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Like what? can you name one? If this is true, how come the people that study this aren't rich?


The law of diminishing marginal utility for example can be logically proven using this method. Alas, knowing it won't make you rich, the world is not that simple.


Whaaa?

> the more of something you have, the less of it you want. This phenomenon is referred to as diminishing marginal utility by economists.

Okay, but I have a counter-example. Money. The people who have the most sometimes still act like penny-pinchers, and lust after even more, and haggle over the smallest things. Therefore the "law of diminishing marginal utility" is more a rule of thumb than a law.


Um, there's not a whole lot of economic laws that are less controversial than the law of diminishing marginal utility. I'll give you a rough outline.

If you own a good G, that you could use to satisfy either a desire D1, or a competing desire D2, you will logically choose to use G to satisfy the greater one of these two desires - the one with the greater subjective utility to you. Let's assume that is D1.

Now, if instead of 1 you have 2 of G, you can satisfy both D1 and D2. As we have already established that the utility you have derived from consuming the first G to achieve D1 must be greater than the utility derived from consuming the second G to achieve D2, the utility of the additional unit of G is diminished when compared to the previous one.


I don't see how this addresses my counterexample.


Your counterexample isn't one. It's a made-up, incoherent mess, that doesn't show in any way what you claim it does. That starts with the incomplete definition of the law itself, which is part of a single sentence that you pasted off a multi-page Wikipedia article on the topic, which isn't exactly the best source in the first place. Why don't you just try to think through the simple explanatory outline I gave you?


Agree with sibling comment that this is more "heuristic" than "law". There are many things that have basically 0 utility up until some threshold, there are things that become more marginally useful the more of them you have (users for your social media app)




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