An Economist Attempts to Explain Marginal Utility to the Layman

"Why do individuals pay much higher prices for some goods versus other goods? The common reply to this is the law of supply and demand. But what is behind this law? To provide an answer to this question economists refer to the law of diminishing marginal utility.

At that point, most people stop listening. Too technical for me! But in fact, it is not. The concept of marginal utility is the essential building block of a sound theory of human action as it applies in the science of economics. But too often, the mainstream theory is misleading. So I offer this attempt to demystify the idea...

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