Mises’ Theory and History Chapter 15 Section 3 ‘The Egalitarians’ Interpretation of History’ should do the job in refuting this essay. It appears that Einstein was a victim to the vicious Marxian “presumption that civilization, progress, and and improvement emanate from the operation of some mythical factor—in the Marxian philosophy, the material productive forces—shaping the minds of men in such a way that certain ideas are successively produced contemporaneously in them.” What Einstein failed to see is that without the Capitalist system of the division of labor accompanied by private ownership of the means of production, not only is the incentive to excel, achieve, innovate removed, but also the very capacity to do so is also removed in that there would be no means for economic calculation.
To simply ask the question “Can anyone here refute this?” is a simplistic question. Yes we can, but not justifiably so in just a couple of paragraphs in a discussion forum. Ludwig von Mises, the preeminent economist of the 20th century, spent a good portion of his esteemed career refuting such claims as Einstein made in this essay. If you really want a satisfactory answer that delves deeply into the issue, then you should study his master works: Human Action, Theory and History, and Socialism. If you want an answer as simplistic as your question, then here it is: A society based on the socialist ideology espoused by Einstein would be Utopian, if by Utopian you mean a society marked by extreme poverty, rampant violence, totalitarian control by an omnipotent centralized State power, mass death, short life expectancy, miserable living standards, etc.
Can’t happen by definition. Comparative advantage, remember? You can always gain by cooperating and trading with someone, no matter what. Absent non-market forces there will always be work for those who want it no matter how automated things become.
It’s so odd that many individuals in the realm of religion seek Einsteins quotes and pantheistic opinions as muster against atheism, but when he speaks of politics his misguided opinions are simply overlooked.
“I’m not really shocked by this, as most intellectuals are leftist or statist anyway, and definitely were back then. I think I see this in my own physics department and at University generally. In all fairness I think it would have been fairly unlikely for Einstein to have come across Mises, though part of me just wishes they bumped into each other at least once! Or better yet both Einstein and Godel meet Mises, the results could have been tantalising!”
Kurt Godel was best friend of Oscar Morgenstern, and vice versa. Morgenstern learned all his economics under Mises. Too bad Morgenstern was a bad economist, however, since he believed in cardinal utility (see first chapter of his book with Von Neumann, which was just Morgenstern’s attempt to refute ordinal utility).
Problem is, physiologically, Donald Hebb showed in 1949, that pleasure is growth of neural network, literally. There is no numerical comparison, because it is just topological change. It can’t be compared, because old neural network is gone, and only topology of neuron growth and firing within confined of glial matrix matters. This also proved Mises’ 1949 contention that preferences change every time we do anything, and cannot be revealed over time (Rothbard expanded more on this question in 1956).
Speaking of which, most scientists are socialists, but ordinal utility in terms of pure preferences (preferences between bundles and within bundles), which is result of physiology, kills “social preferences” concept. Its just that most scientists thinking about this question simply ignore the economics and physiological literature entirely. They don’t read outside their narrow field…
Einstein is classic example, who notoriously cited very few people (compared, say with modern physicists such as Roger Penrose, who has pages and pages of citations in virtually any major article or book). So of course he was a socialist…
Joe the Butcher = Butcher. This man by defintion cares and knows about butching
Joe The Baker = Baker.. This man by definition cares and knows about baking
Joe the Candle Stick Maker = Candle Stick Maker. This man by definition knows and cares about candle stick making
What these men say “with authority” outside of their scope of practice outside of there significant esoteric circles, mean nothing to me outside of what the price of their product sell for…and if what they said did mean something more to me in the subiective sense, by definition, would logically have no more consequence as Joe the physicist, Joe the priest, or Joe the McDonalds employee vs Einstein the physicist. He is just as much working for his interest, using his subjective values, and using his comparative advantage to subsidize his aesthetics on top of someone elses as much as the next guy and with equal qualifications as the butcher, baker, and candle stick maker. They are all knaves in this regard
Intellectuals hate economists because they happen to, by the nature of their trade, have a more relevant and qualified narrative on scientism, evolution, materialism, psychology (to an odd extant), society, egoism, subjectivism, etc than they can give in relation to human affairs and actions. Like it or not economics is the corner stone of all sociological (and to a degree personal/ psychological) metaphysical and scientific thought when it comes to the world of universal intersubjective communication. Einstein, in this regard is subject to the laws that Mises spelled out.
They are both amazing relativists, however Einstein was trying to walk into territory where he was no more qualified to comment than a McDonalds employee. If Einstein cared that much about intersubjective relations, he should have studied it as rigoursly as Mises had…likewise if he cared about the quality of serving friesquickly and with a satisfactory taste - he should have worked at McDonalds.
It seems as if academics still can not accept radical Aristotelian styled empiricism when it is empolyed by the social sciences.
Actually, Gottfried Leibniz, founder of Calculus, Dynamics, and more, was also one of earliest jurists (his real job) to defend market rationality in way the Mises did:
“Every time someone does anything, they do it only because they prefer it to something else. If they did not receive or expect to receive pleasure, they would not have done it. Also, there is no opposition of love and pleasure. Yo**u only love others if their appearence of well-being gives you pleasure. There cannot be any other kind of love. Everytime someone denies this, they contradict themselve the moment they bend their finger or open their mouth.”
(translation from latin preface to his book of legal documents in 1670’s if I remember correctly).
James Hutton wrote 600 pages more on this topic (Volume 3, Investigations of Principles of Knowledge).
Thus:
Locke, Leibniz, Hume, Condillac, Hutton, and Mises are one side,
Socialists, even including Einstein, are on other side.
Question:
Which side is more impressive scientifically overall? Especially now with neutrino experiment:
A better question would be: Why should anyone listen to or seek council from Einstein on government and the economy? He has no credentials to speak on the subject simply by virtue of his name. I do not seek out the wisdom of Livy or Hayek when it comes to physics. I do not invest with the brick maker when buying jewels. So why should I take the advice of a physicist who subscribes to a system which has caused more oppression, poverty, war, and mass-murder than any other? Take note as well that Einstein specifically chose not to live in a socialist economy, having two major ones to choose from.
Even as a theoretical physicist, Einstein was wrong on a number of factors so it’s safe to assume that his views of economics where just plain wrong. He would of received the Nobel Prize on several more occasions if he only believed what his equations put forth.
Once he discovered general relativity, I believe, he only made a few more major ground breaking contributions (Bose-Einstein condensates/statistics) to physics.
A number of mistakes that he made of the top of my head:
The cosmological constant that cost him dearly thanks to Hubble.
His constant tirades against quantum mechanics where Neils Bohr defeated him in every debate. Because Einstein didn’t accept quantum mechanics, he’s work suffered tremendously in attempting to find a master equation that would couple gravity with electrodynamics.
Not accepting that his equations predicted black holes, big bang, and singularities in general.
most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the peoplewere thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.
Anyone see the irony here? If he had only taken it to it’s logical conclusion: this is what the government is doing to us!!!
The logical conclusion of this is methodological dualism.
Conquest is largely economic. “I want what you have and I’m not willing to exchange anything for it, but I’m willing to take it by force.” However, the systems of values in various (arbitrarily-delineated) societies have not been made out of whole cloth, as it were - they have evolved over centuries and millennia. In other words, Mr. Einstein gives the priests too much credit.
Sure it can. Economic science, as advanced by the Austrian School of Economics, demonstrates that any conscious organism (e.g. man) acts in its own perceived self-interest. Unless and until there’s a way for one person to literally drive another’s action (i.e. think for him), all human beings will remain in the “predatory phase” of development (as it were). However, once there’s a way to do the above, then some human beings - namely those doing the thinking for others - will remain in that phase. Taking it to its logical endpoint, there would ultimately be one person doing the thinking for literally everyone else. Even then, mankind as a whole would still be in the “predatory phase” of development. So I fail to see how this phase of development could ever truly be overcome. It seems that the purpose Mr. Einstein attributes to socialism is doomed from the start.
But on the other hand, if economic science can throw little light on the socialist society of the future, how in the world can Mr. Einstein himself - or anyone else - do so?
I am not an idiot. Look at my avatar. Does it look like I am defending socialism?
I posted this without commenting on it because, at the time, I was working well over 80 hours per week. I just wanted other people on this forum to check it out and comment upon it.
EDIT: Maybe I am an idiot. Look at how many times I quoted this person, and now I can’t figure out how to edit it.