> A bit of a tangent, but something that bothers me is the assumption in economics that the amount of money one is willing to pay for a good is equal to the utility provided by that good.
Some economic analysis uses that (or, rather that willingness to pay is linearly proportional to utility) as a simplifying assumption to make particular problems tractable (or, because the systematic bias it introduces is ideologically preferred by the actor doing the analysis), but it's fairly basic—like, 101 level—economics that aside from the biases introduced by variable wealth that this isn't true because money, like anything else—or, rather, a a direct consequences of this being true for everything money can buy—has declining marginal utility.
Some economic analysis uses that (or, rather that willingness to pay is linearly proportional to utility) as a simplifying assumption to make particular problems tractable (or, because the systematic bias it introduces is ideologically preferred by the actor doing the analysis), but it's fairly basic—like, 101 level—economics that aside from the biases introduced by variable wealth that this isn't true because money, like anything else—or, rather, a a direct consequences of this being true for everything money can buy—has declining marginal utility.