OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

possibilities of a month’s labor available in any particularyear. That longer processes are more productive thanshorter ones, Bohm-Bawerk indicated by an increasingnumber of units of product for each successive year. Themarginal utility of each year’s yield when obtained isillustrated by a decreasing series, since the marginalutility of a stock of goods decreases as the number ofunits in the stock increases. Since the year 1888 was con-sidered as the time of reference, or the first year in whichthe investment of labor was to be made, the numericalseries representing the marginal utilities of the optionalproducts as of the respective years of their production wasreduced, by discounting, to a series of numbers repre-senting the marginal utility of each year’s yield as of theyear 1888. The subjective value of each year’s yield asof the year 1888, Bohm-Bawerk obtained by multiplyingthe number of units of each year’s yield by its reducedmarginal utility.

Of course, that investment of the month’s labor avail-able as of any particular year would be made whichshowed the maximum present value. When, however, thetable of any one year is compared with that of any suc-ceeding year, the maximum present subjective valueselected is the greater the earlier the month’s labor isavailable.

For example, a month’s labor available in 1888 wasshown to be most advantageously invested in the processwhich yielded the maximum present subjective value of840 in 1890. But a month’s labor available in 1889 yielded

the validity of the proof presented by these tables of the theory of tech-nical superiority advanced by Bohm-Bawerk . While it does not seemadvantageous to repeat here this analysis, since it is available in my pre-vious book to any reader who may be interested, it is pertinent to pre-sent the conclusions drawn therefrom.

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