I could stand it [:P]
p.s. I respect your new-found openness to familiarising yourself with the literature
With all due respect, I believe that attitude is the weakness of the Austrian school.
I’m sure you could. I’ve ordered the Hoppe and Friedman books. They should be here in a few days.
I don’t even understand the criticism so as i could try to respond to it. care to expand?
Why?
The state enslaves children from kindergarten till 12th grade. From the early morning into the afternoon, then there is homework. It is easy to see why they have the upper hand at the moment
Which is a lie as well. Obama promised to take from the rich and give to poor, but he broke that promise before being elected. He broke it by voting for the Wall Street bailout.
I think it overestimates the audience.
When you understand what praxeology is… the criticism of ‘rationality’ and ‘irrationality’ doesn’t hold any weight.
Read anything on that subject yet?
i think its finding an audience.
so i’m glad we got all these thoughts out there. hope they do some good
Not as much as you have I’m sure.
Anyways, my brain is tired so I’m gonna call it quits for tonight I think. I’ll talk to you guys tomorrow, have a good night.
Not at all. I think you’re making an argument from ignorance again.
What constitutes its audience?
As I understand it, if you’re a Rothbardian, you don’t apply praxeology to ethics.
Quite right. And where did you get the impression that is what was being suggested?
The point being if Bloom - at least what I understood he was getting at with his objection: “I think it [Austrian Economics] overestimates the audience.”
I understood that as meaning what he has said elsewhere - that apparently Austrian Economics assumes everyone is “rational”, and he is using that as a reason to object to a stateless society. If he understood praxeology, and I believe you yourself have stated elsewhere that he should require a basic level of understanding - then I’d hope he’d realise: what Austrians actually mean by “rational” - Rozeff
"It is common for researchers to use the terms “irrational” and “irrationality” in describing these findings. The meanings of the terms vary. Some are just using a summary term. Some mean that people violate certain axioms of economics. Some see irrationality as violations of “rational expectations.” Some view failure to satisfy Bayesian axioms as irrational. Some term impatience (high time preference) as irrational. Some view certain kinds of trading as irrational.
How then do such findings square with praxeology? Assuming they are valid and reliable, they challenge some popular economic theories that restrict the domain of an actor’s choice to stipulated sorts of choices governed by so-called axioms of rationality.
However, they pose no challenge whatever to praxeology which, as we have seen, countenances error in the selection of means to achieve ends and logically views all human action as rational. The main point of difference is that praxeology does not term the findings as irrational or interpret them as indicating irrational human action. Not only does the praxeological position avoid confusion, it also, as we shall see, undercuts any case for state intervention to remedy irrationality."
Which I believe goes to the heart of the matter.
I actually read a good article today by Rothbard in relation to Mises ethical relativism.
On Mises’s Ethical Relativism
Then you clearly have no grasp of the value-free nature of economics.
I’m talking about politics, which isn’t value free. An-cap is a political system in that it needs to overthrow the current political system to be established. You cannot have a large an-cap society in the US as it is now. People will find out and the feds will march in and take everything. You need protection from the feds. Which means you need political power and popular support. That means that philosophy and economics must include political considerations. We’re talking strategy here, not ideology.
“Philosophically, I believe that libertarianism — and the wider creed of sound individualism of which libertarianism is a part — must rest on absolutism and deny relativism.”
So does this mean we can determine what is and is not rational? How can all values be rational relative to the person considering them but at the same time praexology be absolute? That doesn’t make any sense.
“Moreover, not only can we say with absolute assurance that certain methods and means are irrational, but can also go on to say that certain ends are irrational. Suppose that A’s end is to torture B, because A enjoys it. Even if it lies within A’s power to do so, and even if A need not fear retaliation by the police or by B or B’s friends, I think it can be demonstrated that such torture and love of torture is contrary to the nature of man and to what is required by that nature for man’s true happiness; I think it can be demonstrated that such perversions of man’s nature are profoundly irrational.”
What if that individual just enjoys hurting people? Wouldn’t it be rational to torture people?
“What I have been trying to say is that Mises’s utilitarian, relativist approach to ethics is not nearly enough to establish a full case for liberty. It must be supplemented by an absolutist ethic — an ethic of liberty, as well as of other values needed for the health and development of the individual — grounded on natural law, i.e., discovery of the laws of man’s nature. Failure to recognize this is the greatest flaw in Mises’s philosophical worldview.”
And yet we cannot determine what is and is not rational because economics is a value free system? This makes no sense. Absolutism implies that absolute values be given to means and ends. Right?
False. Weren’t you going to stop posting things that you don’t know until you do know something?