I got the following reply recently on this thread. I’m not going to bother responding yet, but found it so amusing I thought I’d share it with you. The guy is literally claiming that Mises and the Austrians claim value is equal and ranked at the same time. He also claims without a doubt that values are cardinal as if it’s scientific fact! When it comes to debating these types of people I’m starting to wonder if it’s even worth responding or if all their statements are so contradictory they will form collapse to form an information theoretic entropy expanding grey goo. Anyway, here’s his response:
"Actually, I think you are glossing over a VERY controversial part of this approach. The system you advocate… the system argued heavily for by Mises and his students… attempts to treat peoples preferences as… essentially equal in value and only different in terms of rank.
However, since much of this work regards humans as acting beings, then it becomes critical to accurately reflect their thought processes and decision making schemes… For… if this foundation of your position is questionable, inaccurate, or flawed, then your whole argument collapses. Following what led me into this point, we know WITHOUT A SHADOW OF A DOUBT that humans treat their preferences as cardinal… That our preferences have different intensities and subjective value… that what we choose to act upon is about much more than a simple ranking… Our preferences and motivations are also about the intensity of the desire.
The approach you advocate attempts to ignore that humans have different intensities for their various preferences… You attempt to treat all human preferences as equal, just differentially ranked relative to one another… and that is simply an errant and inaccurate view of human behavior… an errant and inaccurate premise which destroys the credibility of your assertions.
In short, your system again… being based on logic and deduction… begins with a flawed premise which is non-representative and not reality-based, hence the conclusions derived from it are equally flawed. How do you respond?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinal_utility
Another entirely different problem is whether ordinal utility is indeed an observable variable in real world. For example, in closed hypothetical system like above, there are only orange and apple to choose from. Therefore, when an individual choose orange, one can definitely say that an orange is preferred over an apple. However, in real world, when a consumer purchases an orange, it is often impossible to say what good or set of goods or collection of behavioural choice (including not purchasing anything at all or doing something else) were discarded as options."
The thread is at the following address:
http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?p=522899#post522899
Also, I’m sorry if you guys are getting fed up of me linking to this debate, it’s just I’m lost for words sometimes and would like your opinions. I used some of your earlier replies in my response.