The nature of capital and income

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 102659555X

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-82920

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Fisher, Irving http://d-nb.info/gnd/118533541

Title:: The nature of capital and income

Place of publication:: New York

Publisher:: The Macmillan Company

Year of publication:: 1923

Scope:: XXI, 427 Seiten

Digitisation:: 2019

Collection:: Economics Books

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Document type:: Monograph

Structure type:: Chapter

Title:: Introduction. Fundamental concepts

Collection:: Economics Books

Src. 3] UTILITY 43 In proposing that economists substitute so far as possible the term “desirability” for “utility,” the author is simply following the example of Professor Gide! and Professor Marshall. § 3 If the term “utility” is to be used at all, we must dis- tinguish the utility of goods from the use of the goods. As has been pointed out, the uses or services of goods are the desirable events which occur by their means, Utility, on the other hand, is not these desirable events, but their desirability. Again, the desirability or utility of goods must not be confused with the pleasure which may be ultimately ob- tained from those goods. Here our second concept is involved, for pleasure is not the desire, but the satisfac- tion of the desire. It is an experience in time, and requires duration of time for its existence. Desirability, which means the intensity of desire of an individual under certain conditions, merely indicates a state of mind at a particular point of time, namely, the point of time at which he mentally weighs and measures the desirability of any contemplated service, property, or wealth. We may speak of the de- sirability of a fruit orchard to a particular person on Janu- ary 1, 1905; but the pleasure derivable from that orchard is only to be experienced during future years, as it bears fruit and the fruit gives enjoyment to those who eat it. Thus we have two concepts: utility or desirability, — a state of mind at a point of time; and pleasure or satisfac- tion, — an experience of mind through a period of time. These two concepts are closely related; for the desirability of goods is simply the present esteem in which the future 1 Gide’s Principles of Political Economy, 2d American ed, 1904, Pp. 48. See also the present writer’s “ Mathematical Investigations in the Theory of Value and Prices,” Transactions of the Connecticut Academy, 1892, p. 23.

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