mmm kaaaay.
So what you’re saying is that in societies where private property rights were not outlined, no one ever acted. Got it.
I don’t know why you can’t grasp such simple concepts.
In societies like the Soviet Union where private property rights were very limited(people still owned their own body in the USSR) very little wealth was created. In societies with a lot of private property like Hong Kong a lot of wealth was created. The wealth was created because private property, or in other words freedom/liberty, was given to the citizens. Each citizen tried to make themselves as happy as possible by producing as much wealth as possible. Hence the wealth came from the human acting to maximize utility, and he was only able to do it because he was free to do so because he had private property rights.
Value is subjective. If I take my poo and shape it into something you’re willng to buy from me then I have created wealth. I added value to nature (my gastrointestinal byproduct) and can now invest in a super burrito that may become an even finer work of art to add to your collection.
Someone else tried that nonsense earlier. I’m not sure you’re going to get through to this one. When someone says “reality is private property” and that there is no such thing as action without private property, and that “Utility, happiness, wealth, value are all the same thing”, and thinks Hoppe supports their ideas, I really don’t see any progress being made regardless of what you try.
Wealth creation does not require private property, freedom, nor liberty. Its just the simple act of adding value to something which can occur in the most degrading of circumstances. You might be confusing wealth with capitalism?
“Wealth creation does not require private property, freedom, nor liberty.”
Then explain this. If no one in society has private property rights over their own body and they don’t have private property over any land then they can’t interact with their surroundings. They wouldn’t have the right to move. How can wealth be formed in that society?
John James,
You shouldn’t insult people’s ideas and arguments just because you cannot understand them. If you see a flaw in the logic then actually explain what it is.
Because they are nonsense. Simplicity has nothing to do with it. “reality is private property”. That doesn’t even make sense. “Utility, happiness, wealth, value are all the same thing”. It’s like words have no meaning to you.
And on this “action cannot take place without private property” nonsense, slaves were someone else’s property, no? Slaves did not own their body. They had no private property rights to their body or anything else. And you’re seriously arguing that no slave, ever in the history of the world, performed one action. And you’re telling me I don’t get it?
The military and connected universities came up with the internet? One could argue that there was no freedom, liberty, or private proprerty involved. It was collusion and property taken from others that were then channeled into specific projects that only benenfited a few for a time. Then when it was made available the private property, freedom, and liberty cause the utility of the internet to explode which then leads to value of product and wealth from exchange.
Any information that we derived from the moon landing could also be an example, For instance, we could never “prove” that all things fall at the same rate because of air resistance, but since we were able to go to the moon and test Newton’s hypothesis in a “controlled” (no air; no air resistance) environment we added wealth (in the form of scientific verification) and utility (because we can use that info for future scientific application)
The same could be said for the highway system, the manhattan project (not cause of the bomb, but the nuclear physics research involved).
Fact is the government CAN do good things, but it is rare because of how it conducts its business.
I think we all get what you are saying, but your semantical games trying to tell us about praxeology is getting everyone confused. Utility maximization leads to the creation of wealth and private property and liberty of choice lead to the best results where coercion and force lead to disutility and destruction of wealth (as people’s time and labor is wasted) Is this correct?
When I said “reality is private property” it was in a specific context. What I mean is that theoretically individuals should not be able to interact with property that is not their own.
“Utility, happiness, wealth, value are all the same thing”. These words all represent the same thing because they are each subjective. What makes diamonds more VALUABLE than rocks? The fact that the diamonds bring HAPPINESS AND UTILITY(economic term). Diamonds are only WEALTH so long as people VALUE them.
Slaves didn’t own their own bodies which is why they were not allowed to do the actions that maximize their happiness. The slaves had to do exactly what their masters told them. Slaves were the private property of their masters. The masters created wealth and happiness for themselves by making their slaves work. So the slaves never really acted in the sense that they never chose an action that they wanted to do, they only behaved in the ways that their masters told them to.
Scarcity? the geological process that make them aren’t as plentiful as the average rock? Happiness is an abstraction, use is not. It brings happiness because my girlfriend would rather have it (happiness). If i gave her an average rock she wouldn’t be happy. The happiness that is wrought from a diamond is derived from its scarcity.
this flies in the face of making nature more useful/valuable. Who owns a nature? Property is created from things that people do not own. No one owns a trees, but when i cut one down and make a boat it becomes my property THEN all of the subjective judgments can be considered.
Just because the judgments of things are subjective doesn’t mean they mean the same thing. Words have meanings. You could interpret them differently, but it doesn’t make sense to.
“I think we all get what you are saying, but your semantical games trying to tell us about praxeology is getting everyone confused. Utility maximization leads to the creation of wealth and private property and liberty of choice lead to the best results where coercion and force lead to disutility and destruction of wealth (as people’s time and labor is wasted) Is this correct?”
Yes, overall you understand my point. However, I’m not playing “semantical games” I’m just trying to take things to the extreme to prove the validity of my arguments.
I do not believe the government can do any good. In order for the government to have any money it must steal it. Any coercion by definition lowers the amount of provate property rights and therefore restricts the amount of wealth creation. In the examples you gave the money that was used by the government would have been better allocated if it was done by the free market.
Utility is an economic term. You should google it. It doesn’t mean “usefulness”.
The geological process, and the supply of rocks is not what makes diamonds have value. Diamonds have value because people like them. There is plenty of water but people still value it and consider it wealth because it brings happiness and utility.
But why does the diamond make people happy? It is because not everyone has one. Which deduced, as far as i can, comes down to where they come from = geological development (which is out of the control of mankind)
“Here baby, i got you this (a rock) it was in the yard. =D.”
" =| You know everyone can acquire one of these and i could have picked it up myself. In fact, i saw this rock on my way in today. Why didn’t you get me something that i can show off to people that don’t have one?"
or
“I got you this rock, nothing special everyone has one, wanna bang?”
“OH HELL YES, i love it and because everyone else has one it makes me happy.”
now sure, she could be happy with a rock, but i doubt it is really “the thought” that counts…
Utility (from wikipedia) - In economics, utility is a measure of relative satisfaction. Given this measure, one may speak meaningfully of increasing or decreasing utility, and thereby explain economic behavior in terms of attempts to increase one’s utility.
In the austrian tradition you can’t use that definition because utility is NOT measurable, which is the point of subjectivity. Utility providing use is more accurate (which is why mainstream economics discounts mises and rothbard).
You probably won’t get a lot of disagreement around here. I was at pains to come up with the examples that i came up with a few posts ago, but looking back they aren’t bad examples.
In fact, the creation of the internet was the result of government trying to make itself more efficient. kind of an interesting paradox. bueracracies trying to pass information to each other faster. haha, like that would help. It just made them more deadly.
Forget diamonds because it just confuses the issue. Hamburgers can be considered wealth and are valuable because they remove felt uneasiness they satisfy your hunger. Wealth is purely based on the individual’s judgement. If people liked garbage then garbage would be valuable and would be considered wealth.
you are not even arguing a cohesive point anymore.
The diamond was a perfect destruction of you hypothesis, but you want to discount it, even though it was originally your example. The hambudger gets rid of hunger (ie. it provides use) that is what gives it value. Not because i imagine it. HOW MUCH value it has is what is subjective, hence the price system.
I seem to have misunderstood your original intention having been caught up in your secondary postings.
Wealth creation does require some private property but not universally. If one person out of every 6 billion has property rights then wealth can be created.
I don’t even know what we’re arguing about anymore. I still don’t think you countered the main argument I was making in my first post.
You’re presupposing the reasons why and at what level wealth is subjective. It is subjective due to interpretation of utility. Something isn’t subjective because it is subjective, there are reasons why people act and because those vary, that is what makes it subjective.
And your point that private property is required for wealth creation is too broad. It is not true when taken to extremes and i even found examples where it is not true.