That’s wrong, or badly worded. Economics is discursive reasoning not description.
its harder to be wertfrei than one might think.
The Federal Reserve is the wrong means for attaining the ends of a prosperous economy: a wertfrei critique of the Federal Reserve.
prosperous = possible value leak?
I do not see where I err as far as your critique goes, quite seriously, mind going more at length for ignorent me? Also, I already replied to Wilderness’ objections to the entire paragraph stating that my wording was easilly misinterpretted esspecially in respect to the meaning of “application”, and its derivatives.
It’s obvious that I am not going to convince you that economics is a ‘value-free’ discipline. I suggest we just move on.
are you both trying to convince each other that economics is value-free?
The American government created the Federal Reserve in order to create a prosperous American economy; their chosen means will not attain their ends.
Yah, and Hitler sent the Jews to Auschwitz for public safety.
Unbelievable.
I thought the prior compartmentalization was naive, but this is true belief.
No I am convinced that economics implies a value system.
win!
I have to laugh at giles assertion that Hazlitt wasn’t a very good economist, as Mises described Hazlitt as one of the outstanding economists of their age, and TFOTNE as a devastating critique of keynesianism.
i hold mises judgement as to what constitutes a great economist to be far superior to yours, giles. at the moment you are a petulant pseudo intellectual, and an increasingly belligerent and confused one at that.
So essentially you are holding up Mises’ judgement with scarcely any evidence. Rather hagiophical, isn’t it?
call it what you will, but i consider the judgment of the greatest economist of all time to be immeasurably superior to that of our resident intellectual.
Do you have the political opinions of Mises?
that is a rather broad question…would you care to include specifics?
Do you support the state like Mises?
Anarchist Cain, I don’t really think you know the meaning of economics being a priori, it means that one can learn it without experience. There needn’t be humanity in order for economic science to exist, there’d be nobody to eluciadate it, but the logical structure of praxeology would still be valid, since it is all hypothetical anyway. You’re shifting the goalposts, you’ve gone from arguing “economic science does not exist without humanity” to “there would be nobody to write Human Action without humanity”. The former is false, by the very nature of praxeology, and the second is obvious.
As concerns Rothbard, I’ll quote myself to clarify (I don’t think my exposition is very good, but I can’t find another, besides Gordon’s lecture on the subject):
Once again, if you have this in mind it’s clear what Rothbard is objecting to, Mises’ attempt to make ethical theory value free. Rothbard has said elsewhere (I’ll try to find it, but Long points out the same thing) that economics should be value free, but the ethical theorist must advise people on what their ends should be. In other words, they need to make “ought” statements.
In the interest of keeping this civil, let’s go back a few steps. When I (and pretty much every other economist) say value freedom, what I mean is that the economics is concerned with making “is” statements, the economist can never (in his role as economist) make any judgments about the ends one is to choose, only the means. In other words, the economist can say, if you value prosperity you’d better get rid of the Fed, regulation and the public sector in general, but the economist cannot say “you should value prosperity”.
Now, you’re going back and forth between attempting to tackle my views and saying that economics supposes that people hold “values”, which is pretty much a platitude, that no economist would dispute.
I don’t really know what you mean when you say “So are you conceding or not that Mises’ economic theory … is based on the premise that humanity values wealth therefore the best economical theory that gives them that is the right economic theory?”. The meaning of the term “best economic theory” is really vague. If you’re a realist, then the best economic theory is that which gives the scientist the best understanding of phenomena. Perhaps what you mean is the best way of organizing the economy is that which maximises wealth, to which the economist can only point out that the free market is the best system for maximising wealth, not that such a system is “the best”, only the philosopher can answer the second question. And that’s really the crux is the issue, you believe the economist can say (or does say) that a given system is better than another, with no qualifications. What I believe is that economic science does only say (and where it says otherwise it errs) that if you wish to acheive a given end a certain system is best (for example, if you want to get rid of the business cycle you should should stop pushing interest rates below their natural rate). To put it more concisely, I believe that economic science should (and does) inform you on the means to a given end, not on the end itself. Any more is up to the philosopher.
Nir, I don’t know what you think you’ve proven with those quotations, but you’ve certainly not shown that I think Hazlitt was less of an economist than Keynes. So if that’s the point you’re making, you didn’t make it very well, I’ll tell you know, I don’t think Keynes was a very good economist at all (although, I’ll repeat, he’s had some brilliant disciples), but I don’t think Hazlitt was either (even if he was better than Keynes).
What I’m saying is that unless you understand the Keynesian system, and its variants (new Keynesian especially) you can’t dismiss it, just like you wouldn’t expect neoclassical economists to dismiss Austrianism. It’s really not difficult to understand what I’m saying, if you want to make an informed decision, you need to understand the subject matter over which you’re deciding.
Moreover, one needs to understand the system to understand its fallacies. I’m not asking you to write a textbook on Keynesian theory, what I would expect is for you to show some level of understanding. Now, you can caricture my position if you like (you’re attributing to me posititons that I do not hold, such that you should know every intricacy of Keynesianism), at the end of the day, rejecting my advice is only going to impair your own understanding of economic science and make you look rather dogmatic, ignorant and arrogant.
Now, I’ve never said you’re completely ignorant of neoclassicism, I doubt you have quite the grasp of it that you claim to, but even so, you’ve done better than most here have and to the extent that you have my criticisms don’t apply.
However, you refused to comment on my points about how Austrians can (possible) learn from Keynes, and how some claim to have learned from Keynes. The fact of the matter is the some Austrians have been influenced by Keynes’ thought, so perhaps it isn’t so wise to reject him so quickly. As for your witchdoctor quip, it’s a false analogy, witchdoctors base their “medicine” on faith, whereas Keynesianism and neoclassicism are logical, now, perhaps you think they’ve erred, nonetheless, you can’t draw such conclusions about them being the same so easily. Also, I reject the notion that natural scientists can ever reach the truth, no matter how advanced it becomes they’re going to reach a point at which they reduce their science to some “useful fictions”, so they base their science of its usefulness, wrt witchdoctors don’t have the best track record. Now, if witchdoctors did have the ability to cure people and that could be demonstrated, I daresay some people in medschool might be interested in learning from them.
Two more points, the first is that Keynesianism isn’t is such high regard by intellectuals at the moment, perhaps you should educate yourself before you make such confused pronouncements. By the way, Caplan and Cowen both rejected Austrianism, I don’t think either of them are particularly renowned. The second is that I’m not the most knowledgably person about Islam (although, that’s an ad hom anyway) but I do intend to educate myself about it, I’ve just got other interests right now, if I find it appealing I will embrace it.
Juan, I’ve never claimed to be an objective scientist, although I do aspire to be one. And if I do indeed end up choosing a career in academia I will have no issue with calling myself a scientist. I don’t know because I’m an 18 year old who has just finished his first year of his bachelors degree. This said, I don’t think one needs to be an academic to be a scientist, I just think that there’s a strong correlation and that it helps considerably.
You’re missing my point entirely, neither system of Rothbard nor that of Mises was flawless (if you wish to make a claim to the contrary, go ahead, I don’t think it has much credibility though) therefore to some extent they did bypass logic. And if they did, you’re going to have to draw some entirely arbitrary and nonsensical line allowing you to claim that Mises and Rothbard are scientists but orthodox economists aren’t.
If you believe that neoclassicals adhere to their paradigm because the government signs their paycheck, meanwhile claiming that Austrianism is a more coherent system (I follow you with the latter, disagree with the former) you’re going to have to attribute both moral and intellectual superiority to Austrian economists. That’s a very silly thing to do, if you ask me. Do you really believe that every economist who chooses the wrong means to eliminate poverty is merely a statist propagandist? I simply can’t accept that they’re evil as opposed to misguided, and to the extent that they are merely misguided, it’s nonsensical to call them propagandists, since Austrians have said some incorrect things before (and will do so in the future)
A lot of economists simply aren’t good philosophers, and they accept that and as such refrain from education themselves about epistemology, instead, they economize and write about economics (and even if they did enjoy philosophers, that’s not to say they would reach conclusions that you agree with, in which case your objection has been blunted). Likewise, a lot of Austrians don’t care much for epistemology either (as an example, has Salerno done much work on epistemology?) and accept that Austrian methodologoy is correct, does that make them propagandists for liberty? All this implies is that they’re not left to specialize in economic theory, which is where they’re going to be most productive.
Now, as for your pedantic quip about maths, my point was that math is a priori (if you wish to dispute that, go ahead) meaning that one can potentially learn it without ever picking up a math textbook.
tacoface, I’m sorry to inform you, but economic science and Keynesianism have come along way since Hazlitt’s day, as far as I’m aware Hazlitt didn’t contribute much to economic science, not in the same sense as many other economics have.
Menger provided the entire subjectivist framework of Austrianism. Mises provided a very strong critique of central planning (meanwhile giving good insights into how the market system works) and laid the foundations for the ABCT (combining the work of the British Currency School, Wicksell’s notion of the “natural” rate of interest and Bohm Bawerk’s capital theory), Hayek built on the foundations Mises provided. Garrison has made a very nice graphical depiction of the ABCT, Yeager (and Horwitz and others) have done good work on monetary disequilbirium theory, Kirzner has made huge contributions as concerns the entrepreneur, Rothbard made modern Austrian monopoly theory (as have Armentano and DiLorenzo). Hoppe has made contributions to political economy and extended praxeology into the realm of sociology, Lachmann, whether you agree with him or not, tried to emphasize uncertainty wrt to Austrian economics.
What did Hazlitt do?
I wonder why LS is ignoring the discussion we’ve had thus far (amusing given that he chastises others for doing the same), On another note, you guys really are the wingnuts that Danny dismissed you as.
(If my post is convoluted, it’s because I had problems with the quoting, I apologise in advance)
If you do not share the political sentiments of Mises about ethics, justice, and the state how dare a “resident intellectual” like you disagree with Mises!
You guys haven’t answered, I win by default.
Good game, no rematch.
I’m not ignoring this particular discussion. As a poster, I will be ignoring all of your discussions henceforth.
I’m curious, but was there ever an answer as to the original question as to the differences in the philosophies of those teaching at George Mason University and those teaching at The Ludwig von Mises Institute?