1. Take the number of meals as an example. When a consumer first starts eating, due to the feeling of hunger, the utility of the meal just eaten is greater. However, when the meal continues to exceed a certain amount, the consumer will It will be too much for the consumer. At this time, eating more will have a penalty-like effect. The result of the consumer eating more will lead to negative marginal utility.
2. A farmer built a small wooden house in the virgin forest, where he worked and lived alone. He harvested five bags of grain, which he will use next fall, but there is no need to leave any surplus. Being a man of calculation, he arranged a plan to use the grains within a year.
The first bag of grain was necessary for his survival. The second bag is used to increase physical strength and energy in addition to maintaining survival. In addition, he wanted to have some meat to eat, so he set aside a third bag of grain to raise chickens, ducks and other poultry.
He loved to drink, so he used the fourth bag of grain to make wine. As for the fifth bag of grain, he thought it would be better to use it to raise a few parrots he liked, so as to relieve his boredom. Obviously, the different uses of these five bags of grain have different importance. If expressed in numbers, the importance of the bag of grain that will sustain survival can be determined as 12, and the rest are determined as 10, 8, 6, and 4 in order.
Extended information
The essential meaning of the law of diminishing marginal utility and the reasons for its emergence are as follows:
Within a certain period of time, when other conditions remain unchanged, when When you start to increase consumption, the marginal utility will increase, that is, the total utility will increase greatly, but after accumulating to a considerable amount of consumption, the marginal utility will gradually decrease as the consumption increases.
If the marginal utility is still positive, it means that the total utility continues to increase, but the increase gradually becomes flat; when the consumption reaches saturation and the marginal utility decreases to 0, it means that the total utility will no longer increase cumulatively. At this time The total utility reaches the maximum; if the marginal utility decreases to negative, it means that the total utility will gradually decrease.
Reasons for decrease:
①Although people’s desires are diverse and endless, due to limitations of physiological and other factors, the satisfaction of each specific desire is limited. of.
In the beginning, the desire is the greatest, so the satisfaction obtained when consuming the first unit of goods is also the greatest. As the number of consumption of goods increases, the desire also decreases, so the degree of satisfaction in feeling decreases, so that when the goods are consumed, the degree of satisfaction decreases. If you continue to consume more when your desire disappears, it will cause unpleasant feelings.
② Items have a variety of uses, and the importance of each use is different. People will always use it for the most important purpose first, that is, where the utility is greatest, and then for secondary purposes. Therefore, the satisfaction or utility provided by the latter unit of goods to consumers must be less than that of the former unit.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility