[求助]水与钻石的价格问题

My Review on the Water-Diamond Paradox

The water-diamond paradox, which was set forth by John Law(1704), and made famous by Adam Smith(1776), indicates that, water is useful to humans,''t b diamonds are useless to humans, thus water should have a higher "use value" or "utility" than diamonds do.To solve the paradox, in my opinion, we can resort to either classical theories or neo-classical ones. From the classical economists'' perspective, Utility can also be related to desire rather than usefulness, thus diamonds still thve utility since they are desired, and in the short run, scarcity may play an important role in the determination of price, therefore , it won''t be to difficult to imagine the higher price of diamonds since they are so rare.On the other hand, in the long run, neither utility nor rarity have a role in the determination of natural prices in the Classical schema. The high diamond price may have something to do with the long-run demand-and-supply mechenism, which suggests the demand of diamonds exceeds the supply of them to so large an extent, or the cost of production doctrine, which indicates that it is too expensive to produce a large amount of diamonds.However, it is only half of the story, the Neo-Classicals(or rather the Marginlists) may provide an alternative appoarch to this paradox----the marginal utility theory, or more pecisely the diminishing marginal utility.First of all, I would like to review the two types of utilities, the objective utility and the sbjective utility, which are related to objective-determined rarity and subjective-determined rarity respectively. It is evident, we can not survive without water, the objective utility of water is high while the subjective utility of it may be low since there is so much water around us. If some day in future, we are running out of water(particularly clean water), wthe subjective utility of it may be as high as the diamonds, imaging you are in the desert, thirsty under the burning sun, what would you choose, diamonds or water?

我认为结合政治经济学和西方经济学的理论来解答这个问题比较全面和适合

水作为一种生活必需品，而钻石则是奢侈品．

政治经济学告诉我们，商品具有价值和使用价值二重性，而价值是指凝结在商品中的无差别的人类劳动，对于相同数量的水和钻石来说，显然，凝结在钻石里的无差别的人类劳动要远大于水，而价值决定价格，价格是价值的外在表现，同时，价格受市场供求的影响，而价格始终围绕价值上下波动，而不会绝对偏离价值．

西方经济学告诉我们，由于资源的稀缺性的存在使我们利用有效的资源时要加以选择，要进行合理的配置，所以对于大多数拥有较少财富的人不会把资源（金钱）投入到钻石（奢侈品）上，而必须投入到水（必需品）上，这并不意味着人们对钻石的需求很小，相对于钻石这种极其稀缺资源的供给来说，对她的需求是很大的，因此当对钻石这种商品的需求曲线经过市场的角逐后与其供给曲线在一个较高水平的价格相交，而达到了一次又一次均衡．ＱＱ６８２１７６５１

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