In his introduction to Rothbard's "A History of Money and Banking", Salerno writes (p.11): "For Rothbard, a particular price datum is, no less than the Spanish-American War, a historical event, and its causes must be traced back to the subjective aims governing human plans and choices." He explains that historical facts are unique, nonrepeatable events, that cannot be treated as homogeneous data and lumped into aggregate classes.
Obviously, we would not lump together all the wars of the 20th century and draw statistics on citizen morale, weaponry, or collateral damage. Without reference to the specific history of each war, such statistics would be meaningless.
But if prices are also complex historical events, differing from wars only in degree, how can they be treated like homogeneous data resulting from a controlled experiment? Can prices be meaningfully aggregated?
AnalyticalAnarchism.net - The Positive Political Economy of Anarchism
Sage:Can prices be meaningfully aggregated?
No. From one of Shostak's articles
It is interesting to note that in the commodity markets, prices are quoted as dollars/barrel of oil, dollars/ounce of gold, dollars/tonne of copper, etc. Obviously it wouldn't make much sense to establish an average of these prices. Likewise, it doesn't make much sense to establish an average of the exchange rates dollar/sterling, dollar/yen, etc. On this Rothbard wrote, "Thus, any concept of average price level involves adding or multiplying quantities of completely different units of goods, such as butter, hats, sugar, etc., and is therefore meaningless and illegitimate. Even pounds of sugar and pounds of butter cannot be added together, because they are two different goods and their valuation is completely different" (Man, Economy, and State, p. 734).
On this Rothbard wrote, "Thus, any concept of average price level involves adding or multiplying quantities of completely different units of goods, such as butter, hats, sugar, etc., and is therefore meaningless and illegitimate. Even pounds of sugar and pounds of butter cannot be added together, because they are two different goods and their valuation is completely different" (Man, Economy, and State, p. 734).
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