A wise man will hear and increase in learning, and a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel.

What is more materialistic, to say that the worth of human activity can be measured in dollars, or that there is more to life than dollars and the pursuit thereof?

There is a problem in society of people of some learning contenting themselves to use their learning to try and make others look foolish when they make audacious-sounding statements or simply try to open dialogues or present new ideas. Wouldn't it be better if those with some education try to increase their learning?

Balking and mocking are better left to fools.

But since we are discussing the most brazen lines of my earlier post, I will happily defend them. When a person makes a decision, he makes a valuation. If I decide to buy $2.00 worth of apples instead of $2.00 worth of bananas, I have made a few decisions. Obviously, I have chosen apples over bananas. Only slightly less obviously, I have chosen apples over $2.00, which I could have kept in my possession. I have valued apples more than those two dollars.* Even more subtly, and fundamentally, I have chosen to think about produce. Instead of grabbing whatever fruit was nearest and taking it to the cashier and swiping my credit card thoughtlessly, I have chosen to think about my options and weigh them in my mind, before I ever contrasted apples with bananas in a contest of which fruit I should like better.

Socrates said that the unexamined life is not worth living. Even so, the unexamined life results from choices that were based on valuation. A person values entertainment higher than self-examination or philosophy, and goes about his life doing what he needs to do to maximize his entertainment. That is choice based on valuation, even though, before long, such a choice leads to lazy, sloppy habit. He continues to value his intellectual laziness higher than thought, so he continues to choose not to think.

Contrast this with the philosopher who continually thinks about his surroundings, his life, and the creative spirit within him. If he chooses to value philosophy over a high income, and the creation of unappreciated art over the acquisition of luxuries, does that mean that he has eschewed value? Or that he does not create anything of value? Or are his choices just as much a process of valuation as weighing Harvard vs. Yale as part of a plan to acquire fabulous material wealth with a law degree? If one chooses to spend his weekends with his family instead of using them to pursue a promotion with a raise, is that any less an economic decision for not being materialistic?

When I say "every human action is based upon a choice," I am not talking about reflex behaviors, I am referring to the capacity of humans to choose what they do. Perhaps we could quibble about whether to call reflexes "actions," or we could just use "action" to refer to conscious choice because reflexes and animal movements are just as easily referred to as "behavior" as they are "actions." I should have defined the term "action," I suppose, but I never really know beforehand which blog posts to deck out for debate. I really am blind to the differences between my most incendiary writing and my most innocuous observations.

Regardless, the very act of debating implies that we choose what we do, apparently in contrast with animals, which simply behave according to the behavior of their kind, or according to their training. If we are debating one another, we are presuming that we choose our actions, else why debate? If we do not choose, our actions are no more under our control than is the rotation of the Earth. When we debate, we do so with the presumption that others can choose their actions differently on account of what we have said.

Since we are conscious actors, then, what do our actions represent, but choices? And if we choose, based on what, if not subjective, relative valuation of our various options? And what are we to call these subjective, relative valuations? "Values"? I think "values" is no less likely to foment misunderstanding in this case than "economics," but more importantly, if we include every subjective, relative valuation in one field of study, we have the advantage of seeing whatever is going on, regardless of whether or not it fits into a preconceived notion of what suits our topic. That is to say, if A, B, and C, affect my choice to take a particular action, it does not behoove us to examine only A and B as factors. If I am choosing between an entire alphabet of options, and A and B are considered economics, a more reasonable way to study economics would be to allow for the existence all twenty-six possible factors, to bear them in mind, rather than to compare and contrast A and B as if they are the only things that exist. Furthermore, if I am studying economics, and I come across those who have chosen C or Z or anything in between, am I any more materialistic for including that in my study of economics than if I study only the material component of subjective valuation? I believe those who focus only on the material world in economics are more materialistic than those who use "economics" as an umbrella term for all of the subjective valuations that humans make. In retrospect, perhaps I should not have spared my reader exposure to the term "praxeology."

Since all of human life (or all that is worth living), is based on choice, based in turn on subjective valuation, the study of which I referred to as "economics," every aspect of human life except reflexive behavior is economic. If a monk in a secret corner of a remote monastery does nothing but meditate on spiritual things and eat a few grains of rice, economics is no less relevant to his life than to Warren Buffett's. It is simply that he places a lower subjective value on the accumulation of wealth.

Perhaps Buddha would oppose me in comparing spiritual valuations to material ones (I don't know, as I have not studied Buddhism), but Christ Jesus would not. He explicitly states "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." He had so much to say about money, in fact, that it seems hasty and ill-thought out to imply that viewing everything as economic is somehow irreligious or unspiritual, or undervalues the immaterial. Valuing the immaterial requires assigning it value, that is, making an economic choice. Luke 16, and many other Scriptures, are very difficult to reconcile with the pro-economic ignorance stance.

In sum, economic methodology is too important to limit to material goods, and doing so leads inevitably to both bad economics and poor time stewardship. The study of economics is essential to understanding the human interaction in material world, yes, but is also greatly instructive for making subjective valuations in every aspect of our lives.

*I use the word "those" very consciously in this sentence, because I would not do this same transaction all day long, as my grocer would, happily. This suggests the idea of marginal utility, one of the most important and least understood concepts in economics. If I want some apples, and those apples are being sold for $0.40 apiece, I may very well want 5 apples more than I want $2. But if I have $100 in my pocket, it is unlikely that the entirety of my cash will be worth, altogether, less than 250 apples to me. What would I do with 250 apples? So the sixth apple is worth less to me than the first. The sixth apple is worth less than $0.40 to me, and the first five were worth more than $0.40 each to me (not exactly $0.40, or else I would not have troubled to carry them to the register to make the exchange). If this were a scenario where apples cost $0.50 apiece, perhaps I would have bought only two (for $1.00 total), and used the other dollar of those $2.00 (that would have been spent on apples at $0.40 apiece for apples) for something else, perhaps another kind of fruit that would have seemed too expensive by comparison if apples were only $0.40 apiece. In the $0.50 per apple scenario, only two apples were worth more than $0.50 to me, and third through fifth were worth more than $0.40 but less than $0.50. The sixth remains less valuable to me than $0.40. There is a curve then, whether I picture it or not, in the price I would be willing to pay for each subsequent item of identical (or nearly identical) quality. For any given item, the marginal utility of the hundredth, thousandth, or quadrillionth of that item approaches 0 in your scale of marginal utility, because once you have 999,999,999,999,999 of something, how much are you willing to give up to have one more? If there's a genie who gives you the Midas touch, and you eventually own a gold ranch the size of Texas, chances are that at some point you would want flowers (or beef cattle, or something) more than you want your next blade of gold grass. Everything material tends to diminish in our estimation the more abundant it becomes in our life (leaving aside, if we may, the issue of Midas-touch-induced starvation). It's the same when we buy groceries: the first few of each are worth more than what they cost us, but our valuation of variety drives up the value of some other fruit or vegetable in our scale of marginal utility, until we have our basket of groceries, and to buy more of anything costs more in dollars than our valuation of that excess produce.