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2/🧵 #blacklions

This topic is taken from The General Theory of the Good written by Carl Menger in his Principles of Economics (1871).

This is a theory I should read... I never thought about what's considered an actual Goods before. Actually, I think I should read more books about economics.

#Youtube videos are too focused on being flashy to be that useful.

!LUV

Yeah, Carl Menger's Principles of Economics is tough reading, but I find it worthwhile.

#blacklions

3/🧵 #blacklions

The chapter has six sub-topics: the nature of goods, the causal connection between goods, the laws governing goods-character, time and error, the causes of progress in human welfare, and property.

4/🧵 #blacklions

However, I would reconstruct the six sub-topics and limit this threadstorm to just three of them: real goods, imaginary goods, and a special class of goods.

5/🧵 #blacklions

Real goods comply with four basic prerequisites:

  • A human need to be satisfied

  • A thing must have the properties capable to establish a causal connection to satisfy a human need (I hope this will be clarified later).

This is true. A good is not considered a real one if it cannot satisfy a need.

It seems Menger's exposition is too academic at first, but it made sense to me.

#blacklions

Yes it does make a lot of sense. #blacklions

6/🧵 #blacklions

This is becoming too academic so I will not add the remaining two prerequisites. I will just continue with the content that can be clearly understood.

7/🧵 #blacklions

Real goods are subject to the law of causality:

If, therefore, one passes from a state of need to a state in which the need is satisfied, sufficient causes for this change must exist.

8/🧵 #blacklions

Two kinds of real goods exist:

  • material goods

  • useful human actions and inactions

Among useful human actions, labor services are the most important (p. 55)

9/🧵 #blacklions

Real goods lose their “goods-character” in four ways (pp. 52-53):

  1. Disappearance of specific human needs due to either internal or external changes.

10/🧵 #blacklions

  1. Disappearance of a causal connection between the thing and the human need due to a change in the properties of the previous real good.

11/🧵 #blacklions

  1. Disappearance of the knowledge of a causal connection between the real good and the human need

12/🧵 #blacklions

  1. Disappearance of the command over the previous real good making men incapable of directly using it to satisfy a human need.

I think I will end with this. The threadstorm has become unusually long.

13/🧵 #blacklions

I will just create another threadstorm later for imaginary goods and a special class of goods.