I think I get what you mean re utility, but let me ask- whether or not wanting 'substanceD' is truly me maximizing utility, or just me maximizing a 'utility whim' that may/may not be my maximal utility, doesn't this still allow the models to do any/everything they are intended to?
Not quite. We have to think of the entire demand-side process, from purchasing decision-making to satisfaction post-consumption. If we say a 'utility whim' is maximized, we simply state that people purchase what is most desired. While people usually think themselves to guide their decisions to 'maximize utility'* in the medium-term, the effects of the purchase and subsequent consumption (and its after-effects) will vary wildly by situation and psychological state at every temporal step along the way. In the context of the purchase, the decision will usually be made via vague intuitions, contextual cues, and the like. It's rare if not completely infrequent for consumers to think as might follow:
"I have x dollars to dispose over y time-span. There are (a, b, c, d, e, f, . . .) products available for purchase. The expected yielded pleasure from each possible selection from the set of possible purchases is as follows: . . ." We can't even answer this question in ordinal terms. This approach is obviously intractable, as these products provide qualitatively different effects on affect, also dependent on interrelation to consumption of other goods, but also psychological state, social context, immediate environment, etc.** That, and nearly no one things thinks out in this way.
So not only do we lack means to accurately predict utility yielded but also the very cognitive machinery necessary to guide our errors via flawed beliefs about utility levels.
As in, even if the models are showing that we're all maximizing our 'utilty' on alcohol, when it shoulda been weed, isn't the difference in 'true utility' between weed and alcohol practically irrelevant in the context? Ie, normative v prescriptive?
I'll concede that this type of maximization of utility-whim occurs in terms of maximization of likelihood to purchase. . .and nearly always along with it, maximization of satisfaction at the moment of choice of purchase. Is this not a mere restatement that those commodities which most strongly motivate to purchase are most high in demand? This does not clearly link utility maximization to purchasing decisions.
'true' utility is real and aggregable, despite such a value being uberly impossible to ascertain in any practical manner
On what grounds do you believe this?
doesn't change the modeling, so long as it's a constant
But we need to step back for a moment and ask
what, in particular, are we modeling?
*Let's try pretending that this were possible for a second. We could call "maximized utility" a point in a multidimensional space of emotions/feelings/sensations/etc. where one experiences maximal pleasure. But even this is problematic, as "pleasure" is actually a composite of many types of experiences, each holding distinct import and relation to other experiences depending on context (internal and external).
**The case is simpler with substitutable goods, but the context of purchase and consumption of other, non-substitutable goods will shape the type of pleasure yielded in consumption, problematizing the very distinction between substitutable and non-substitutable goods.
ebola
) that puts economics as a social science, it's its very nature (obviously; economics is the study of how people trade w/ one another, and necessarily requires 'sociology' as a foundation)
