of their products, which in turn is conferred by consumer valuation and demands.

Classical Economics, p. 22

… values always fluctuate, and there is no invariable, fixed base of value from which other value changes can be measured.

Classical Economics, p. 90

… value is strictly relational, a ranking among goods, and therefore cannot be absolute or invariant.… value is not inherent in goods at all, but is rather always a process of subjective evaluation in the minds of individuals.… Value is not only a subjective estimation, but also that valuation is necessarily relative among various goods or objects; value is a matter of relative preference. …

… value is subjective and relative (or relational) valuation …

Classical Economics, p. 113

… utility is the basis of all value …

Classical Economics, p. 116

… the value of any good is not determined by its cost of production, but by its demand and supply …

Classical Economics, p. 117

… value depends on utility and scarcity …

Classical Economics, p. 118

… the value of consumer goods, determined by the subjective utility of the goods to consumers, is imputed back on the market to the values of the various factors of production, which will be set equal to the marginal value productivity of each factor. Thus the unit price of every type of factor will tend to be equal to its marginal value productivity as imputed back through the competitive market process from the subjective utility of the final products.

Classical Economics, p. 135

… subjective values and preferences cannot be precisely measured.

Classical Economics, p. 290

… human wants are unlimited, and hierarchically ordered by individuals in their scales of value.

Classical Economics, p. 446

… exchange value stems from value conferred upon goods by consumers … value and demand derive solely from mental desires of consumers. …

… value stems from subjective valuation by consumers …

Classical Economics, p. 462

… personal utilitarianism counsels that actions be judged not on … everyone tries always to maximize his utility.

Economic Controversies, p. 109

The marginal utility of a unit of a good is always higher than the marginal utility of a unit of smaller size.… given a certain sized unit, the marginal utility of that unit declines as the supply of units increases. This is the familiar Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility. …

… there is no such thing as total utility; all utilities are marginal.

Economic Controversies, p. 301

… when a good becomes scarcer, it will become subjectively more useful or valuable.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 17

… means, or “instruments of production,” necessarily derive their value from the final products useful to man, “the instruments of action.” The greater the desirability, or subjective value, of a good, the greater the desirability, or value of the means to arrive at that product.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 17

… good with many potential uses will be more desirable, or valuable, than a good with only one use.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 18

… the “marginal utility”—the value of each unit of a good—diminishes as its supply increases. Thus a superabundant good such as bread or water will have a low marginal utility, while a rare good such as gold will have a high one. The value of a good on the market, and therefore its price, is determined by its marginal utility …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 61

… the value of a good is dependent on its subjective utility and hence demand by consumers …

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 292

… the value of products is imparted by consumer valuation … the value of goods is determined by “utility” and “scarcity,” by subjective valuation of a given supply. The more utility the higher the value, and the more abundant the supply the lower the value and price of any good on the market. …

… subjective valuation by consumers rather than “intrinsic value” determines price.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 350

… utility is not a thing, it is not a measurable entity, it cannot be divided, and therefore it is illegitimate to put it in ratio form, as the numerator in a non-existent fraction. Utility is neither a measurable entity, nor, even if it were, could it be commensurate with the money unit.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 380

… the source of value of a good is its utility as evaluated by individuals in accordance with their needs and desires. …

… value is determined by the subjective opinions of individuals on the market.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 410

Value in the sense of valuation or utility is purely subjective, and decided by each individual.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 12

All action involves the employment of scarce means to attain the most valued ends. Man has the choice of using the scarce means for various alternative ends, and the ends that he chooses are the ones he values most highly. The less urgent wants are those that remain unsatisfied. Actors can be interpreted as ranking their ends along a scale of values …

… The choice of which ends to include in the actor’s value scale and the assignment of rank to various ends constitute the process of value judgment.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 17–18

The choice of which ends to include in the actor’s value scale and the assignment of rank to the various ends constitute the process of value judgment. Each time the actor ranks and chooses between various ends, he is making a judgment of their value to him.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 18

… values cannot be measured; values or utilities cannot be added, subtracted, or multiplied. They can only be ranked as better or worse.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 19

Human actors value means strictly in accordance with their valuation of the ends that they believe the means can serve.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 20

The original source of value is the ranking of ends by human actors, who then impute value to consumers’ goods, and so on to the orders of producers’ goods, in accordance with their expected ability to contribute toward serving the various ends.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 21

… things are valued as means in accordance with their ability to attain ends valued as more or less urgent. Each physical unit of a means (direct or indirect) that enters into human action is valued separately. Thus, the actor is interested in evaluating only those units of means that enter, or that he considers will enter, into his concrete action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 21

… value, or utility, cannot be measured, and therefore cannot be added, subtracted, or multiplied.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 22

… the value of the second unit to the actor will be less than the value of the first unit.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 24

… for all human actions, as the quantity of the supply (stock) of a good increases, the utility (value) of each additional unit decreases.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 25

The greater the supply of a good, the lower the marginal utility; the smaller the supply, the higher the marginal utility. This fundamental law of economics has been derived from the fundamental axiom of human action; it is the law of marginal utility, sometimes known as the law of diminishing marginal utility. Here again, it must be emphasized that “utility” is not a cardinal quantity subject to the processes of measurement, such as addition, multiplication, etc. It is a ranked number expressible only in terms of higher or lower order in the preferences of men.

This law of marginal utility holds for all goods …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 27–28

The value of the marginal unit is equal to the first rank of the ends which the total good could serve.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 28

… the marginal utility of each good is equal to the value of the least important end of which he would be deprived …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 30

… presented with a choice of units of goods to give up, he will give up the good with units of lowest marginal utility on his value scale.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 30

… faced with the choice of adding units of goods, he will choose the unit of highest marginal utility on his value scale.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 31

The actor may not and cannot measure differences in utility, but he must be engaged in ranking all the goods considered on one value scale.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 31

By ranking the various goods and the ends served by the relevant units, the actor will give up the unit of that good of which the marginal utility to him is the lowest. Similarly, with any given combination of goods in his stock, and faced with the choice of adding one unit of any of the goods available, the actor will choose that good whose marginal utility of increase will be highest. In other words, all the goods are ranked on one value scale in accordance with the ends they serve.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 32

… value scales do not exist in a void apart from the concrete choices of action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 33

The value of each unit of any good is equal to its marginal utility … this value is determined by the relation between the actor’s scale of wants and the stock of goods available.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 33

The utility of a consumers’ good is the end directly served. The utility of a producers’ good is its contribution in producing consumers’ goods. With value imputed backward from ends to consumers’ goods through the various orders of producers’ goods, the utility of any producers’ good is its contribution to its product—the lower-stage producers’ good or the consumers’ good.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, pp. 33–34

… the value assigned to a unit of a factor of production is equal to the value of its marginal product, or its marginal productivity.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 34

… value and utility cannot be measured or subject to addition, subtraction, etc. …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 35

Factors of production are valued in accordance with their anticipated contribution in the eventual production of consumers’ goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 38

… a change in the value of the product causes a greater change in the value of the specific factors than in that of the relatively nonspecific factors.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 40

Each unit of supply will be allocated to satisfy the most urgent of the not yet satisfied wants, i.e., where the value of its marginal product is the highest.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 41

… the value of the marginal product of a unit of a factor will be equal to its value in its marginal use, i.e., that use served by the stock of the factor whose marginal product is ranked lowest on his value scale.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 41

Value exists in the valuing minds of individuals, and these individuals make the exchange precisely because for each of them there is an inequality of values …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 103

The ranking on his value scale depends entirely on the voluntary choice of each individual.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 214

Value scales of each individual are purely ordinal, and there is no way whatever of measuring the distance between the rankings; indeed, any concept of such distance is a fallacious one. Consequently, there is no way of making interpersonal comparisons and measurements, and no basis for saying that one person subjectively benefits more than another.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 258

There can be no interpersonal comparison of utilities …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 259

We deduce the existence of a specific value scale on the basis of the real act; we have no knowledge of that part of a value scale that is not revealed in real action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 260

Each succeeding unit that the consumer allocates among different lines of spending, he wishes to allocate to the most highly valued use that it can serve. His psychic revenue is the marginal utility—the value of the most important use that will be served. His psychic cost is the next most important use that must be forgone—the use that must be sacrificed in order to attain the most important end. The highest ranked utility forgone, therefore, is defined as the cost of any action.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 262

… value can be conferred on a good only by individuals’ desires to use it directly in the present or in the present expectation of selling to such individuals in the future.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 278

All goods are distributed by each individual in accordance with their utility to him. A stock of the units of a good is allocated first to its most highly valued uses, then to its next most highly valued use, etc. The definition of a good is that it consists of an interchangeable supply of one or more units. Therefore, every unit will always be valued equally with every other. If a unit of a stock is given up or disposed of, the least highly valued use for one unit will be the one given up. Therefore, the value of each unit of the supply of a good is equal to the utility of the least highly valued of its present uses. This marginal utility diminishes as the stock of each good increases. The marginal utility of addition of a unit to the stock equals the utility of a unit in its next most highly valued use, i.e., the most highly valued of the not yet satisfied ends. This provides us with the law of marginal utility and the law of allocation of goods.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 320

… men value goods in units and not as wholes …

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 489

… goods are valued for their services.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 535

VALUE-FREEDOM

Praxeology, like the other sciences, is the value-free handmaiden of values and ethics.

Economic Controversies, p. 83

… it is the responsibility of any scientist, indeed any intellectual, to refrain from any value judgment whatever unless he can support it on the basis of a coherent and defensible ethical system.

Economic Controversies, p. 85

Flat declarations of unsupported value judgments should be impermissible in intellectual, let alone scientific, discourse.

Economic Controversies, p. 86

Economics, as a science, attempts and claims to be purely value-free; that is, separate from the personal, valuational, or political proclivities of the economist. And yet economics and economists are continually making political pronouncements; economics per se is shot through with value-loaded assumptions, usually implicit, which then emerge as political conclusions and recommendations. It is my contention that this procedure is illegitimate and unscientific, and that it is incumbent on economic theory to purge itself of all vestiges of the unsupported value judgment. As a science, economics can and should stand apart from such value judgments.

Economic Controversies, p. 241

The main body of economic analysis is scientific and value-free … economists must either make their value judgments explicit and defend them with a coherent ethical system, or strictly refrain from entering, directly, or indirectly into the public policy realm.

Economic Controversies, pp. 250–51

… it is not enough for an intellectual or social scientist to proclaim his value judgments … these judgments must be rationally defensible and must be demonstrable to be valid, cogent, and correct.

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 4

VIOLENCE

… aggression and invasion of another’s right can establish no just title to property or rule … this holds for great heads of states as well as for petty criminals …

Conceived in Liberty v. 2, p. 191; p. 689

… all political history has rested upon violence.

Conceived in Liberty v. 3, p. 337; p. 1101

… the use of violence for purposes of plunder injures not only the victim (which is self-evident) but, in the long run, the plunderer also. The goal of the good citizen, then, is to try to eliminate, or at least minimize, violent plunder in the society.

Economic Controversies, pp. 117–18

… the very existence of institutionalized violence by the state generates imitative violence among the people.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 26

… force and violence are at the heart of state power.

Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, p. 191

Each individual should have the freest possible scope for the development of his faculties and his personality. In order to have this scope, he must have freedom from violence against himself. Violence can only repress and destroy human growth and endeavor, and neither can reason and creativity function under an atmosphere of coercion. If each person has equal defense against violence, this “equality before the law” will permit him to maximize his potentialities.

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 6

… freedom from violence is essential to the development of man’s reason and personality.

Education: Free and Compulsory, p. 10

… the rule prohibiting violence against the persons or property of innocent men is absolute: it holds regardless of the subjective motives for the aggression. It is wrong and criminal to violate the property or person of another …

Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature, p. 117

… aggressive violence means is that one man invades the property of another without the victim’s consent. The invasion may be against a man’s property in his person (as in the case of bodily assault), or against his property in tangible goods (as in robbery or trespass). In either case, the aggressor imposes his will over the natural property of another—he deprives the other man of his freedom of action and of the full exercise of his natural self-ownership.

Ethics of Liberty, p. 45

… libertarianism does not bar defensive violence, which is perfectly legitimate as a defense or punishment against violent aggression.

Libertarian Forum v. 1, p. 244

Libertarians, after all, are not opposed to violence per se; they are opposed only to violent aggression, to the initiation of violence against another’s person or property.

Libertarian Forum v. 2, p. 1090

… the distinguishing features of the contractual society, of the unhampered market, are self-responsibility, freedom from violence, full power to make one’s own decisions (except the decision to institute violence against another), and benefits for all participating individuals. The distinguishing features of a hegemonic society are the rule of violence, the surrender of the power to make one’s own decisions to a dictator, and exploitation of subjects for the benefit of the masters.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 91

Invasive action may be defined as any action—violence, theft, or fraud—taking away another’s personal freedom or property without his consent.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 176

… the various producer-consumers either determine their mutual exchange rates voluntarily in the free market, or else the ratios are set by violence.

Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market, p. 636