Economics of Action

I’ve been struggling for some time to reconcile transactional economics and autistic economics, and my sense is that economic theory has since the beginning been to dismissive of the latter.  And while in the present day producing for one’s own consumption is increasingly rare (or at least that is the perception fostered by those who prefer to ignore it), it is still significant to the underlying motivations of participants in an economy and in some cases directly relevant (make-or-buy decisions).

Every human action is undertaken to effect a change, and one that exchanges a less satisfactory state of affairs for a more satisfactory one – at least if it is an action performed with premeditation and guided to some degree by reason or emotional desire.   And every human action is an inherent exchange of the effort required to perform the action for the sake of the benefit (plus the cost of materials consumed, which are also acquired by means of action).

Monetization is a convenient but incomplete way of assessing the value of action.  To make a good that is intended for sale is to assess the cost of making it against the benefit to be derived by selling it.   But at the same time to make a good that is intended for consumption is likewise assessed against the options of purchasing it for consumption – the effort of the making being the cost of acquisition.

And even in a transactional economy, money is merely the medium through which effort is transferred.   We earn a wage by selling labor rather than using labor to our own benefit, and obtain goods by spending that wage rather than undertaking the effort to create them by means of our own labor.  So money is merely a container for the value created by labor (as wealth was never created by merely printing more money).

Granted, the basic theory considers the situation of a person whose product is as good as anyone else’s and who sees all forms of labor as being equally unpleasant – but the differences in the quality of goods and the unpleasantness of labor are merely refinements on the basic equation to account for variables, and does not invalidate the essential premise.