Nature of Competition: A Theory of Utility

 

While we are on Earth up to 125 years, we by creation shall subsist and reproduce. We need energy, nutrition, protection and spirit for maintenance of the human asset which is to be used for such purposes. In addition, we want a better future and accordingly want to grow the human asset as much more.

             For all those purposes, what we physically take in is called the good and we psychologically do the service. In economics, we sometimes use the term “product” collectively to mean the good and the service: the former tangible and the latter intangible; production and consumption of the former are separated, but not of the latter.

             To be precise, we do not buy into the product per se, but its utility value rendered to us. We in economics call such value of material “utility” (M∙U, where M for mass, U for value of utility). Here, material is opposed to spiritual, not immaterial.

            

Utilities for subsistence. Probably, subsistence means more than just avoiding starvation. “Barely sustaining” will possibly  kick us off this world more plausibly in the short than in the long run. After all, we when in Here have at least “seven emotions and six desires” (七情六欲, qīqíngliùyù).

             We need indefinite kinds of utilities in a time period after another. We have to obtain them in one way or the other. 

 

Utilities for better-being. “I have a dream.” “We have a dream.”

             By providence, we are born with ambition, curiosity, imagination and creativity. We dream of “luxuries and conveniences” which never recognizes any bound or limit. Blessed we are provided with up to 125 years of currency. Confucius Say, “Where there is a push (yin), there is a pull (yang).” A certain savant would second, “Where there is a will there is a way.”

             Our desires for utilities are indefinite in kinds and unlimited in degree through the life time, cyclical may they be in sync with life. We somehow secure them.

 

The nature of utility.

1)     Utility is personal and private. I like the rainbow better than the shower. You are on the opposite side. 

            Macroeconomists prefer liquidity to all else, unanimously or otherwise. The rest of us would choose bitcoins  over liquidity as the case may be. To us, in the first place, the preference is all dependent whether in downturn, recession, depression, stagflation, the zero lower bound, liquidity trap, paradoxical thriftiness or secular stagnation. We are never unanimous in all cases other than praying for peace.

2)     Utility is periodic. For various reasons, we never “consume” apples, for instance, once and for life. Most probably, our appetite for apple(s) is daily at the longest run (over time, not across the distance). Our need for a shirt is at the shortest seasonal (over time, not cross-sectional). Our desire for a mansion would in general be decadal (over time, not a spatial run). Et cetera.

3)     Utility is situational. The want for a wedding dress is only in the best time(s) of life. Nobody desires a glass of champagne while he is sleeping. Most typically, the conceived utility of apples is different between a shopper in “the market” vs the consumers home. “Demand” for apples is weekly while appetite for apples is daily.

              Alas, the market in economics is not home in life. The market is metaphorical while life is real, at the end of the day.


ABBA - I Have A Dream

 

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