That makes sense.
Those wants have nothing to do with economic science. Economics just informs you about the logical consequences of human action. An understanding of economics is just as useful to a libertarian who wants to create prosperity in society as it is to a dictator who wants to wreck the economy for his own benefit. It doesn’t tell you which course of action you ought to take. That is a decision left up to ethics.
Think about it this way. Using physics, I can create a rocket that will shuttle me to the moon. Using the same physics, I could purposefully create a rocket that will crash and kill its occupants. Which action I choose is beyond the scope of physics.
Exactly, without value statements economics just tells you what is irrespective of what ought to be. Much like history without theory is just listing of events without explanation or fluidity.
That is only true if “we don’t desire unemployment in anyway whatever”. If we do, in fact, desire unemployment (I have no idea why we would, but that’s no the issue) then Austrian economics tells us that we should increase minimum wages. Economics only tell us if our actions will lead to the intended results. It does not judge those results any more than a hammer judges into what it is pounding a nail.
Okay, the immaterial metaphysical concept known as economics doesn’t say what we should do. Great, I concede the point.
Wonderful. Now we can proceed to use our understanding of economics to make the world a nicer place [:D]
Indeed!
“Effecting choices for the community as a whole” is the antithesis of libertarianism. And for the last time, Austrian Economics is a method of study; there is no way to “implement” it.
Right, but it is no crisis.
Economics has the explanatory power to be descriptive of a bad economy as well as a good economy, meaning, an economic science can explain all economies. The ethical statements can be secondly by introducing and applying the whole other science called ethics. If economics became limited by explaining a good economy only, then it wouldn’t be able to show and point out directly via theories, what is going on in a bad economy. Therefore by studying an economy the economy is known. And then if that is a bad or good economy, then the evalution of such an economy being either good or bad would necessarily come second. Let me explain further.
In ethics the explanation of what is good and bad comes about, but ethics is not applied to economics only. That shows how ethics is a distinct field that can be applied in other fields, ie medicine, etc… In economics ethics can be applied but that application would have to be from aprior knowledge on what the economy is, in which the ethical judgment is to deliberate upon.
Thus the order in passing an ethical judgment upon an economy would need to follow this reasonable set of events. First, the economy needs to be understood first and that’s what economics does. Secondly, an ethical application based on the insight of what that economy is can be deliberated upon. The individual applying an ethical judgment upon the economy needed to have the knowledge of the economy first before a deliberate ethical judgement could even act. There is no ethical insight upon an economy unless there is knowledge of an economy first, in which to secondly pass an ethical judgment upon. It can not be known if an economy is good or bad, if a person doesn’t know what that economy is.
Absolutely not. Value statements are involved in every facet of life. Every action expresses preference and therefore value.
indeed [Y]
yeaper
Re Joseph Bright, “…you seem to be under the impression that ‘Austrian economics’ is a poliitcal program…”
I’m thankful this thread has taken on a life of its own, but this is marked as unanswered, and I think I have answered it.
Replied to on page four of this thread. What I’m saying is that to transform the economy into an economy that would be consistent with Austrian theory would require changes to the present economic system (as a rough definition, the set of institutions via which production and exchange take place). Certain institutions would have to be greatly modified or done away with altogether. The only way to change the existing set of economic institutions is through political action of some kind. [Here’s where the definition of the political process (from Warren J.Samuels’s definition of “social power” as “the ability to effect choices”) is very useful: The political process is the process of effecting choices for the community as a whole. It is organic. It is inherent in the existence of any formally organized community.] Presumably, Austrians aren’t contemplating an armed revolution (though that would still be a political act), so some engagement with the political process would have to take place for Austrian theory to be instituted.
Now, I thought, mistakenly, that this forum was populated with libertarians. According to my understanding of libertarianism, some of the fundamental goals of it (as a general perspective) include ending management of the economy by government and/or a central bank, doing away with transfer payments of all kinds, and in general minimizing the impact of government on the citizenry. The idea I am proposing would accomplish those things. So would an economy organized on the basis of Austrian economics. So, when it comes to those goals that transcend the purely economic part of life, they can be accomplished by more than one set of institutional arrangements.
In general, life is about optimality problems: Which is the best option? It’s almost never as simple as plugging some data into an equation and, presto, there’s your answer, especially when it comes to effecting choices for the entire community. As has been noted on this thread, human interactions always bring up normative issues that must be taken into account. What’s more, people will never have the same beliefs regarding the ethics that underlie our responses to those issues. Absent a necessarily universal ethic (its applicability to every human being cannot be coherently denied by any human being), we are left with, as Thomas Hobbes put it, a war of all against all, or, as Michel Foucault put it, an endless processioin of contests of power.
No third party is able to “transform” the economy in any desirable way. Changes must and will emerge naturally through voluntary transaction and mutually beneficial cooperation (trial and error). Austrians believe in spontaneous order and not in various forms of interventionism, in the labor market or whatever.
We (as in libertarians) want to end the central bank and government intervention because these institutions are coercive and destructive (they are destructive because they are coercive). We don’t want to replace coercive institutions with other coercive institutions. We don’t sit around and try to figure out ways to manage the economy; in fact, this is we oppose.
This is not problem, it is a virtue. The vast array of human experiences and desires is what causes mutually beneficial cooperation; it’s why some teach our children, why others manage banks, and why some clean our streets. These professions are all noble, but most of all, they’re necessary. The very fact that people desire different things and have different philosophies is precisely why we don’t want centralized institutions directing people and dictating what they “should” do. When left alone, they will organize and create a set of decentralized institutions which benefit them and don’t infringe on the liberty of others. Your proposals are the antithesis of libertarianism.
No it’s not. JosephBright answered your question.
Gettin’ too high on your own kool-aid. [:^)]
In this forum, we aren’t entirely concerned with how a socialist business model would work. We see from the start that it is socialist, and that is why people don’t really bother to analyze it any further.
And as such, it is not a “new” idea.
No we don’t just dissmiss socialism outright. We don’t hate socialism “just because”. Socialists essentially hate capitalism "just because: We have more concrete reasons. We aren’t zealots in that respect. The Austrian school is the originator of the calculation problem. Some of us here may dismiss you as a crank but others have asked you genuine questions. Ignore the hostility and focus on the productive posts.
Stephen you need to go up and address Lilburne’s question, that starts to hit the root of the problem.
False. The current system is perfectly consistent with Austrian theory.
False. Individual secession is not a political action.
Austrian theory cannot be “instituted”. It is a method of study.
Your proposed system, rather than reducing government managment of the economy, increases said management to 100%. It vastly increases the impact of government on its citizenry.