If you actually read what I’ve said on this thread, you would know that I don’t agree with the objection. I’m just looking for the best way to respond to it. Being condescending and throwing the question back to me doesn’t make you look smart, it makes you look like an ass.
Jesse: “If you actually read what I’ve said on this thread, you would know that I don’t agree with the objection. I’m just looking for the best way to respond to it. Being condescending and throwing the question back to me doesn’t make you look smart, it makes you look like an ass.”
You could have easily said “I don’t know the answer”. That would have sufficed. I thought this was your argument. My bad man, don’t get so upset and revert to nasty wordage.
My first post was a response to how to argue against such an objection, but then you said it wasn’t “intelligient”.
This what I said:
I said this because the response you suggested was the response that I already came up with in the OP. You added nothing to the discussion except rudeness.
Jesse: “I said this because the response you suggested was the response that I already came up with in the OP. You added nothing to the discussion except rudeness.”
I already apoligized. But in no way was I being rude. I gave an argument that deals with an entrepeunar. Just because I initially thought I was arguing against you so asked you to provide an argument against the entrepeunar working in the free market doesn’t make what I said rude in any sense of the word. Sorry, I thought you were who I was debating with. It’s not necessary to revert to emotional rhetoric when I all I gave was, what I thought, was a decent agrument against anti-free marketers. But apparently I offered no decent argument centered on the entrepeunar, but you think that’s adding nothing to this discussion. Ok, great.
You and mises have a different definition of rational. By rational he means purposeful. You quote him on this. But by rational YOU really mean that choices are always optimal. This we don’t agree with.
And you’re right that the preference for the market over socialism is a preference and nothing else. But if you prefer life liberty and prosperity, an economically informed person will prefer the market. If you prefer poverty and starvation, you might prefer socialism. No confusion there.
“I said this because the response you suggested was the response that I already came up with in the OP. You added nothing to the discussion except rudeness.”
Bloom said it best…and answered the discussion with his 2 questions…
Why is Disney holding onto the land if they don’t think that’s the most profitable thing they can do with it? Are they trying to lose money?
“I heard a rumor” - many times rumors such as this turn out to be fiction, but I will proceed.
“The most valuable use of this land would be for the expansion of the competition’s theme park (evidenced by the amount of money they would be willing to pay for it)” -You are claiming the most valuable use of the land can be derived from the amount of money an entity is willing to pay for it. You are also claiming that Disneyland is willing to pay more money for the land. It follows from your assumptions that Disneyland is utilizing the most value from the land. Yet you claim, “the land is not being put towards its most valuable end.”
A water park known as Schlitterbahn came into a similar situation. I’m not sure of all the details of what limited their expansion. They responded by creating a separate park a few miles away and connecting the two by bus. This creation of two parks is what makes the park so popular. The themes of the two parks are able to specialize to their target consumer. In one park you have 20 somethings who want to be away from children and families, and in another park you have children and families who want the quiet of no 20 somethings. Both groups get the possibility of riding any of the rides in either park, for one price. This specific park is ranked #1 water park in the world. In conclusion, the limited expansion accomplished the opposite of what you are claiming it will.
Mises definition is nonsense but I’m using it anyway. And according to HIS definition, which I am using, socialism is rational. Sorry, deal with it.
Only if you, by defintion, equate “socialism” to poverty and starvation, which is another arbitrary defition that you use to try to win the argument.
The truth of the matter is that you reject a rational system (socialism) based on your arbitrary judgements of value. Also, as I mentioned earlier, poverty is subjective. Or are you going to pull some collectivistic GDP statistics to show how wealthy the west is? Number of mcdonald’s burgers per capita?
Ahuh. Mises wrote in german. He probably wouldn’t have been this unclear in english. By rational he means purposeful. You are right that socialism is purposeful. To say it is rational is technically correct under mises, but in english rationalism connotates soundness of logic. Socialism is not optimal, or useful, which is the way most people conceptualize rationalism in english.
So you’re basically just saying “ha ha ha you all reject socialism but according to you socialism is rational so that makes you hypocrites”. It cheeses us off because none of us use the word rational like that, which is why myself and others attempted to correct you that human action is purposeful.
Well equating socialism with poverty is what mises tries to do through study of economics. He doesn’t say that socialism is defined as poverty, rather, he studies human action to come to his conclusion. I suppose if the nature of man were different then socialism might not lead to poverty. shrug
Rational, purposeful, but nontheless sub optimal. On these grounds I reject it.
Im not trying to cover up my preferences for peace prosperity and freedom. But my rejection of socialism follows from my understanding of economics. In this sense, it is not arbitrary. It is arbitrary in the sense that my values are merely personal preferences.
Nope. I don’t know that the west is happier than any other place on earth. I can’t make that call. Don’t need to.
When I say I prefer prosperity, I mean that I want as many wants of the individual to be satisfied as possible. This may not have anything to do with big macs. It might mean sitting under a tree waiting for meditation his whole life. shrug
Snowflake,
Not that I’m defending JacobM, but rational or logical doesn’t necessarily mean truthful. It’s important to know that logical deductions that imply false conclusions are significant. It was one of Aristotle’s great achievements. Logically deducting false conclusions from truthful premises, those false conclusions are logical and are important in doing science. So even though the logical deduction is false it possibly leads to better science.
Rational doesn’t necessarily mean ‘soundness of logic’, but maybe you could explain that more. A false logical conclusion is what hypothesis are based on. Being logical is always sound. Or being rational is always sound. It doesn’t necessarily mean the truth though and sometimes what is false leads to better science.
It does if you think that a priori truths are tautological! I don’t know if you are referring to things like zeno’s paradoxes but I looked at them and the more significant of them are linguistic confusions.
I’m just bouncing around a rough version of the way that people who speak english commonly use the term rational. In the context of economic behaviour it seems to be equivalent to “optimal”.
Why use McDonalds burgers per capita when we have this triumpth of capitalism?
Meet the Oreo Pizza. Yes…those are Oreos…on a pizza. That is what our “impoverished” citizens eat lol.
Maybe. I think its free riding if other businesses benefit from disney’s investment at disney’s expense. So a food merchant right outside disney’s gates would be cutting into their profit margin.
This is probably an issue, but they invested a lot of money in that park. Not buying up all the land would allow competition to move in much more easily and harm their revenues.
Socialism is a school of political/economic thought. It is not human action. Humans can act on their beliefs but beliefs themselves cannot act.
I may have complicated it a bit by injecting truthful and falsity into what I was saying, which actually subverted my point a bit. Let me clarify. What I mean is logical deductions that demonstrate an impossible conclusion are what hypothesis are based on.
Yes, but that is counter to Mises point. Mises states one cannot say that a socialist is being irrational unless of course the socialist doesn’t want the ends that socialism leads to. And formally I can say is that by the human acts of socialists they are doing what they prefer. They are being rational. I can’t base my conclusions on what a socialist says is their end cause they could be lying. Their actions are what praxeology is concerned with not if they are lying or their psychic state. The assumptions of choice and preferences are just that. Assumptions that are considered self-evident and they are the means. And the ends or completion of these means is the full act, ie. there is only inaction or action no in-between. It is the acts that are observed that we can all point out as the preferences. And in this case, the preferences of socialists are those acts leading to such ends that socialism leads to. It is logical that their means will lead to such ends. It is only rational.
Well its counter to his definitions. The overall point of the posts was that mises means that rational=purposeful, not rational=optimal, so you can’t use both definitions interchangeably, which is what trollman was doing.
I agree that if a person wants what socialism actually entails, he is acting rationally and optimally. But if a man wants freedom, and falsly believes socialism is his path, he is still acting “rationally” but sup optimally. This is really simple. I guess JakobM doesn’t get the distinction and just wants to claim victory over a bunch of strangers who challenge his ego driven world views.
“Intro. to Logic and Scientific Method” Cohen (the same book Mises had recommend; just saying so it doesn’t appear far-fetched or a different kind of logic):
I really don’t know what JakobM wants. I was going in accord with Mises definition which JakobM is correctly using.
“Right, no reasonably ordinary, judicious person aware of the economics and sociological factors of socialism could prefer it to the market.”
Except the capitalists, special interest groups and individuals who benefit from the state… which is where ethics & political philosophy come into play.
Bro, that’s such a good plan for achieving liberty.. give the statists & socialists the moral highground!?
…
“Except the capitalists, special interest groups and individuals who benefit from the state… which is where ethics & political philosophy come into play.”
“The average American worker enjoys amenities for which Croesus, Crassus, the Medici, and Louis XIV would have envied him.” (Mises, HA)
Had Louis XIV established economic liberty at the beginning of his reign, capitalist France would have poured a greater cornucopia of goods and services upon his head than his crippling taxes ever did. VERY few (if any) people benefit from the interventionist state more than they would benefit from capitalism. Mises knew what he was talking about: there truly is a harmony of interests.
Economics education is the way forward. Specious philosophical doctrines are nothing but a vicious distraction. Recognizing that doesn’t give “statists & socialists the moral highground”. Rather, it is a matter of shifting altogether from the moralist battleground (which is equally flat and muddy for all its spurious disputants) to the scientific battleground of economics, where the battle is fought over existential propositions that can actually be meaningfully affirmed or denied, and where the scientific case for capitalism is invincible.