Does this just mean that marginal utility is non-linear at the minima and maxima?
while the change from zero control over a supply chain in any given significantly complicated product (i.e. a computer); up to a fractional control may impart an initial high utility (i.e. I make all the mice—everyone needs to come to me for their mice); The following utility if you were to gather more control (i.e. I also make all the keyboards—everyone also needs to come to me for the keyboards) is a lot less of a utility increase. as is screen, motherboards, ram, and N pieces required to create a computer, up until the last several where control of the final pieces will give you the status of computer-master-overlord. like none before you...
come to think of it; resources when they are below a threshold for high-level production automation. for example wool. one sheep may produce between 5-10kg of wool. in the hands of any single person the value of the wool is of a certain low-level utility, but as one person amasses enough of the resource to allow a production-line to make use of the wool the utility increases and we can get yarn and socks in an efficiency that no small amount of the resource could.
where 1kg of coal will provide little utility to anyone but santa, having enough coal to run a power-station is a quite high utility in comparison to making many sad children...
Linear functions on closed bounded domains can (and on finite dimensional closed bounded domains must, IIRC) have minima and maxima. This seems to be Elo’s implicit assumption in the first paragraph, that we were just talking about resources which are available in quantities between 0% and 100%.
Does this just mean that marginal utility is non-linear at the minima and maxima?
while the change from zero control over a supply chain in any given significantly complicated product (i.e. a computer); up to a fractional control may impart an initial high utility (i.e. I make all the mice—everyone needs to come to me for their mice); The following utility if you were to gather more control (i.e. I also make all the keyboards—everyone also needs to come to me for the keyboards) is a lot less of a utility increase. as is screen, motherboards, ram, and N pieces required to create a computer, up until the last several where control of the final pieces will give you the status of computer-master-overlord. like none before you...
come to think of it; resources when they are below a threshold for high-level production automation. for example wool. one sheep may produce between 5-10kg of wool. in the hands of any single person the value of the wool is of a certain low-level utility, but as one person amasses enough of the resource to allow a production-line to make use of the wool the utility increases and we can get yarn and socks in an efficiency that no small amount of the resource could.
where 1kg of coal will provide little utility to anyone but santa, having enough coal to run a power-station is a quite high utility in comparison to making many sad children...
Mathematically, everything is non-linear at its minima and maxima. Linear functions do not have minima or maxima.
Linear functions on closed bounded domains can (and on finite dimensional closed bounded domains must, IIRC) have minima and maxima. This seems to be Elo’s implicit assumption in the first paragraph, that we were just talking about resources which are available in quantities between 0% and 100%.