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instead of spending money on present consumption. The miser is claimed to thereby prefer future satisfactions to present ones. Economist Walter Block refutes this challenge in "The Negative Interest Rate: A Taxonomic Critique." However psychologically flawed the suicidal miser might be, his actions are still consistent with universal positive time preference. For the miser, abstaining from the purchase of food is a value; it sates his conscience, which, for him, overrules his stomach. Thus, the miser is consistent in preferring present abstinence from food to future abstinence from food. If he indeed values abstinence from food above all, then eating in the present would indicate a negative time preference. Furthermore, if the miser dies as a result of his choice not to eat, he cannot be said to be future-oriented. His death arising from his choice implies that he will have no future which he favors over the present. One certainly does not favor future consumption by dying. According to Block, the miser's suicide "is purely an intratemporal choice, irrelevant to time preference" (2).

Suicide is beyond doubt objectively immoral and imprudent, but this consideration is beyond the scope of pure economic analysis and the theory of time preference.

Extending its analysis to both widely prevalent trends, such as market interest rates, and to extreme and highly abnormal instances of human action, Austrian Economics capably demonstrates the universal applicability of positive time preference.

Learn more about this author, G. Stolyarov II.
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