The Disutility of Labor as a Category of Action

Economics Economics Questions
1

Both Mises and Rothbard consider the disutility of labor to not be a category of action, but rather to be what Rothbard calls “a subsidiary assumption, based on empirical observation of actual human behavior.” Rothbard, in MES, goes on to write, “It is not deducible from human action because its contrary is conceivable, although not generally existing.”

But I think the disutility of labor is just as necessary an implication of human action as time preference is.

With regard to time preference, as Mises and Rothbard argue, there must be a disutility in waiting for consumption, or else man would forever go on producing, and never consume. But that wouldn’t make any sense, because production is for the sake of consumption.

Now take labor. Labor is the expenditure of human energy for the sake of production. Similarly, there must be disutility of labor, or else man would forever go on expending his energy in production, and would never expend energy upon consumption (partaking in leisure or in the enjoyment of any other consumers’ good). But, in this case too, that wouldn’t make sense, because production is for the sake of consumption.

2

Is the word disutility interchangeable with cost? If so, then surely there is a cost to labor, namely, the next best option foregone.

3

“…there must be disutility of labor, or else man would forever go on expending his energy in production.”

I dont think thats so, for exsample I’m drinking some of this new V8 fruit stuff, and the fact that I am not drinking a dr. pepper dosent prove I get disutlity from dr. pepper.

4

I’m not sure if Rothbard actually has the position you state in MES, but I think I do agree with you that he does not stress enough that it simply follows from a praxeological understanding of action. I believe you are incorrect in asserting that Mises makes the same mistake. From page 133 of Human Action (Scholar’s edition):

“The fundamental praxeological insight that men prefer what satisfies them more to what satisfies them less and that they value things on the basis of their utility does not need to be corrected or complemented by an additional statement concerning the disutility of labor. Thcse propositions already imply the statement that labor is preferred to leisure only in so far as the yield of labor is more urgently desired than the enjoyment of leisure.”

Admittedly he does take his time to point this out, after going through the analytical conclusions that can be gained using the “disutility of labor” as a device.

5

abskebabs,

Mises did indeed hold the same position as Rothbard on this question…

HA: “The disutility of labor is not of a categorial and aprioristic character. We can without contradiction think of a world in which labor does not cause uneasiness, and we can depict the state of affairs prevailing in such a world.”

6

Hmm… then it would seem that he’s at least contradicting himself. I suppose I gave the above a more charitable reading in the sense that one could logically conceive of the conditions of such a world without running into intolerable contradictions, in much the same way one could conceive the stationary economy. So for instance, we produce in order to consume. However, not all goods are necessarily “perished” in the process of consumption(e.g. paintings). If utility only required us to have things and not to “consume” them in our leisure(e.g. having a bottle of coke as opposed to drinking it), then for me there seems no reason as to why such a world without disutility of labor could not exist.

Given that most goods are perishable however, such a distinction considering the disutility of labor would be redundant. Perhaps you’re right, more does need to be said on this area, requiring clarification.

7

I think there is a flaw in your last paragraph. In the parenthetical statement, you assume leisure to be a consumer good when you write “partaking in leisure”.

But you make that assumption right in the middle of an argument that assumes the contrary. When you write “or else” in the third sentence of that paragraph, you are assuming there is no disutility of labor, i.e. that leisure is NOT a consumer good.

Put another way, there may exist a bizzaro world where people have the following preferences: Eating ice cream is better than working always. Working is better than doing nothing always.

But even in that bizzaro world it could not be that people have the following preferences: Eating ice cream later is not worse than eating it now. Because in that case, why not delay eating the ice cream forever, to keep on getting richer?

8

“Eating ice cream later is not worse than eating it now. Because in that case, why not delay eating the ice cream forever, to keep on getting richer?”

We could conceive this to be the case if we posit absurdly the world to be populated by actors immortal in the truest sense of the word (not the age of the Universe, since we now know that to be finite).

9

Doesn’t the word “labor” imply disutility? Isn’t labor defined as being disutilitious?

10

I agree. I was merely summarizing Grayson’s argument of how time preference follows from the action axiom.

You probably knew that and are trying to say that if weposit bizzaro worlds we can make any world we want, and hinting that my whole “proof from bizzaro world” thesis is flawed.

BUT, it ain’t so. The quotes on this thread mention the masters’ saying that empirical observation of how people behave teach us the disutility of labor; that it was possible to be otherwise. In other words, a bizzaro world of workacholics does not violate the nature of the physical universe as we know it. But yours does.

Bottom line, I think I’ve got something.

11

Labor is just people doing work to get what they want [=money]. In theory, they may so love their work that they prefer working to idleness. Saying labor has disutility is asserting people would rather lie in the sun than work, all other things being equal.

12

I don’t think so. If someone “love[s] their” labor so much that “they prefer [it] to idleness”, I don’t think that you should anymore refer to it as “labor” from their perspective. What you are saying depends on assuming that what people consider labor is immutable, which of course isn’t true. Saying that labor is defined as being disutilitious isn’t saying that someone “would rather lie in the sun than work, all other things being equal”. What if he considers lieing in the sun simply as labor to get enough vitamin D so his body may properly function so he may do something else that he considers leisure?

13

I guess I wasn’t clear enough. I think the standard common usage of labor is different than the technical definition of labor that Mises adopted.

So to spell it out:

Mises’ definition of labor as used in his works is people doing work to get what they want [=money].

Given that definition, is it immediate from the definition that people would rather not engage in labor? Mises says no. In theory, maybe most people love their work, and would rather work than not work. Only getting out there and seeing the world shows us that people would rather acheive their ends [=money] with out working for it.

Now we are ready to address your last post:

  1. With the above understanding, someone who loves their work would still call it “labor”, if he is sticking with Mises’ definition of labor.

  2. A definition in a scholarly work, once laid out, is indeed immutable. It doesn’t depend on what people consider, but what the author decided.

  3. I didn’t say labor is DEFINED as disutilitous. Quite the opposite. Putting those words in me mouth hints to me that you may have lost the thread of the argument somewhere along the line.

  4. If he is lying in the sun for Vitamin D, then he is not an example of what I’m talking about. I intended to give a picture of someone merely NOT WORKING, as opposed to laboring. Hope that’s cleared up now.

14

“You probably knew that and are trying to say that if weposit bizzaro worlds we can make any world we want, and hinting that my whole “proof from bizzaro world” thesis is flawed.”

Not at all, I was merely making an inference. If I was actually criticizing you on those grounds I would not be able to accept the praxeological method; the use of imaginary constructions, on top of the many unrealisable constructions used in physics in order to be logically consistent(although for slightly different reasons).

In actual fact, I should have mentioned this has led me to the belief that the time horizon or lifespan in which one’s actions have perceived future effects for oneself forms the instrumental aspect in determining the level of time preference, and thereby the interest rate. I believe one could actually even calculate primitive interest rates and elaborate one’s investigations to produce a more complete theory of interest, showing time preference to be a consequence and not a category of action. Such is the subject of a paper I’ve been scratching the details and notes for so far.

N.B. I feel we should avoid jumping to the conclusion that every comment made on one’s point is somehow “in opposition” to the other participant, as opposed to advancing our knowledge with argument and deduction.

15

OK, my bad.

16

Sounds like a circular definition. “Labor” and “work” mean the same thing. Exactly where does he give that definition?

You don’t understand what I meant. I didn’t mean that the definition shouldn’t be immutable. A definition in a “scholarly work” of course should be immutable. I meant that what the word applies to isn’t immutable. It depends on the attitudes of real people. Most people probably consider lieing in the sun as leisure. But that doesn’t mean that they couldn’t change their attitudes. Their attitudes aren’t immutable. And it doesn’t mean that there couldn’t be exceptions. You said that what I said implies that “people would rather lie in the sun than work, all other things being equal”. But that isn’t true, because people could change their attitudes and start considering lieing in the sun as labor, or there could be exceptions.

I didn’t say that you said that “labor is DEFINED as disutilitious”. The fact that I already was talking about labor being defined as disutilitious before we even started arguing should alert you to the fact that I wasn’t trying to say that you defined it as that. When I said “[s]aying that labor is defined as being disutilitious”, I was referring to what I said, not what you said.

I should have been more clear about what I was responding to. I was responding to you saying that “[s]aying labor has disutility is asserting people would rather lie in the sun than work, all other things being equal”. I wasn’t responding to the other thing that you said, that, “[i]n theory, they may so love their work that they prefer working to idleness”. In fact, I don’t even understand the reason why you said that. Why would people not “prefer working to idleness”? Why is that “in theory”? Many people everyday show that they prefer “working to idleness”. How is that remarkable?

17

We could change that to “[o]nly getting out there and seeing the world shows us that people” would prefer to get “their ends” without employing the means. Only observing someone could demonstrate that they would prefer to get their ends without using the means.

But I don’t think that is true. Saying the opposite, that someone would prefer using the means to not using them, is saying nonsense. If they were to prefer getting their ends with using the “means”, the “means” wouldn’t be means, they would be ends in themselves.

Which I think is what Lilburne was saying here:

If there were no disutility of labor, people would forever “produce” but never consume. But, that is nonsense, because production is for consumption. If someone were to forever “produce”, the “production” wouldn’t be production, it would be consumption.

18

Ryan,

Sorry we got so tangled up here.

  1. Let me start from the most difficult part for me, your request for a quote from Mises defining labor. I can’t give you one, not being familiar enough with the book. But we need go no further than Grayson’s first post, where he says “Labor is the expenditure of human energy for the sake of production.” Which is what I was saying, although phrased more impressively.

  2. OK, now since we seem to be looking at things from completly different angles, I’ll sum up my understanding of this thread.

Grayson assumed the definition of labor to be “expending energy to get something”. Note that there is no assumption in the definition about the atitude people have to doing that. And he is going to assume that definition to be immutable, at least until the end of his post.

He also is assuming what Mises and Rothbard asserted to be something they observed in the real world, that people like NOT expending energy. They like it so much, in fact, that it is considered a valuable thing to have time in which one can do nothing if one so wishes. One can go so far as to call it a consumer good.

Now the fact that people actually do go out there and work does not disprove that assertion, of course. They work because although they value idleness, it is not at the top of the charts for them. They value a roof over the head and minimal food and clothing even more than they value idleness. So while lesiure time is not the most valuable consumer good, it is one of SOME value.

Grayson then went on to make a new claim, apparently hitherto undiscovered in Austrian thought. Mainly, that one need not go out in to the streets and check if people like idleness. One can PROVE from first principles [meaning the action axiom] that people enjoy idleness. [I have my doubts about Grayson’s proof, mentioned in an earlier post. But that’s besides the point, so let’s move on].

Your post asked “Doesn’t the word “labor” imply disutility? Isn’t labor defined as being disutilitious?”

My answer to that, [which I may not have made clear], is that no, that is not the definition Grayson is using here. He is taking the word “labor” to mean “expenditure of energy to get something.” That does NOT imply that people would rather not expend the energy, and see it as a bad thing [despite its good consequences of getting money]. In other words, the definition does not imply that labor is a neccessary evil in people’s eyes.

Perhaps in popular speech the word labor has that connotation, but he is being careful to purposefully omit that connotation in his definition.

OK, hope we have things starightened out a bit.

19

Hi Grayson

I think what you are grappling with is the tension that exists between the older, objective conceptions inherited from classical economic science, and the newer, formal conceptions Mises was utilizing.

Action is the utilization of means for the sake of ends (borrowing your phrase “for the sake of”).

In your two passages, I believe you have simply given different definitions of action using various content, rather than defining action formally using only the terms means and ends. You are admixing content with the formal definition of action, and this is leading to confusion.

“Now take labor. Labor is the expenditure of human energy for the sake of production.”

Substitute: “Now take action. Action is the utilization of means for the sake of ends.”

“Production is for the sake of consumption.”

Substitute: “Means are for the sake of ends.”

I believe that any objective definition of labor, production, or consumption is ultimately incompatible with Misesian praxeology.

Examples:

(1)

Person A to person B who is lying on a towel on the beaach: “I see you are enjoying leisure and forsaking labor.”

Person B: “No. I’m working for person C. C told me to put brand X suntan lotion on my right leg, and brand Y suntan lotion on my left leg, and lie here on this towel.”

(2)

Person A to person B who is drinking a glass of wine: “I see you are consuming and not producing.”

Person B: “No, I’m producing a wine rating report.”

As I understand the formal approach, each action has a “dissatisfactory” aspect. Mises conceives this dissatisfactory aspect as the “cost” associated with any action (however this may be conceived). But this is not an “objective” quality of the act concerned, rather it is a formal or logical entailment that comes with the supposition of any and all acts. If we suppose an act, we thereby suppose a cost associated with that act. “Labor” refers to a particular material content. As far as I can see, there is nothing that happens in the act which is “labor” that doesn’t happen in any other act. There is a “cost” or “uneasiness” or “dissatisfaction” logically entailed in every act. When we say that there is a “disutility” entailed in “labor” we provide an example of a particular cost associated with a particual act.

We can also say that there is effort involved in walking, expenditures involved in business, etc. These are different material examples of the conception that cost (or some “dissatisfactory” element) is part of every action.

“Similarly, there must be disutility of labor, or else man would forever go on expending his energy in production, and would never expend energy upon consumption (partaking in leisure or in the enjoyment of any other consumers’ good).”

Here is an alternative way to express the same thing:

As you write, production (A) is for the sake of consumption (B) (formally, means are for the sake of ends).

We have thus put forth a logical construct whereby A and B are logically entailed.

Then, by this very defintion, it is nonsensical to conceive that "man would forever go on [… in production], (A), and would never […partake in consumption] (B).

If we put forth a logical construct in which A always entails B, how can we then suppose A without supposinig B?

If A and B are logically entailed, then when we suppose A we suppose B.

Adam

20

Great post Adam. I agree that labor being disutilitous is not an empirical observation, but is contained in the formal construct of praxeology.

This is very closely linked to the discussion in this thread and this thread. Hulsmann points out that an actor must always value his end higher than he values the means to achieve that end. Mises and Rothbard apparently both failed to see this fact or its profound implications. He explains this mistake as a case of intellectual path-dependency from Bohm-Bawerk. I think we are looking at the same thing here.