 As a student of the Austrian School of Economics, Hayek was a subjectivist as well as a marginalist in his approach to studying human decision making. The value of goods and services resides in the judgment of the individual chooser, and is not inherent in the goods and services themselves. Neither are prices posted in the market merely a summation of costs of production. Value, costs and the expectations of individuals choosers are driven individual buyers and sellers assessing tradeoffs. (To give a concrete example, owners of gas stations may hike the retail price of gasoline in response to breaking news of a supply problem in the middle east. The news does not affect the price of gas already in their storage tanks, but it does affect their assessment of what the wholesale price of gasoline will be next time they are buying new supplies so that they can stay in business. Retail customers see the hike as gouging because they don’t understand that profit from current sales is what has to pay for new supplies.) Thus, Hayek’s point in calling the valuation process subjective is not to say it is a matter of opinion. Rather, it is a process of perceiving reality as needing one response rather than another. 