Didn’t mean to derail I’m out of practice
Yes.
No. Misesian science doesn’t say “you want X, but you REALLY want Y.” It says “you are adopting A in order to achieve X, which you want. However A will instead achieve Y, which you don’t want. Now, if you adopt B, you will achieve Z, which you prefer to X anyway, but didn’t know was possible.”
Yes, thank you.
Mises is not a moralist!
That’s not moralism! That’s like saying a doctor is a moralist for diagnosing good acts from bad acts, with reference to his patient’s own preferences of life over death, ease over pain, and soundness of body over debility.
"As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil." - Mises
“Liberalism has always had in view the good of the whole,” - Mises
"liberalism has outgrown that of the older liberalism, that it is based on a deeper and better insight into interrelationships, since it can reap the benefit of the advances that science has made" - Mises
"The program of liberalism, therefore, if condensed into a single word, would have to read: property, that is, private ownership of the means of production*" -* Mises
Use science to attain better and deeper insight into interrelationships, ie. ethics, because liberalism is always in view of the good of the whole (utilitarian and moral concept of good). Liberalism is property (as he says one single word can be condensed out of what liberalism is). What is property - scarcity. How is liberalism as a political-ethic for the good of the whole to resolve conflicts of scarcity, Mises says by the protection of natural rights which are of the natural law of human nature as I quoted Mises saying that protection of life, health, liberty, and private property; are to be. John Locke discusses those concepts and they are called natural rights.
So now, Mises is for normative science, natural law, and natural rights. Awesome. Thanks for obscuring the intellectual legacy of one of the most important thinkers in history.
"As the liberal sees it, the task of the state consists solely and exclusively in guaranteeing the protection of life, health, liberty, and private property against violent attacks. Everything that goes beyond this is an evil." - Mises
It’s in black and white. I’m sorry you disagree with Mises. Argue with him. Not me.
He expressed his judgements of value. Sick awesome. But why does that matter?
That’s what anybody ever does. What’s your point?
What exactly are you trying to prove?
I am not necessarily trying to prove anything. I think I am addressing something else. I mentioned this at the top of my OP requoted here:
Also I think this is important:
Also:
Francois Facchini:
Thomism [ie. natural law] consequently it links methodological subjectivism and ontological objectivism (Maki 1990, p. 295) and gives us the means to rectify our beliefs. It is ontological objectivism that enables us to affirm that we can have knowledge of economic phenomena that transcends our prejudices, opinions, and preconceptions about the world.
Transcending ones own prejudices, opinions, and preconceptions.
Again, “an evil”, is meant not in the sense of wicked (contrary to an universal/metaphysical end), but in the sense of something destructive (contrary to the ends of those involved), as in Machiavelli:
“Never let any Government imagine that it can choose perfectly safe courses; rather let it expect to have to take very doubtful ones, because it is found in ordinary affairs that one never seeks to avoid one trouble without running into another; but prudence consists in knowing how to distinguish the character of troubles, and for choice to take the lesser evil.”
(Dear reader please do not let your ancap hackles rise; this is not an endorsement of Machiavellian doctrine, but simply an example of how the word “evil” is often used in political philosophy with a non-moralist meaning)
wilderness,
Do you realize that two of the foremost scholarly proponents of normative science, natural law, and natural rights completely disagree with you on this interpretation of Mises’ thought?
- Luwig von Mises and Natural Law: A Comment on Professor Gonce by Murray N. Rothbard
- Economics and its Ethical Assumptions by Roderick T. Long
Of course you’ll probably continue to Google-mine quotes to and try to stretch their meaning to show that when Rothbard and Long say that Mises was against normative science, natural law, and natural rights, they really mean he was FOR those things.
Such is the way of your syncretism-run-riot.
“…Locke’s view we have a right to the means to that end. So we have rights to life, liberty, health and property. These are natural rights, that is they are rights that we have in a state of nature before the introduction of civil government, and all people have these rights equally.” - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
And what does Mises offer to the solution because “everything that goes beyond this is evil” - Mises says life, health, liberty, and private property are to be protected, ie. defensive action.
- Private Property and Ethics
In seeking to demonstrate the social function and necessity of private ownership
of the means of production and of the concomitant inequality in the distribution of
income and wealth, we are at the same time providing proof of the moral
justification for private property and for the capitalist social order based upon it.
Morality consists in the regard for the necessary requirements of social existence
that must be demanded of each individual member of society. A man living in
isolation has no moral rules to follow. He need have no qualms about doing
anything he finds it to his advantage to do, for he does not have to consider whether
he is not thereby injuring others. But as a member of society, a man must take into
consideration, in everything he does, not only his own immediate advantage, but
also the necessity, in every action, of affirming society as such. For the life of the
individual in society is possible only by virtue of social cooperation, and every
individual would be most seriously harmed if the social organization of life and of
production were to break down. In requiring of the individual that he should take
society into consideration in all his actions, that he should forgo an action that,
while advantageous to him, would be detrimental to social life, society does not
demand that he sacrifice himself to the interests of others. For the sacrifice that it
imposes is only a provisional one: the renunciation of an immediate and relatively
minor advantage in exchange for a much greater ultimate benefit. The continued
existence of society as the association of persons working in cooperation and sharing a
common way of life is in the interest of every individual. Whoever gives up a
momentary advantage in order to avoid imperiling the continued existence of
society is sacrificing a lesser gain for a greater one.
The meaning of this regard for the general social interest has frequently been
misunderstood. Its moral value was believed to consist in the fact of the sacrifice
itself, in the renunciation of an immediate gratification. One refused to see that
what is morally valuable is not the sacrifice, but the end served by the sacrifice, and
one insisted on ascribing moral value to sacrifice, to renunciation, in and for itself
alone. But sacrificing is moral only when it serves a moral end. There is a world of
difference between a man who risks his life and property for a good cause and the
man who sacrifices them without benefiting society in any way.
Everything that serves to preserve the social order is moral; everything that is
detrimental to it is immoral. Accordingly, when we reach the conclusion that an
institution is beneficial to society, one can no longer object that it is immoral. There
may possibly be a difference of opinion about whether a particular institution is
socially beneficial or harmful. But once it has been judged beneficial, one can no
longer contend that, for some inexplicable reason, it must be condemned as
immoral.
wilderness, what do you think of Rothbard’s position, thoroughly expounded in the paper I linked to above, that Mises was avidly against the natural rights doctrine?
If you really think Mises was a moralist, you’re insane.
pop quiz, did Mises ever write the sentence: “we are at the same time providing proof of the moral justification for private property and for the capitalist social order based upon it.” ? Did he throw it in as a foil that he would then critique…? does that sentence shows a rejection of ‘moralising’ and make moral arguments?
here’s another question:
Who said it:
"Everything that serves to preserve the social order is moral; everything that is
detrimental to it is immoral. Accordingly, when we reach the conclusion that an
institution is beneficial to society, one can no longer object that it is immoral. There
may possibly be a difference of opinion about whether a particular institution is
socially beneficial or harmful. But once it has been judged beneficial, one can no
longer contend that, for some inexplicable reason, it must be condemned as
immoral."
another “moral justification”… anybody can take a guess. It’s open table.
In that quotation, he is arguing that, at its foundation, the application of the word “moral” or “immoral” to an action refers to what the speaker of that word believes are consequences of that action.
This is a good game, ok, so here is Omnipotent Government
With the exception of Feuerbach all Germanphilosophers scorned utilitarianism as a mean system of ethics. Forthem the basis of ethics was intuition. A mystical voice in his soulmakes man know what is right and what is wrong. The moral law is a restraint imposed upon man for the sake of other people’s orsociety’s interests. They did not realize that each individual serves his own-rightly understood, i.e., long-run-interests better by complying with the moral code and by displaying attitudes which further society than by indulging in activities detrimental to society.Thus they never understood the theory of the harmony of interests and the merely temporary character of the sacrifice which man makes in renouncing some immediate gain lest he endanger the existence of society. In their eyes there is an insoluble conflict be-tween the individual’s aims and those of society. They did not see that the individual must practice morality for his own, not for some-body else’s or for the state’s or society’s welfare. The ethics of theGerman philosophers are heteronomous. Some mystical entity orders man to behave morally, that is to renounce his selfishness forthe advantage of a higher, nobler, and more powerful being, society.
Aside from Mises using the word “we” here’s what else Mises states in that same section:
"In seeking to demonstrate the social function and necessity of private ownership
of the means of production and of the concomitant inequality in the distribution of
income and wealth, we are at the same time providing proof of the moral
justification for private property and for the capitalist social order based upon it.
Morality consists in…"
(sorry underline won’t turn off for some reason) But Mises clarifies what that section is about. It is about “providing proof of the moral justificiation” That’s what that section is about.
An amoralist or non-moralist is trying to provide proof of the moral justification.
An amoralist proving moral justification.[:^)]