Austrian Economics Overview

Competition can mean rivalry or freedom. All firms must serve the preferences of consumers in order to exist. Monopoly has historically been an artificial privilege granted by the state.

In the history of money, bartering was awkward because wants were not divisible. Direct exchange depended upon a double coincidence of wants. Demand for a medium of exchange grew until a general medium of exchange emerged, like gold and silver.

Time preference says that individuals prefer satisfaction now to later, present to future. This explains the loan market. In the structure of production, the capitalist pays wages now, despite the fact that he himself does not get paid until the final stage when the product actually comes to market.

Causal-realist analysis allows imaginary constructs like the ERE — Evenly Rotating Economy — in order to isolate certain factors like interest.  There would be no profit or loss in the ERE, because those can only exist under conditions of uncertainty.

As with all government intervention, price controls do not achieve what their originators think they will. Trying to maintain a supply of milk by putting a price control on it will cause shortages, which are the very situations the price manipulators said they wanted to avoid.

Factors of Production are economic goods: scarce means used to achieve an individual’s ends. They are land, labor and capital. Each is examined. Incomes are earned by factor owners as production takes place. There is no separated production and distribution.

What determines market prices? Buyers and sellers must know of feasible trades. They can learn from their mistakes. They prefer higher profits to lower profits. They think in discreet terms. Both participants win in market exchanges.

All action is really exchange. What the actor prefers less is exchanged for something he prefers more, including gift giving. It is a fallacy to say that the goods exchanged have equal value.

The July-August 1983 issue of Libertari

In this first lecture of a series of lectures covering the basics of applied Austrian economics,  Joseph Salerno introduces a number of basic concepts including utility, exchange, psychic cost, choice, value, and marginal utility.