Abstract

Bastiat's great contribution to economics, in his own view, was his identification of service as the source of economic value. What is anything worth to anybody? In the cases where we are not dealing with what our fellow men do for us, the answer is to be found in its utility - how much the thing contributes to our satisfaction. In the case where we deal with our fellows, we are interested specifically in what they can do for us, that is, how much service they can render us - how much they can or could, by their actions, contribute to the purchaser's satisfactions. If the providers are free beings, then the recipient will obtain those satisfactions only by agreement with that provider. It is to be assumed that the purchaser will get the best outcome he can: he will pay the lowest price feasible, for the option that is better than any known alternative.