I dont know if this is the case… you’re assuming that non-human capital can’t grow as needed. The austrian view of the market is that it is a dynamic, ongoing thing, so that at any point in time maybe things are out of sync but they’re moving towards a certain goal.
I think if a lot of people started being born then human capital intensive industries would flourish. I can see what you’re saying about the general quality of life for people maybe going down, but this is counterbalanced by the rising demand for labor that accompanies the rise in population. Human beings aren’t just machines, they’re the only thing in the economy that creates real demand.
Overall i think your idea runs into the lump of labor fallacy.
That Bloomberg is the least democratic and most monarchistic mayor in the history of New York City, and as a result, New York City is the most well-off city in the USA.
yeah, I got turned on to libertarianism 3 months ago, it’s not that shocking… if I were you, I wouldn’t assume everyone on this site to be experts on libertarianism…
Still, I am intrigued, could you or anyone give me an insight as to why you would prefer monarchy? I’m not saying democracy is great, but still…
You don’t have to apologize to anyone. Hoppe has some great political critiques, but he doesn’t offer much that isn’t rooted in anachronism when it comes to evolutionary ideas. Fantastic thinker but prone to epistemological errors.
Hoppe’s basic premise is that monarchy is superior to democracy because a monarch has an enduring interest in his title, whereas a politician has no incentive to manage the affairs of state for the long term.
Stranger has tried to apply it to Bloomberg, who was elected democratically, and thus, his analysis was stillborn as soon as he hit post. I get where he is coming from, and disagree with him, but the argument he is presenting really has no merit, so don’t sweat not getting it.
Fully agree. Thus, praxeology tells us that when there are too many people and not enough capital, capital starts increasing while population goes down. That’s the way the market moves towards equilibrium. All that I’m adding here is that perhaps it is possible to transform labor into capital, thus boosting the capital stock in much more speedy way than it would be possible to do by simple savings. Perhaps this only happens when there is a massive misalignment of population and capital, perhaps it always happens when such misalignments show up. If that is possible (transforming labor into capital), I don’t se why self-interned individuals wouldn’t do it. “Masters” get more capital, while “slaves” avoid being killed death.
But there’s a catch here. What you say rightly applies when a labor becomes relatively more abundant than capital, as long as population level are still sub-optimal. For think about this: can any firm employ people ad infinitum? Assuming its capital stock doesn’t grow, it can employ labor up to certain point, for then every new worker subtract to its profitability. The limited capital stock allows it to profitably employ people up to e certain point. The very same thing happens in a society at large. So there is a limit at which labor can be employed, a limit beyond which newly added population is unusable as such.
Here’s the point. CAN humans be equalized, economically, to capital? This needs a lot of theoretical work, and right now I can’t devote any time to this. But the basic idea that surplus population can exist is, I believe, undeniable.
Thanks for elaborating, Merlin. My first thought is, there is always more stuff to be made. In the division of labor, each person produces far more than he consumes, so it seems every extra person reduces the wage rate while reducing the price of goods and services to an even greater extent. The result is everyone is better off.
I also don’t see why capital analysis needs to enter into the picture: Even if all the extra people just picked berries and did manual labor with their bare hands (no capital), in a division of labor they would still tend to produce marginally more than they consume, wouldn’t they? And if we don’t need any more labor (i.e., labor is too cheap to interest them), doesn’t that just mean society is extremely well off?
even if we hunt and fish with our bare hands, even if we build rudimentary homes without the aid of tools or roundabout processes, different labourers have different skills (and develop skills through) practice. hence division of labour and specialization was feasable from the get go.
Mises specifically talks about the always relative scarcity of labour with respect to material factors of production (capital and LAND)
I can’t find the phrase ‘optimal population’ in the text of Human Action. can i get a page ref?
I’d argue that while the conditions you describe could occur, a free market/free society would correct them. Creation of the State doesn’t really fix the problem, although I see where you’re coming from on this; discussion is on the belief in the people that a state is needed.
Also, with State interference conditions could be even more extreme: a Class Bubble, if you will.
Let’s not pretend that there is anything democratic about American elections. He was chosen as the heir of the previous Republican ruler because he had the city’s capitalist class behind him, and the means to lead in battle against democratic politicians. This is exactly the same process through which early European kings were chosen.
The argument for monarchy is not simply that the monarch has the long term interest of the state at heart (which Bloomberg does through his substantial capital investment in New York City), but also is selected for his talent for capital accumulation and protection, as opposed to the democratic politician being selected for demagoguery and his promises to plunder.
Sounds as if you were talking about the junior Bush.
I think Hoppe defines monarchy as a system where the ruler owns the security part of the state. That is a definition that doesn`t even include most monarchies, much less the city of New York.
Did he build a company from scratch that made him the wealthiest man in Texas?
This is monarchy in its post-Westphalian definition. In the early medieval period, the king was a war leader elected by his peers (other landlords) to head the covenant of the kingdom and defend it against foreign invasion. There was no monopoly of justice.
The only reason for producing stuff is to consume it. If ‘each’ person produced ‘far more’ than he consumed then we would end up with heaps of stuff that no-one consumes - which certainly doesn’t happen…
Wrong again. If they pick berrries and can trade them for, say, computers, then for all practical purposes they have produced and cosumed a certain amount of berries/computers. There’s no reason why a ‘surplus’ of production would exist.
Division of labor means that more complex stuff can be produced…and consumed.
Of course you don’t . That because you don’t know what you are talking about.
If you produce more than you consume you are saving. And that’s not directly related to division of labor.