Murray Rothbard

(1) they may provide a greater production of the same good per unit of time; or (2) they may allow the actor to consume goods that are not available at all with shorter processes of production.

The time expended

Action requires an image of a desired end and “technological ideas” or plans on how to arrive at this end.

any given action, we can distinguish among three periods of time involved: the period before the action, the time absorbed by the action, and the period after the action has been completed.

Thus, the larger the supply of means available, the more ends can be satisfied and the lower the rank of the ends that must remain unsatisfied.

unpredictability of human acts of choice, and insufficient knowledge about natural phenomena

action occurs in the present and is aimed at the future

man prefers his end to be achieved in the shortest possible time.

utility of fewer units and that the utility of each successive unit is l

process of valuation according to the specific units involved provides the solution for the famous “value paradox” which puzzled writers for centuries. The question was: How can men value bread less than platinum, when “bread” is obviously more useful than “platinum”? The answer is that acting man does not evaluate the goods open to him by abstract classes, but in terms of the specific units available. He does not wonder whether “bread-in-general” is more or less valuable to him than “platinum-in-general,” but whether, given the present available stock of bread and platinum,