The General Theory of Goods

LR

April 18, 2015

Abstract

This is an text based on chapter 1 of the book Principles of Eco-nomics by Carl Menger. The real purpose of this file is to apply LATEXtothis text I wrote somewhere else.

This text is not to be published, its incomplete and was writtenfor learning purposes only.

Humans have needs and wants they urge to satisfy, and the things whichcan be used to that purpose are named useful things. Even though there arecountless useful things not all of them can be used in the needs-satisfactionprocess, this is because human actors either dont know about their usefulnessor they cant direct them to their ends.

Goods are those things some actor knowns to be useful and he can direct ittowards their goals; and algo a good need not directly satisfy the need, but maybe just a step in the causal process leading to that. They can be classified inorders, where the first order ones are those that directly satisfy the need, eachconsecutive order serve only to produce the goods of lower orders; dependingon the need a good may be in several orders.

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