Thursday, December 11, 2014
Surplus Utility and Ersatz Utility
Three types of Utility can be called 'Essential', 'Surplus', and 'Ersatz'. Examples of the three are, respectively, clothing, tailor-made clothing, and clothing with a celebrity logo. For, clothing is an organic necessity; well-fitting clothing, while not an organic necessity, still has real value as comfortable; but, a celebrity logo, regardless of a price increment, adds nothing to the purpose served by clothes. Now, a telling weakness in Marginalism is that it does not distinguish the Surplus and Ersatz varieties, thereby potentially establishing delusional spending as paradigmatic Economic behavior, while, at the same time, marginalizing actual organic need.
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