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Comment by taprun | Hacker News Reader

Imagine that you have two people with the exact same amount of money. One hasn't had any water in 3 days, the other just drank a gallon of water.

Do you think they'd place different values on a glass of water? Do you think they'd interpret the glass of water differently?

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Are they placing different values on the glass of water? Or is that not the correct way to think about this? The person who hasn't had water in 3 days places a certain value on quenching his thirst and avoiding dehydration. If there were two items available to him (water and something else we can call X) that would serve that purpose, one would expect he would pay the same amount for both things. And the reason he would do so is because the thing he is valuing is avoiding dehydration and quenching thirst - not any particular tangible thing.

Let's say we call the person above A and the person who drank the gallon of water B. And let's say instead of a glass of water, A and B were offered a bottle of water. And before you make the offer, you tell B that he will be spending the next 3 days stranded in the desert. Now will he value the bottle of water the same as A?

From this perspective, back to your scenario, instead of looking at it as A and B valuing water differently, one could say they value avoiding dehydration the same. It's just that in the scenario, there's no dehydration for B to avoid.

> From this perspective, back to your scenario, instead of looking at it as A and B valuing water differently, one could say they value avoiding dehydration the same. It's just that in the scenario, there's no dehydration for B to avoid.

How is this different than anything else? I'm not placing value on food, I'm placing value on eating. I'm not placing value on money, I'm placing value on the freedom it gives me. Literally every value judgement has to do with fulfilling a subjectively perceived need.

I'm challenging the idea that the scenario presented by the original poster in this thread shows that value is subjective. Maybe value is subjective, but i would need a different thought experiment to prove that.

Different people might assign different values to the same product, but everyone follows the same thought process. If you repeat your scenario x times, the thirsty individual is always going to value water more than the sated individual.

If the second person knew of the existence of the first, he could buy the glass of water and sell it to the first, pocketing any difference. Their perceived values should be similar.

No, the perceived value wouldn't be similar. If the first person is about to die of dehydration and only the water can save him, he very likely would be willing to pay more / sacrifice more to get the water. The second person will match the price only up to a point. If he had to cut his finger off to pay for the water, he wouldn't do it. But the first person might, to save his life. They value the water differently.

No, there should be an equilibrium market price in dollars thst they both pay if they are participants in a shared market. That doesn't mean the value to each is the same.

Of course, the fact that they have access to that shared market also changes the value to each of them from that in the original hypothetical.

I think we have a difference in vocabulary. I would say value and equilibrium market price refer to the same thing, but you are saying it is the particular use it has to the individual which is of course not quantifiable. Assuming the person who's had no water has access to a functioning market they will only pay market price. Arguing about them perceiving it to have a higher value seems like a pointless philosophical argument.

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