A Brief Note on Indifference

Authors including Robert Nozick (1977) and Bryan Caplan (1999) have levied criticism against the treatment of indifference within the Austrian tradition of economic theory. Their attempts to dismiss the Austrian position on this matter as unrealistic and contradictory are unsatisfactory as they fail to properly portray the core differences between the Austrian and neoclassical concepts of goods, utility, and preference, thus rendering their analysis inaccurate. The only preference that is relevant to the understanding of purposeful human action is the preference of ends, and indifference of ends cannot exist.