On the instantaneous life of a nondurable input: a reflection in light of Cantor, Newton and Zeno

A nondurable producer good that incurs no interest cost, which implies the instantaneous period of production, is a feature of many important models. We investigate various issues arising from this feature: counting the uncountably infinite (pace Cantor), modeling time as two infinitely distant instants (pace Newton), and accommodating no sequence of production (pro Zeno). These issues are all related to the property of real numbers, to which the instantaneous period of production inevitably leads. It is concluded that the current accounting practice based on the instantaneous period of production should be revised.