This statement just isn’t true. First off, I’m not sure what it means to value something negatively. How I value various ends is alway in relation to other ends, and not some actual value scale which has measurements from -x to +x. What could hypothetically happen with an ever increasing supply of some good is that it no longer serves any end I have in mind. But the reality is that for such a situation to occur to good would have to be so abundant that I wouldn’t be able to even exchange it for some other good, making me question whether this constitutes a good (it may be non-scarce).
This is my point exactly.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:UtilityQuantified.svg
Just look at that chart. Most economists accept the fact that the marginal unit has less and less value until it becomes a burden. I don’t think Rothbard or Mises every disputed this.
Austrians explicitly reject the quantification of values, which is what the chart you posted represents. What most economists accept is inconsequential to what constitutes laws of praxeology, which is what your post was initially about.
Yes, I disagree with both Mises’ and Rothbard’s formulations (which are broadly similar). But no I would not call the disutility of labor a praxeological deduction. I actually think of it as a ‘situational proposition’ (that’s my own term, which I will now explain).
They describe the disutility of labor as not a praxeological deduction, but an empirical observation, or subsidiary assumption, that must be acknowledged or made because later economic laws depend on it. They say we can imagine a world where labor is not disutilitous, but as you point out, in such a world that so-called ‘labor’ would really be leisure. So yes it certainly feels like disutility is implied by the very word labor. I agree on this point, but there is still a subsidiary assumption that we must make. Namely we must posit that humans labor. Like the action axiom, this is the labor axiom. What it means is that humans have satisfactions that they can’t achieve purely through leisure activities. Humans undertake some tasks (which we call laborious tasks) because they want the end result; this is a labor action. Leisure actions are performed for their own sake; there is continuous satisfaction throughout the action.
I’ve always found it odd that Rothbard stresses that this is the first time in MES that what he is saying has not been derived from the action axiom. Even if we ‘patch up’ Rothbard as I have described, is he still right to say that the disutility of labor labor axiom, is the first of its kind to appear in MES? I don’t think so. For example, by this point in the book he has already talked about different stages of production; introducing terms like “producers goods”. When he introduces these terms and concepts, he is effectvely saying that from this point onwards we are imagining a world in which producers goods exist. That is, a world in which humans have some desires that cannot be satisfied by either leisure or laboring to produce a consumers good. Some of our satisfactions require producers goods. We could call this the “producers’ goods axiom”.
So I don’t see anything special or troubling about making this “subsidiary assumption” about labor, because we make all kinds of other “subsidiary assumptions”. This is really just the process of introducing and defining new categories and concepts into the science. It doesn’t make praxeology any less powerful or rigid; it simply specifies the kind of world that we are operating in. This is why I call all these things “situational propositions”.
The imaginary world that Mises and Rothbard are talking about where ‘labor is disutilitous’ (more accurately stated as nobody labors) is simply a world where this particular situational proposition - that humans labor - has been relaxed. This is no different to imagining a barter economy, say. When we do that, we simply relax the situational proposition that money exists. Whether or not it is useful to consider a world where nobody labors is another matter.
I don’t have a quote of Mises on hand, but I’m sure he did. As for Rothbard, earlier in this very thread I posted a quote in which he disputed that claim. On page 25 of Man, Economy, and State he states that “the utility of X units of a good is always greater than the utility of X-1 units.” Just one page later, he includes a diagram illustrating this law, and a verbal restatement: “The diagram illustrates the aforementioned [law] that the utility (value) of more units is greater than the utility of fewer units…” (p.26)
Rothbard includes no mention of a caveat that, at a certain point an additional unit may prove to be burdensome or provide disutility. By use of the word “law” he clearly implies no such limiting notions, and obviously his word “always” in his explicit formulation above should make it clear that, whatever most economists may think about the concept of utility, Rothbard was not on board with diminishing total utility or anything of the like. Total utility (obviously ordinal, not cardinal) must increase as the supply of that good increases, because the actor will be able to satisfy more of his ends with that greater supply. However, those ends will be progressively less useful to the actor on account of their being less urgently desired.
The conceptual barrier between labor and leisure is not, as you’re implying, utility versus disutility; in fact that’s just the point Mises and Rothbard are making. One is able to conceive of a situation in which labor does not offer disutility, so to define them this way is not so helpful. The more expedient classification method is whether an activity offers, in Mises’ parlance “mediate or immediate gratification.” If an activity offers solely immediate gratification, by definition it cannot be called labor. An activity may or may not bring about disutility, but if it is able to offer mediate gratification then it is a means to a further end and can be called labor.
Given the wiggle room above, it would be incorrect to say that labor as a praxeological rule is always ‘disutilitous’; however, being that it almost always is, we can call it an empirical observation.
I still don’t understand why you said “But no I would not call the disutility of labor a praxeological deduction.”
Here’s my proof as simple as can be:
-
Leisure is a good
-
Humans prefer to have more goods than less goods
-
To engage in labour, you must forego leisure(a good)
-
Giving up a good brings disutility, because consuming that good would bring utility.
Therefore, labor brings disutility.
Where is the flaw in my logic?
It’s not a praxeological rule. What do you mean by ‘almost’? What exceptions do you have in mind? Let me explain why there are none…
Think of a scale with pure leisure at one end and pure labor at the other end. So at the leisure end are activities which are done purely for their own sake, for immediate satisfaction. The satisfaction comes throughout the activity and then the satisfaction ends when the activity ends. There is no satisfaction in “having done it”. At the labor end of the scale are activites which yield no immediate satisfaction; they are performed purely for mediate satisfaction. All activites in between (which is most activites) provide some immediate satisfaction, and some mediate satisfaction.
Whether a given action is leisure or labor depends on how the actor values the immediate ends achieved by the activity, compared to the mediate ends. More precisely, if the mediate ends are removed from the actor’s choice, would he still perform the same activity just to achieve the immediate ends? If he would, then we can say that for this actor, this activity was leisure. If the prospect of no mediate ends would have led to the actor making a different choice, then the activity is laborious to him. This is the borderline between where we could call an activity labor and where we would call it leisure.
As I explained in my post, I think ‘disutility of labor’ is confusing and misleading. But it is true in a sense because the laborer (actor performing a labor activity) does always suffer disutility. By definition he would have made a different choice of action if it weren’t for the mediate ends that the activity would yield. The counterfactual where the actor made a different choice would have yielded immediate ends of higher value to him, and hence actors always suffer this disutility by laboring.
The whole section of MES dealing with disutility of labor can be replaced by the situational proposition I talked about, which might informally be stated as We have to work for stuff, noting that work sucks by definition.
“More precisely, if the mediate ends are removed from the actor’s choice, would he still perform the same activity just to achieve the immediate ends? If he would, then we can say that for this actor, this activity was leisure. If the prospect of no mediate ends would have led to the actor making a different choice, then the activity is laborious to him. This is the borderline between where we could call an activity labor and where we would call it leisure.”
That’s exactly right. The conclusion is that in no situation could labor bring utility. Therefore the disutility of labor is proven without the use of empiricism. It is deduced through praxeology.
Your logic is sound and your conclusion is sound. But to be a praxeological deduction in the sense I used the term there you would have to start with Humans Act, and then deduce your conclusion without introducing any concepts that are not implied by the action axiom alone, i.e. without bringing in “subsidiary assumptions”. So an example of a praxeological deduction would be Humans have ends. To reach your (1) and (3) premises, you have to define leisure and labor and explain what these concepts are.
On reflection, I should have said that it is not a pure praxeological deduction. Because you need to bring in a situational proposition, which you could very well call “empirical”. This is that humans labor. Humans work to achieve mediate ends, as well as acting (leisuring) to achieve immediate ends. This is not implied by the action axiom alone, so is not a pure praxeological deduction. That labor brings disutility falls immediately out of the definition of it, as your proof and mine show.
Alright, I can agree to that.