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Regarding Bill Williams' comment about using the concept of utility in the 
classroom and his direct reply to me, I think that the problem lies with 
the textbook, not the concept. It is possible to write an economics text 
that contains the same important material without using the term "utility" 
and "marginal utility." We can say that when individuals choose among units 
of this and units of that, their choices reveal their preferences for the 
last unit of the X that they choose over the additional units of Y that 
they could have chosen with the same money. 
 
The choice among marginal units is a real phenomenon (although don't ask me 
to prove it) and students should learn this; although many, if not most, 
important buying choices by consumers are not among marginal units. I have 
a preliminary intro text chapter on this if you are interested. 
 
I'm afraid that the modern texts are designed partly to make it easier for 
teachers to give lectures and to give tests and to correct them. They are 
also partly designed to help prepare the students for the mathematical 
version of economics. 
 
 
Regarding David Colander's point about needing to make interpersonal 
comparisons in order to do policy, Ludwig von Mises had a good answer. It 
was that economists should not do policy. Rather, they should evaluate 
arguments that a specific policy would achieve a specified goal or set of 
goals. One way that he expressed this was to say that economics has the 
task of identifying the dominant deologies and determining whether the 
policies that the practitioners of these ideologies advocate are likely to 
achieve the goals that they believe can be achieved by the policies. For 
example, can socialist policies relating to the organization of production 
by means of central planning achieve the goals of the central planners? 
 
The question to ask is whether the image, or model, of behavior and choice 
used to defend a policy argument is (1) logical and (2) relevant, given the 
goals of that argument and the environment of the policy. That way, 
economics can remain "value" free. As I recall, Coase attacked the 
Pigouvian models on the grounds that they were irrelevant. This was very 
much in the Misesian vein. 
 
 
Pat Gunning 
 
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