[From my Webnote series]
“Although it is usual to speak of money as a measure of value and prices, the notion is entirely fallacious. So long as the subjective theory of value is accepted, this question of measurement cannot arise.” Ludwig von Mises, “On the Measurement of Value,” in The Theory of Money and Credit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1953), I.2.1
“Money is neither a yardstick of value nor of prices. Money does not measure value. Nor are prices measured in money: they are amounts of money.” Mises, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, J. Kahane, trans. (Indianapolis, Ind: Liberty Fund, 1981), p. 99
See also Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics, Scholar’s ed. (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 1998), pp. 96, 122, 205, 211, 218, and 286.
Quoted in Kinsella, The Problem with Intellectual Property, n.49
Stephan Kinsella, “Against Intellectual Property After Twenty Years: Looking Back and Looking Forward,” in Legal Foundations of a Free Society (Houston, Texas: Papinian Press, 2023), text at n.35 & n.35:
… as Austrians have explained, value is not a measurable, cardinal quantity that can be interpersonally compared.35
35 See AIP [Against Intellectual Property], n.41; also Murray N. Rothbard, “Toward a Reconstruction of Utility and Welfare Economics,” in Economic Controversies (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011; https://mises.org/library/economic-controversies). For a recent article debunking David Friedman’s scientistic and confused contention that “Von Neumann proved” that utility can be measured or expressed cardinally, see Robert P. Murphy, “Why Austrians Stress Ordinal Utility,” Mises Wire (Feb. 3, 2022; https://mises.org/wire/why-austrians-stress-ordinal-utility).
